[Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa by David Livingstone]@TWC D-Link bookMissionary Travels and Researches in South Africa CHAPTER 11 15/17
A sandy ridge covered with trees, running parallel to, and about eight miles from the river, is the limit of the inundation on the north; there are large tracts of this sandy forest in that direction, till you come to other districts of alluvial soil and fewer trees.
The latter soil is always found in the vicinity of rivers which either now overflow their banks annually, or formerly did so.
The people enjoy rain in sufficient quantity to raise very large supplies of grain and ground-nuts. This district contains great numbers of a small antelope named Tianyane, unknown in the south.
It stands about eighteen inches high, is very graceful in its movements, and utters a cry of alarm not unlike that of the domestic fowl; it is of a brownish-red color on the sides and back, with the belly and lower part of the tail white; it is very timid, but the maternal affection that the little thing bears to its young will often induce it to offer battle even to a man approaching it.
When the young one is too tender to run about with the dam, she puts one foot on the prominence about the seventh cervical vertebra, or withers; the instinct of the young enables it to understand that it is now required to kneel down, and to remain quite still till it hears the bleating of its dam.
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