The fight between the grazing animal and the plant is, in these scrubs and half-deserts, very severe. In Egypt it is said that the whole flora has been entirely altered by the camel and the donkey.[47]
But in this case the battle is unfair. Man keeps those camels, donkeys, and goats. He provides them with water and protects them from lions, leopards, and snakes. In East Africa man has not yet interfered, and the plants probably get the better of the animals. In such places lions, leopards, and hyenas are common. It will be remembered that a lion not very long ago stormed and took charge of a railway station on the line to Uganda, and was only routed with very heavy loss.
There is also some reason to suppose that the antelopes and other creatures do help the plants in their efforts to colonize the Sahara. Their droppings will very greatly improve the soil, and more vigorous thickets and undergrowth will spring up when the soil is improved in this way. Such a vigorous growth of plants will be better able to resist the long eight or nine months' drought, and so help the wood to develop, until perhaps it is too thick, and the trees are too high, for the antelopes to graze upon them. In this manner the Acacia scrub is slowly and painfully colonizing the desert.
It is not only in Africa that one finds these half-deserts or scrub. There is the Brigalow Scrub in Australia, which has a curious silver-grey shimmering appearance on account of the blue-grey sickle-like leaves of the Brigalow Acacia. The foliage casts no shade, for the leaves are flat and thin, and place themselves edgewise to the light, so that there is no danger of the strong light injuring them. Also in Australia is the Mallee Scrub, covering thousands of square miles between the Murray River and the coast. It consists of bushy Eucalyptus, six to twelve feet high. Its monotonous appearance when seen from a small hill is very striking.[48] "Below lies an endless sea of yellow-brown bushes: perhaps far away one may observe the blue outline of some solitary hill or granite peak, but otherwise nothing breaks the monotonous dark-brown horizon. Everything is silent and motionless save perhaps where the scrub-hen utters its complaining cry, or when the wind rustles the stiff eucalyptus twigs."[49]
There is a melancholy interest attaching to both the Mallee and Brigalow, for in them lie the bones of many gallant and persevering explorers. Nor is the East African thorn-tree desert without its victims. The missionary, Dr. Chalmers, was lost near Kibwezi in the Taru Desert.
The Egyptian Queen Hataru's Expedition
The ships of the expedition are drawn up along the shores of Punt (in Somaliland), and incense trees are being carried on board. Notice the baboons on board ship, and the rays and sword-fish in the water.
There are a certain number of valuable plants found in these half-deserts or scrubs. Perhaps the earliest geographical expedition of which we have a good account (with illustrations) is that sent by the Egyptian Queen, Hatasu, from Thebes, about three thousand years ago. She built on the Red Sea a fleet of five ships, each able to carry from fifty to seventy people, and sent them to the land of Punt, which was probably Somaliland. The natives lived in round huts built on piles like the ancient lake dwellings. The object of the journey was to obtain incense. No less than thirty-one incense-bushes were dug up with as much earth as possible about their roots, and carried to the ships, where they were placed upright on the deck and covered with an awning to keep off the sun's rays. Whether they did really survive the journey and grow in Egypt is uncertain. Sacks of resin, ebony, cassia, apes, baboons, dogs, leopard-skins, and slaves, as well as gold and silver, were also taken away. The Queen of Punt accompanied them. From her appearance it is not probable that the Queen of Sheba was any relation, although some writers have supposed that Sheba and Punt were the same place.