NOTE D
OUR WASTE LAND IN MASHONALAND (1891)
At the present day it is by no means uncommon for men to spend the greater part of their lives and large stores of wealth in a sometimes futile search for the scattered fragments of antiquity. A few broken Greek marbles, or Nineveh mud tablets, or battered leaves of Egyptian papyrus, are considered an ample return for half a lifetime of labour and the expenditure of thousands. We are apt to regard with a scorn not unmixed with malevolence the men of a bygone age who allowed treasure of so priceless a value to humanity to be wantonly destroyed.
Yet, at the present day in South Africa, a destruction of materials far more priceless and irrevocable goes on in our midst in the full light of our nineteenth-century humanitarian culture. It is possible that in the course of time a new Phidias may arise in our midst, and produce statues comparable to, if not identical with, those of the old world, and the learning and lore of the old Egyptians and Chaldeans lost in their destroyed mud tablets or papyrus leaves may yet be re-evolved from the human brain; but there is a reckless and callous destruction now going on in our midst of that which can by no conceivable possibility be restored to humanity when once it is destroyed from the surface of the globe. Future generations will probably regard as intelligent and wise benefactors of their race the men who burnt the Library in Alexandria, and destroyed the Parthenon at Athens, when they are compared, in certain aspects, with the inhabitants of Southern Africa and the modern world.
For the moment we are so entirely bent on advancing the claims of a material civilization, which we are inclined to regard as the all-in-all of life, that more subtle, if equally practical, and important considerations are apt to be forgotten.
This view is forced on us when we consider the reckless and entirely wanton destruction of the one form of production for which the African continent, and more especially its southern portions, stands pre-eminent among the world's divisions—our astonishing fauna.
From gorilla and grey parrot on the east coast, and chimpanzee on the west, to the endless varieties of antelope and pachydermatous quadrupeds which at one time overran the south, no part in the globe has been within the memory of man, and even still is, so rich in beautiful and rare forms of sub-human life; no other presents the same vast field for scientific research.
How quickly this condition of things is passing away the most rapid glance at the present condition of South Africa will show. Hardly a year passes away without some rare and interesting form of life becoming extinct. The hippopotami, elephants, and antelopes which once grazed on the shores of Table Bay have for a century not been seen there, and the vast herds which covered our up-country plains in the memory of those living have absolutely been extinguished, leaving nothing behind but a few horns and skins, the few last wandering individuals, who in the natural course of things will be exterminated within the next few years. Before the middle of the twentieth century is reached (probably much sooner) the rifle, the railway train and the plough will so entirely have modified the conditions of existence that not only all forms of life indigenous to Southern, but to Central and Tropical Africa will have passed away.
From a sentimental and emotional standpoint this is to be regretted, but there are deeper interests than the merely emotional and poetical at stake. In an age when the study of a single small, deep-sea creature of a form intermediate between the vertebrate and invertebrate orders has thrown a flood of light on our biological knowledge, and when the discovery of a few fossilized hoofs has helped to revolutionize our view of vital phenomena; when even the man in the street, perceiving the practical advantages which science has conferred on him, has ceased to jeer, and regards it with a certain vague, if unreasoning, respect, it is not necessary to dwell at length on the fact that the loss of these multitudinous forms of life, by crippling and limiting the field of scientific study, must inflict a direct and serious loss on human knowledge and progress. But perhaps it is only the man more or less interested in the results of scientific research who can fully appreciate the importance of preserving for the future all forms of natural life, from the lion and crocodile to the humblest wood-dove and fly.
Some years back, finding it necessary to gain what information was obtainable with regard to the domestic and social habits of the higher apes, we found that all the information to be obtained from the latest works on the subject amounted to little more than nil; and that for a personal inspection of these creatures in their natural state three distinct journeys into separate and most inaccessible parts of the globe would be necessary.