Through South Africa: His Visit to Rhodesia, the Transvaal, Cape Colony, Natal — John Shaqi
Through South Africa: His Visit to Rhodesia, the Transvaal, Cape Colony, NatalStanley, Henry M. (Henry Morton)
History
Through South Africa: His Visit to Rhodesia, the Transvaal, Cape Colony, Natal
Stanley, Henry M. (Henry Morton)
South Africa -- Description and travel
driving their babies in perambulators on the plain outside Bulawayo in a
sun as hot as any in the Egyptian or Moroccan desert, and, though I felt
they were unwise, it was clear to me that in such a climate a sufficient
head protection was the only thing necessary to guard against a
sunstroke or the feverish feeling which naturally follows a rash
exposure to heat.
The Rainy Season.
Rhodesia has been visited by us during what is generally said to be its
worst period. The rainy season begins in November and ends in March.
We arrived November 4, and, though we have been here only a week, we
have had four showers and one all-night downpour. The rainfall during
the season amounts to as much as 45 inches. I fancy few men have had
larger experience of the pernicious effects of cold rains alternating
with hot suns than I, and the composure of the Bulawayo population under
what seems to promise four months of such weather strikes my
imagination, and is to me a strong testimony of the healthfulness of the
climate.
No Stint of Vegetables.
The park of Bulawayo, the grounds of Government House, and especially
the advanced state of Mr Colenbrander's charming gardens, afforded to
me valuable proofs that the soil responded very readily to civilised
treatment; but the most conclusive proof to me of the capacity of the
soil was furnished by a large market garden laid out in a depression
just outside of the town. From end to end the garden, supplied with
water by a windpump from a well, was a mass of robust European
vegetables, whence cabbages weighing 30 pounds each, and tomatoes of
extraordinary size, have been sent to market. At the Palace Hotel the
hundreds of guests made large demands for vegetables, and there was no
stint of them. Further on towards old Gubulawayo we were attracted by
native women hoeing in a field, and our attention was drawn to the
native fields, which showed by the old corn-stalks that the Matabele
must have found the black earth of the plains gracious to their toils.
Here and there in these villa gardens, market gardens, public
pleasaunces, and ornamental grounds we found sufficient evidences that,
given water, the soil of Rhodesia was equal to supplying anything that
civilised man with his fastidious taste and appetite could possibly
demand.
The Gold of Rhodesia--Something to Satisfy an Anxious Mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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