Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/186

140 SOUTH AND EAST AFRICA. with rough fleece or hair, which is spread over the greater part of the African continent. The animals* of this variety owned by the European and native farmers of the colony are still estimated at about a million, and their numbers have even recently increased. Their flesh is so highly esteemed that they continue to be largely bred, chiefly for the shambles. The first European sheep yielding a fine wool were not introduced till the ear 1790, and in 1830 the wool exported from the Cape amounted to no more than some thirty-three thousand pounds. The weaving of wool was still unknown in the country, and even now it would be difficult to find amongst the old Boer families a single woman able to handle a distaff or knit a pair of stockings. Wool-growing acquired no importance till about the middle of the century; but from that time forth it developed rapidly, and this industry reached its high- water level in the year 1872. After that time it again notably declined, owing to the prolonged droughts, and probably also because the wools of the Orange Free State, formerly exported by Cape Colony and reckoned amongst the produce of that region, are now forwarded through Natal. Excluding the fat-tailed species, there are altogether about nine millions of wool-yielding animals in the colony. Thanks to their fleece, the Cape sheep have been the chief agents in distributing the vegetable species. Wherever they penetrate they bring with them the seeds from the regions traversed by them. In many parts^of the country lying north of the Orange River the aspect of the vegetation has undergone a complete change since the introduction of sheep- farming. Since the middle of the century the Cape stock-breeders have also here acclimatised the Angora goat, and the mohair which is now exported from South Africa is said to surpass that of Asia Minor itself in fineness and softness of texture, without, however, equalling it in lustre. In the grassy enclosures of the colony there now also graze thousands of tamt^ antelopes of several species, but chiefly the variety known as boute-boks. Previous to the year 1864, the ostrich had been regarded by the Cape Colonists only as game, and this animal was so eagerly hunted that the time was foreseen when it would have completely disappeared from South Africa. But two farmers in different parts of the country were already turning their attention to tlie domestication of the ostrich, with the view of substituting systematic breeding for the chase. The result was that in 1875 the agricultural census of the colonj' included eighty of these tamed birds, which yielded for exportation one hundred and twenty-five pounds of feathers, less beautiful, however, than those of the Mauritanian tird living iti the wild state. Domestication appears to have gradually changed the character of this animal, which is naturally at once so timid and so irascible, and the young broods may now be tended without any great ri.sk. But the industry remained somewhat in abeyance until the introduction of artificial incubators. Since then the number of domestic birds has rapidly increased, numbering in 1882 about one hundred and fifty thousand, which yielded for the export trade two hundred and fifty-five thousand pounds of plumes, valued altogether at no less than £1,100,000. The smallest newlv-hatched chick reudilv i