Four Years in Southern Africa

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H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1829 - Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) - 308 pages

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Page 199 - With many of the feathered race, he pays the common tribute of a morning and an evening song ; and even when the meridian sun has shut in silence the mouths of almost the whole of animated nature, the campanero still cheers the forest. You hear his toll, and then a pause for a minute, then another toll, and then a pause again, and then a toll, and again a pause.
Page 58 - Here's a large mouth, indeed, That spits forth death and mountains, rocks and seas ; Talks as familiarly of roaring lions, As maids of thirteen do of puppy dogs...
Page 199 - Ye winds, that have made me your sport, Convey to this desolate shore Some cordial endearing report Of a land I shall visit no more. My friends, do they now and then send A wish or a thought after me ? O tell me I yet have a friend, Though a friend I am never to see.
Page 157 - OH, happy shades — to me unblest ! Friendly to peace, but not to me ! How ill the scene that offers rest, And heart that cannot rest, agree...
Page 95 - I in an old regimental jacket, was in the Fort with his retinue of twenty-five wives ; and it was not without interest that I looked on one of whom Barrow had prognosticated so highly. He was then nineteen, he is now fifty, and melancholy has been the change that has taken place in the interval : the English have given him their protection, and with it their vices ; and he is a sunk and degraded being, ready to exclaim with Caliban — " I'll swear upon that bottle to be thy true subject, For the...
Page 87 - Chief is generally distinguished from his followers by a carosse of tiger's skin, and by a narrow tasteful beaded band worn round the head ; and when he stands surrounded by his armed attendants, wrapped in their dark cloaks, it forms a most imposing sight, and one which, though my expectation had been raised, surprised me. Their figures are the noblest that my eye ever gazed upon, their movements the most graceful, and their attitudes the proudest, standing like forms of monumental bronze. I was...
Page 75 - On this occasion he is said to have remarked, " that though indebted to the -English for his existence as a chief, yet when he looked upon the fine country taken from him, he could not but think his benefactors oppressive." It is not strange that the savages should be unable to see the justice of all this ; that they should be troublesome neighbours to the settlers in a country of which they had been dispossessed.
Page 76 - ... of the Commando was to destroy, to burn the habitations, and to seize the cattle ; and they did their duty.
Page 198 - His note is loud and clear, like the sound of a bell, and may be heard at the distance of three miles. In the midst of these extensive wilds, generally on the dried top of an aged mora, almost out of gun reach, you will see the campanero. No sound or song from any of the winged inhabitants of the forest, not even the clearly pronounced ' Whip-poor- Will ' from the goatsucker, causes such astonishment as the toll of the campanero.
Page 74 - ... towards them has been severe ; for, when did Europeans respect the rights of the savage ? By the Dutch Border-farmers, over whom their government had little control, they are said to have been slaughtered without mercy, — to have been destroyed as they destroyed the wolf. At no period, I believe, since the English have been in possession, has wanton cruelty been committed ; but the natives have at different times been driven back from boundary to boundary, and military posts have been established...

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