88 HOME LIFE ON AN OSTRICH FARM. 



" voice of many waters ! " It means everything to the 

 farmer ; the long^ drouGfht over at last, the dams full, 



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the parched country revived, the poor thin cattle no 

 lonorer in danijer of starvation ; healthier ostriches, a 

 better quality of feathers, a near prospect of nests, and 

 in fact the removal of a load of cares and anxieties. 



How early we are all astir on the morning after a 

 bio: rain ! and with what eao^er excitement we look 

 out, in the first gleam of daylight, for that most wel- 

 come sight, the newly-filled dam 1 A wonderful trans- 

 formation has indeed been worked in the appearance 

 of things since last night. That unsightly dry bed of 

 light- coloured soil, baked by the hot sun to the hard- 

 ness of pottery, and broken up by a thousand inter- 

 secting deep cracks and fissures, which has so long 

 been the ugliest feature among all our unpicturesque 

 surroundings, offends the eye no more ; and in its 

 place there now lies in the early morning light a 

 beautiful broad sheot of water, into which the yellow 

 slwit, a miniature Niagara Rapids, is still lavishly 

 pouring its wealth — not for many hours indeed will 

 the impetuous course of this and numerous other sluits, 

 large and small, begin gradually to subside. Every- 

 where the water is standing in immense pools and 

 ponds ; how to feed one unlucky pair of breeding-birds 

 — my special charges — in a low-lying camp on the 

 other side of the sluit is a problem which for the 

 present I do not attempt to solve ; indeed, to walk a 

 yard from the door, even in the thickest of boots and 

 shabbiest of garments, requires some courage, for it is 



