Thomas Baines (British/South African 1822-1875)

Scene on the Logier River, Zambesi: The Full Striped Quagga (Equus Chapmanni)
oil on canvas, signed and dated lower right “T. Baines Jany 21 1865”
Inscribed on reverse: “Full striped Quagga supposed new variety interme/diate between E. Burchelli & E. Montanus female/shot by myself a few miles from Logier Hill Zambesi/River Sunday Decr 7 1862./T. Baines/Cape Town/Jany 21 1865”
Provenance: By descent through the family to Dr. William McKinlay; Gift from Bill Smithson to June McKinlay (neé Lawrence)
Size: 18 x 25 in (with frame 22 ½ x 30 in) 
ZJ20053

Artist Biography

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The famous artist and explorer Thomas Baines is today best known for his detailed paintings and sketches which give unique insight into colonial life in Australia and southern Africa. An observant naturalist, his sketches and watercolours of weather conditions, plants, animals, and insects are accurate enough to be valued by esteemed botanists, zoologists and anthropologists. Baines travelled widely through Africa and Australia. He joined the missionary and explorer David Livingstone’s second African expedition to the Zambesi River in 1858 as artist, trader and storekeeper and to assist with topographical surveying and cartography. However, personality conflicts and disagreements forced Baines off the expedition prior to reaching Victoria Falls. Shortly after, Baines was invited to join fellow explorer James Chapman on an expedition aimed to explore the navigability of the Zambesi River from Victoria Falls down to the delta, and in July 1862 was the seventh European to reach Victoria Falls and the first to paint it. However, sickness and misfortune plagued the adventurers and they were forced to abandon the trip and return to Cape Town in 1863.

It was from this trip that Baines painted many of his most notable paintings, including Full Striped Quagga. The complete description of the course of events that led to this painting can the read in Baines’ own words in “Scene on the Logier River, Zambesi: The Full-Striped Quagga” published in Nature and Art Vol 1, published by Day and Son Limited London in 1866, including a colour lithograph of this painting. Baines describes the scene, set after the visit to Victoria Falls, one hundred miles away on a small hill he named “Logier” after his friend Frederick Logier (1801-1867), where the party stopped to cut planks for their portable boat. Low on food, Chapman organized a hunting party to supply the expedition with meat, but due to fever and illness Baines had to take over the hunt. On Sunday, December 7, 1862, the incidents of the subject of this illustration occurred. Baines travelled with two Damaras guides, Matokolo and Kajumba, through the rugged hills to the southward between the Logier and Luisi River, to the dense forest along the Zambesi bank. He describes the foliage in detail, many of which are illustrated in the painting. They took up the tracks of a herd of quagga, following them across the valley where Baines shot and wounded one, and he colourfully describes the hunt where they follow the quagga and eventually took her down. Baines was encouraged to sketch the dead animal quickly, and word was sent to the camp about the kill. Baines kept the skin which he endeavoured to preserve by stretching it above the fire in the cooking hut. He describes the animal in detail, having stripes upon its rump and legs which is different from the common quagga. The zebra is different again as it has longer ears and more asinine head, hoofs and tail, and is only found on mountains and broken ground whereas the quagga is found in herds on the plains. The party proceeded to shoot, sketch and photograph as many specimens as they could, but Baines succeeded in preserving only one skin which reached the Cape in good condition but was destroyed before it reached the British Museum. The quagga (Equus Quagga Chapmani) which once roamed South Africa in immense herds, was hunted to extinction by the 1880’s.

Baines describes the Full Striped quagga in detail:

The colour of the animal is generally white, more or less deeply tinted on the back, the rump, and shoulders, with Sienna brown, which is also prevalent about the muzzle, blending into the black of the lips. The brown of my present specimen was very faint, and in a young stallion previously shot by Chapman the ground was pure white. The stripes are of the deepest possible brown, or even of jet black, continued down to every hoof. They are sometimes so strongly marked that the black spreads almost over the fetlock and pastern, and in others so faintly as to be hardly perceptible: in all cases the inside of the forearm and thigh is more faintly marked.

A black line runs from between the forelegs along the belly to between the hind legs, where it spreads, and becomes less dark; and in the female, the teats, two in number, are placed in the after-part of it. There is also a black stripe upon the back, extending from the mane down the root of the tail to the brush, which is black and equine, though hardly so full as that of the horse. In fact, the inside hairs of the mane are black also; but, on the outside, the vertical stripes of black and white upon the neck and withers are continued up it. The mane comes well down upon the forehead, and the ears – which are six inches and a half long, cross banded with black and tipped with dark brown – are not seen above it, but are, in fact, rather lower. The stripes upon the sides are all more or less perfectly connected with the vertical line. Sometimes two or three of them, sometimes more, join the dorsal line upon the shoulder, but never far behind it: the others either terminate before reaching it, or are curved backward over the flanks and rump till they merge into the horizontal stripes upon the thigh. Those on the shoulders open more or less, so as to form a beautiful series of triangles, in conjunction with the horizontal stripes of the fore leg. No two specimens are exactly alike, and the stripes even on the two sides of the same differ a little, so as to give a pleasing variety without injuring the symmetry. Sometimes there are intermediate stripes of light brown, between the black ones, on the hind legs, above the hough. It has warts or callosities on the forelegs only. Mr. E.L. Layard, the eminent naturalist and curator of the museum in Cape Town, says: -“This new animal differs from E. Montanus in the union of all the stripes with the medial one on the belly, and in wanting the gridiron pattern (as Baines calls it) on the rump; also, from the other zebras, in having the callosities on the legs far larger and more round; in having shorter and more equine ears, six inches and a half high, instead of eleven and a half; and in having a shorter and more equine head and tail. The mane grows several inches down on the forehead, and stands up between the ears; so that when seen in front, it is far higher than they are. Chapman and Baines give measurements of several individuals. All who are competent to judge, from knowing the other species, will at once detect the difference. I am well convinced of them myself, and I wish to call the animal Equus Chapmanni, after its discoverer, Mr. James Chapman, who has done so much for African discovery, and has yet reaped no reward.”

Baines’ description of the trees and plants in the painting are extremely detailed. On the right you can see the hunting party, including Baines himself with his gun, accompanied by the two figures Matokolo and Kajumba of the Damara tribe. To the left of the figures is a Molambeira or Baobab tree, a species in which Baines was fascinated. Now known as ‘Baines Baobabs’, the 8 species commonly named Adansoina are native to Africa, Madagascar and Australia. He describes the tree extensively in his text for the painting:

“Higher on the hills grow the gigantic baobab, or mowana, called here m’boyou, or the house; and farther down the river, the molambeira, with its white blossoms pendent among the rich green leaves, to be followed by the fruit, from whose refreshing (though white and dry) anti-scorbutic pulp it obtains among the colonists the name of “cream of tartar tree.” Many of the stems were stripped from the knee to breast height, for the purpose of making cordage of the fibre, leaving, when the process is repeated by successive generations, a series of rings, which may be noticed on the trunk shown in the illustration.”

On the left of the painting is a Kigelia Pinnata, or African Sausage Tree, with its strange hanging fruit and red flowers which Baines describes it as follows: “On the banks of the rivulets grew the picturesque mosaawe – the pao-pisa of the Portuguese (Kigelia pinnata) – a large, soft-wooded tree, nearly impossible to work when cut with the sap in it. It is remarkable chiefly of the dark crimson flowers pendent on stems four feet or more long from its spreading branches. It has a fruit, hard, inedible, and fibrous as a great wooden cucumber.”

At front is the Euphorbia tree which Baines describes as “the white stems and green chandelier-like leaves of the Euphorbiae, filled with milky but intensely acrid sap…”

“The mararu papierie, or soft white-wooded tree, bearing the poison grub of the Bushmen, grows almost among the red volcanic rocks”. These can be seen behind the figures on the right of the painting.

Both Baines and Chapmen kept journals of the expedition in which they remarked on each other’s practices. Their accounts were published by both Thomas Baines in his book “Explorations in South-West Africa” published in 1864, and James Chapman’s “Travels in the Interior of South Africa” published in 1868. These dual publications provided a rare account of two different perspectives of the same exploration. It was also the first African expedition to use both the new technology of photography as well as painting to capture events and scenery. Realizing the importance of the value and superiority of the new photographic medium over drawing and painting in scientific documentation, upon his return to London in 1865 Baines took photography lessons from James Lawrence, of the celebrated Lawrence Brothers. This painting was a gift to a descendant of James Lawrence, June McKinlay (neé Lawrence) by Bill Smithson, and has been passed down through the family to the present owner.

From:
NATURE AND ART VOL. 1.
LONDON: DAY & SON, “LIMITED”.
6 Gate Street, Lincolns Inn Fields, (W.C.)
1866
SCENE ON THE LOGIER RIVER, ZAMBESI.
THE FULL-STRIPED QUAGGA (EQUUS CHAPMANNI).
BY THOMAS BAINES, F.R.G.S.

The full-striped quagga. Colour lithograph illustration for Nature and Art (Day & Son, 1866).

In the year 1860, having returned to Cape Town from the Zambesi expedition, worn out with fever and literally almost destitute, I determined not to desist from the attempt to penetrate into the interior of Africa, and the generous hospitality of my friends, Mr. and Mrs. Logier, enabled me to devote to the purpose of my re-equipment all the proceeds of my art during my residence in the colony.

     I was fortunate, too, in meeting with an esteemed friend, Mr. James Chapman, who, since I had known him, ten years before, on the Vaal River, had been almost continually engaged in travel, and was then fitting out another expedition for the purpose of exploration combined with hunting and commerce. He had himself crossed the continent of Africa from the east, reaching Walvisch Bay on the west coast, in 1855, being the first European, so far as we know, who performed that feat; and only by the desertion of his native crew he missed being the discoverer of the magnificent Victoria Falls of the Zambesi, two years before they were seen by Dr. Livingstone.

     He invited me to join; we agreed to attempt the passage from Walvisch Bay to the Delta of the Zambezi on the east coast; and, for the navigation of the river below the Falls, I constructed a copper double boat in twelve sections, only four of which we were able to carry up. After visiting the Falls, in July, 1862, I selected a small hill, nearly a hundred miles farther down, which I named after my friend Logier, and began cutting and sawing trees into plank to rebuild the missing portions; while upon my friend devolved the arduous task of hunting to supply the whole of the party with meat. Unfortunately, the carriers were able to lighten their cargo and gratify their appetites by one and the same process, and not a tithe of the liberal supply ever reached me. I had, therefore to leave my work and go hunting: fever and starvation came on; one of my party died, and seven of Mr. Chapman’s. He was himself so ill that, as he was unable to join me, I was obliged finally to abandon my work when I had every prospect of being able to complete it and to return to him.

     It was during my residence here that the incident occurred which forms the subject of the illustration. On Sunday, the 7th of December, I had shot a spur-winged goose, out of a flock that came to feed upon the young grass which the rains had caused to spring up; and I had wounded, but could not capture, a Guinea fowl. As our meat was entirely expended, I omitted the morning service, and went out with two Damaras – Matokolo and Kajumba – over the red and rugged hills to the southward, between the Logier River and the Luisi. The dense forest along the Zambesi bank comprised many varieties of noble timber trees, which, small as they seemed from a distance, I always found unmanageably large when I inspected them more closely for the purposes of boat-building.

     Two species of mochicheerie, with wood like red cedar, pleasant to work but somewhat brittle, grew plentifully on the lower flats. The dense foliage of one is borne aloft upon the spreading limbs. That of the other is carried in tufts like those of the chestnut on branches that droop and then gracefully curve upward again, bearing a small fig-shaped fruit, with red seeds of an intense bitterness. The stems are seldom less than eighteen inches, but more frequently three or four feet, in diameter, and from twenty to fifty feet or more before they part into branches. A small sapling, growing straight up toward the light through a group of larger ones, yielded me planks more than thirty feet long, nine inches thick at one end and five at the other. Unfortunately, I had to cut it in November, when the sap was up, and, in consequence, it was so heavy that I could not relieve my men of the labour of carrying it by floating it down to my sawing-trestles. Another tree, equally large, but with white and brittle wood and drooping clusters of yellow seed-pods, was also plentiful; and the crashing of one of these, as it fell, once brought the natives, who were unused to the silent operation of the cross-cut saw, to inform me that elephants must be in the forest breaking the trees close by me.

     Beside these, were the large kameel thorn (acadia giraffe); the motjeerie, or omborom bongo – the traditionary mother tree of the Damaras – with wood like the lignum vitae we used to cut for the furnace of the “Ma Robert” on the lower Zambesi, in having dry and flattened seed-pods of a brownish tint instead of drooping clusters of bright yellow flowers. On the banks of the rivulets grew the picturesque mosaawe – the pao-pisa of the Portuguese (Kigelia pinnata) – a large, soft-wooded tree, nearly impossible to work when cut with the sap in it. It is remarkable chiefly of the dark crimson flowers pendent on stems four feet or more long from its spreading branches. It has a fruit, hard, inedible, and fibrous as a great wooden cucumber.

     Higher on the hills grow the gigantic baobab, or mowana, called here m’boyou, or the house; and farther down the river, the molambeira, with its white blossoms pendent among the rich green leaves, to be followed by the fruit, from whose refreshing (though white and dry) anti-scorbutic pulp it obtains among the colonists the name of “cream of tartar tree.” Many of the stems were stripped from the knee to breast height, for the purpose of making cordage of the fibre, leaving, when the process is repeated by successive generations, a series of rings, which may be noticed on the trunk shown in the illustration.

     In similar or even more precipitous localities is found the kookom-boyou, or Sterculia (k), a tree as tall, with a pithy stem, and wood nearly as unfit for any useful purpose, as that of the baobab. It has straight and upright smaller branches, which may be used as poles where lightness rather than strength is required; while the inner bark, peeled off in strips, forms, while still fresh, good packing or binding thongs, but, when once dry, becomes too brittle to be used a second time.

     The mararu papierie, or soft white-wooded tree, bearing the poison grub of the Bushmen, grows almost among the red volcanic rocks, with which the white stems and green chandelier-like leaves of the Euphorbiae, filled with milky but intensely acrid sap, formed a striking contrast.

     The white or pale blue lotos, with its golden centre and broad green leaves, floats on the surface of the pools, from the depths of which the natives hook up its edible roots.

     Dwarf palms, with feathery or fan-shaped leaves, appear in favourable localities along the rivulets, and occasionally the tall stem of a palmyra is seen in the distance, but they are by no means so common as in the better-watered country above the Falls. I saw a few paliahs; but as no precaution can prevent the all-pervading moisture from insinuating itself between the cap and nipple, my gun missed fire.

     The spoor showed that koodoos and quaggas had passed recently; but, as my people remarked, though the game is not scarce, in that thick bush men cannot distinguish it with the eye. I took up the tracks of the quaggas, and followed them for many a weary round, till the men proposed to give it up and come again to-morrow. But as the camp was destitute of meat, to return without it to the hungry people was not to be thought of. At length Matokolo fell flat backward in the bush – his keen eye had caught sight of the game; but it was too late, and the quaggas dashed off to the opposite side of the valley. We left the spoor, and, climbing behind the hills, crept slowly and silently, not daring even to break a twig, to the brow, where, far beneath me, I saw the head and shoulder of one. The short, sharp cry of alarm was uttered at the same instant; the herd stated as I pulled trigger, and dashed away down the valley to the westward.

     Blood spots on the stones and leaves encouraged us to follow. We caught a glimpse of one alone, and, after a chase of four miles, Matokolo was seen returning triumphantly. He had outrun me; and failing to kill the crippled quagga with his musket, he had headed her, and knocked her down with a stone. My shot, aimed at the shoulder, had broken the hip joint, as she started forward; and Matokolo’s had barely grazed the skin of her back.

     “Haak aan (be quick), Mynheer, with your sketch-book,” said old Kajumba; “and let us begin to eat.”

     The chase had brought us to the Logier River, only three miles from the hill; and word being sent there, the halt, the sick, and all the women who seemed at the point of death, came tripping along like fairies to the promised feast, leaving not a creature to guard the house.

     No sooner was permission given to cut, than Kajumba’s knife flew, as if by its own volition, to make the incision round the tail; but I stopped him in time, and, returning to the hut, dined off as much of my goose as had not been feloniously abstracted from the pot, and attempted, but in vain, to dry and preserve the quagga skin, by stretching it above the fire in our cooking hut.

     The animal was a mare, of the full-striped quagga, which Chapman had first shot on May 20, 1862, upon the plains some distance to the south; and which, when he mentioned to me that it had stripes upon its legs, I at once guessed must be a new variety. The common quagga of Kathrland (E. quagga) has no stripes upon its rump or legs, while the bonte quagga (E. Bucchelli) has the legs of white from the houghs and knees. The zebra, as we call it in the colony or E. montanus, has longer ears, and more asinine head, hoofs, and tail, and is found only on mountains and broken ground, whereas immense herds of the newly found variety live upon the plains, where there are no mountains within many days’ journey.

     Since then, we shot, and I sketched, while my friend photographed, as many specimens as we could; but I only succeeded in saving one skin, which though it reached the Cape in good condition, was so destroyed by insects before it reached the British Museum, that Dr. Gray could not form a judgement on it, and was obliged to send it to be buried.

     The colour of the animal is generally white, more or less deeply tinted on the back, the rump, and shoulders, with Sienna brown, which is also prevalent about the muzzle, blending into the black of the lips. The brown of my present specimen was very faint, and in a young stallion previously shot b Chapman the ground was pure white. The stripes are of the deepest possible brown, or even of jet black, continued down to every hoof. They are sometimes so strongly marked that the black spreads almost over the fetlock and pastern, and in others so faintly as to be hardly perceptible: in all cases the inside of the forearm and thigh is more faintly marked.

     A black line runs from between the forelegs along the belly to between the hind legs, where it spreads, and becomes less dark; and in the female, the teats, two in number, are placed in the after-part of it. There is also a black stripe upon the back, extending from the mane down the root of the tail to the brush, which is black and equine, though hardly so full as that of the horse. In fact, the inside hairs of the mane are black also; but, on the outside, the vertical stripes of black and white upon the neck and withers are continued up it. The mane comes well down upon the forehead, and the ears – which are six inches and a half long, cross banded with black and tipped with dark brown – are not seen above it, but are, in fact, rather lower. The stripes upon the sides are all more or less perfectly connected with the vertical line. Sometimes two or three of them, sometimes more, join the dorsal line upon the shoulder, but never far behind it: the others either terminate before reaching it, or are curved backward over the flanks and rump till they merge into the horizontal stripes upon the thigh. Those on the shoulders open more or less, so as to form a beautiful series of triangles, in conjunction with the horizontal stripes of the fore leg. No two specimens are exactly alike, and the stripes even on the two sides of the same differ a little, so as to give a pleasing variety without injuring the symmetry. Sometimes there are intermediate stripes of light brown, between the black ones, on the hind legs, above the hough. It has warts or callosities on the forelegs only. Mr. E.L. Layard, the eminent naturalist and curator of the museum in Cape Town, says: -“This new animal differs from E. Montanus in the union of all the stripes with the medial one on the belly, and in wanting the gridiron pattern (as Baines calls it) on the rump; also, from the other zebras, in having the callosities on the legs far larger and more round; in having shorter and more equine ears, six inches and a half high, instead of eleven and a half; and in having a shorter and more equine head and tail. The mane grows several inches down on the forehead, and stands up between the ears; so that when seen in front, it is far higher than they are. Chapman and Baines give measurements of several individuals. All who are competent to judge, from knowing the other species, will at once detect the difference. I am well convinced of them myself, and I wish to call the animal Equus Chapmanni, after its discoverer, Mr. James Chapman, who has done so much for African discovery, and has yet reaped no reward.”

     For my own part, I trust that the name proposed by Mr. Layard may be adopted by naturalists at home, and that when the journal of my friend – the result of nearly sixteen years’ research in Southern Africa – is published, he will at least reap the reward of being as well known to the public of this country as he deserves to be.