DROUGHT IN WATERBERG, SOUTH AFRICA—MARAIS. 515 
years ago—all have vanished, and with the ending of the waters the 
great herds of cattle have fled in all directions. All that once teeming 
pasturage lies dead and desolate. 
But it is not in the middle veld alone that this state of affairs 
obtains. There are hundreds of farms in our immediate vicinity which 
have the same tale to tell. One can take them absolutely at random. 
Zwartkloof, for instance, was selected by the late Mr. Piet du Toit, 
a voortrekker, on account of its magnificent water supply. Up to 
recently it was still renowned as one of the best wheat farms in our 
ward, and its great herds of wild red Africander cattle were hunted 
and shot like big game up to the time of the rinderpest. The present 
joint owners, Messrs. Franz and Nols du Toit, were born on the farm. 
The former is now 65 years of age. He declares that never in his 
jifetime was there even a perceptible lessening of the spruit. To-day 
a well, 40 feet deep, sunk in the source itself, is as dry as a bone. 
There is not a drop of drinking water on the farm. ‘Thirty years ago 
there were no less than 11 perennial springs in its veld. And this . 
same story can be told of almost every occupied farm in Waterberg. 
The great Limpopo itself is dry for all the distance that its course 
delimits this district. Only by deep digging in its sandy bed can 
drinking water be found. The larger seacow pools, it is true, still 
contain stagnant water, but the majority of these are almost putrid. 
The smell of fish and crocodile poisons the air in their vicinity, and 
it would be courting death to drink the soupy liquid they contain 
without previous filtering and boiling. After the recent heavy rains 
in Pretoria and Rustenburg, and the floods consequent on them, 
the running water in the Limpopo reached 30 miles above Silika’s 
Stad and was there—a mere futile trickle—lost in the burnmg sand 
of the river bed. Of all the immense quantities of water which at 
that time drained off the northern slopes of the high veld, and at one 
time most of the tributaries of the Limpopo were flooded, not one drop 
reached the sea in the shape of flowing water. 
The only waters in the district which remain unaffected by the 
drought are the fairly numerous thermal sprmgs. The farm on which 
the writer resides is dependent for all its water, both for drinking 
and irrigation, on a thermal spring, and careful measurements during 
the past five years show no diminution at its source. But this year 
the loss of water between the source and the dam inlet is 60 per cent 
more than it was three years ago on the same date. 
The effect of the drought on plants was naturally in exact propor- 
tion to its effect on surface waters. Early in the season of 1913 the 
belief gathered strength that a large proportion of sweet grass clumps 
in the affected veld were quite dead. The deepest roots under magni- 
fication showed a state of desiccation precluding the possibility of life. 
This, however, was strenuously combated by the experience of old 
