Chapter Eighteen.
The oxen were yoked, and the caravan proceeded at a slow pace to gain the wished-for river. As our travellers walked their horses—for the poor animals had been without food or water for twenty-four hours, and all idea of chasing the various herds of animals which were to be seen in their path was abandoned for the present—Swinton remarked, “We are not far from the track of the Mantatees, when they made their irruption upon the Caffres about eighteen months back.”
“I was intending to ask you for some information on that point, Swinton. There has been more than one irruption into the country from the natives to the northward. Mr Fairburn gave me a very fair idea of the history of the Cape colony, but we were both too much engaged after our arrival in Cape Town for me to obtain further information.”
“I will, you may be assured, tell you all I know,” replied Swinton; “but you must not expect to find in me a Mr Fairburn. I may as well remark, that Africa appears to be a country not able to afford support to a dense population, like Europe; and the chief cause of this is the great want of water, occasionally rendered more trying by droughts of four or five years’ continuance.”
“I grant that such is the case at present,” observed the Major; “but you well know that it is not that there is not a sufficient quantity of rain which falls generally once a year, but because the water which falls is carried off so quickly. Rivers become torrents, and in a few weeks pour all their water into the sea, leaving, I may say, none for the remainder of the year.”
“That is true,” replied Swinton.
“And so it will be until the population is not only dense, but, I may add, sufficiently enlightened and industrious. Then, I presume, they will take the same measures for securing a supply of water throughout the year which have been so long adopted in India, and were formerly in South America by the Mexicans. I mean that of digging large tanks, from which the water cannot escape, except by evaporation.”
“I believe that it will be the only remedy.”
“Not only the remedy, but more than a remedy; for tanks once established, vegetation will flourish, and the vegetation will not only husband the water in the country, but attract more.”
“All that is very true,” replied Swinton, “and I trust the time will come, when not only this land may be well watered with the dew of heaven, but that the rivers of grace may flow through it in every direction, and the tree of Christ may flourish.”