DESOLATE PICTURE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXX, Issue 155, 29 December 1910, Page 4

DESOLATE PICTURE.

SOUTH AFRICA THROUGH AUSTRALIAN EYES. A DESERT WASTE. From Kimberley to Bulawayo we travelled across n 'boundless tableland, a ' <treeless< plain,, hardly; broken- by a single Mil or. kopje, that can surely have no rival for monotony of scenery tha wide world over (says the special correspondent of the Age who travelled to South Africa with the Federal Premier, Mr. Fisher). I Of running rivers we saw no sign : of creeks there were a few, but nearly all were dry. The plain waa fairly well grassed (the rainy season has 'commenced), and widely clothed with green, but destitute of shelter for stock and unspeakably desolate, being .swept night and day with winds that sough and searoh. over the limitless expanse, tear the soil from under the very loots of the grasses and scatter blinding clouds of dust upon the -world. i>iow and bhen, at far Hung intervals, we passed whittymen's villages, and wo saw a white face or two; but they looked sadly out of place, and only served to emphasise the message of the teeming Kaffir kraals—^'Sduth- Africa be." longs to the blacks." We saw many herds of cattle, many flocks of goats. They we're all of inferior type—small, sun-hardened baasties, illconditioned and unkempt. The houses we encountered were- .wretched little iron roofed hovels — pity the sturdy pioneers who dwell in them ! — and no hint or trace of cultivation, save of mealie crops by native farmers, did ire meet with. A poor, ill watered, hungry country it appeared to us; rich in nought save what stands involved within the signification of that blessed word "potentialities." The Canadian Minister, 'M. Lemieux, voiced the opinion of us all when ho said, "I wonder that any whito man can be found to leave his own country to settle in such, a dour, unlovely -wilderness.'-' Later on we came to trees and hills. But the hills were bleak and bare, and the trees thin, scrubby, stunted rubbish fit, perhaps, to burn and elsewise useless. True enough, as we steamed into the heaiVof Africa tho trees acquired a more imposing stature, and their foliage assumed^ many gaudy hues, giving the landscape an opulent autumnal tone ; but they spoke nearly alwa-ys of a hard struggle with 'grudging nature, and the' biggest timber (the bigge&t -trees are ■ pigmies to", our gums) are dubbed in- sinister "fashion "Fever trees," because they grow where fever flourishes'. They, grow in places, that are too many. Bean 'trees and mimosa thorns, • a multitude of thinly sprrakled shrubs that look like starvecf little quinces and ciab apples; all the tree&'and shrubs planted far apart as in a park — such is the South African bush. The country seems incapable of supporting more than an apparition of vegetable life. They say that it is an ideal land for horses and cattle. We saw no proof of it, though w© saw the country at its utmost best, and everywhere we heard melancholy tales of rinderpest and other dreadful stock diseases. I would rather have ten acres of Australian land than ten times as many square miles of such "'deal" cattle 'country. I admit that on the ground grow myriads of flaunting lilies and tubers (some of the blooms are exquisitely beautiful), and orchids, too ; but botanists are not tne best settlers, •and the farmer needs more than spiritual nourishment, also his stock. Cattle do not thrive on- tiger lilies, and it is poor comfort to overlook a wilderness of blooms when one's stock is famishing for homely grass or being ravaged by the rinderpefct. And the country is destitue of game. HEADACHE. Headache is not an ailment — it is a symptom, ?n indication of some constitutional derangement elsewhere, and it should be treated, not with a headache cure, but wiih Chamberlain's Tablets. Constipation, biliousness, torpid liver, all causa aick headache, and arc quickly cured bx Chamberlain's Tablets.— Ad vt.