60 A NATURALIST IN THE TRANSVAAL. 



the loss of the sea that we have left behind. I have 

 frequently driven over the grandest undulating scenery 

 in the most clear and faultless weather ; but the feeling 

 always was that behind yonder headland must be the sea. 

 A long residence in England impresses its particular 

 features of physiography upon the mind, and I found I 

 was apt to read nature with a similar insular bias as that 

 with which one studies foreign politics or observes the 

 different arrangements in family life of other branches 

 of humanity. I know it is usual to overpraise the sea, 

 to feel the despair of a long voyage when left alone 

 with it, to curse the monotony of the view from the 

 seaside lodging when we have ceased to curb our im- 

 patience of quiet ; but still our thoughts travel back to 

 our first love, and the rough health wafted from the 

 ocean is not altogether replaced by the invigorating at- 

 mosphere of the hills. Beside which there is a stillness 

 appertaining to the " everlasting " hills compared with 

 the troubled waters of the ocean. Experience a night 

 at sea with a night on the veld. The stars shine 

 above both, there is the same silence, the same quiet ; 

 but there is a rigidity of thought amidst the solitude 

 of the plains and hills compared with the poetic 

 buoyancy produced by the sea. Amidst the solitude 

 of the first our mind reverts to the genesis of creeds ; 

 on the w r ater we breathe sonnets and listen to old 

 Pagan music. 



The summer of 1890-91 was remarkable for the 

 heaviest rains that had occurred for many years. As 

 we read in the papers of the phenomenal winter at home, 

 so we were assured that the continuous summer down- 

 pour we experienced was equally unusual in South 

 Africa. Towards the end of January the rivers were 

 frequently flooded and dangerous, the roads in many 

 places almost impassable, our homeward mails frequently 

 missed the steamer at Cape Town, and our mails from 

 home were uncertain of delivery. It was in this month 

 that three Dutch anglers, who were sleeping in their 

 wagons on the banks of the Pienaars River, within five 

 yards of the stream, were swept away by a sudden flood or 

 "coming down" of the stream, and the papers frequently 



