THE HALF-BREEDS 239 



from the patriarch to the youngest baby. 

 Small-pox at the time was reported to be 

 raging among the Bondleswartz Tribe, just 

 beyond the Orange River. 



But these people can never develop a type 

 that will persist; the desert they inhabit is too 

 small. Besides, their sons and daughters are 

 continually being enticed away to regions with 

 a kinder soil and a less severe climate. There 

 they further complicate the South African race 

 question. This question will not be confined 

 to South Africa; it will soon be one of world- 

 wide import, and one that is not necessarily to 

 be answered in favour of the Caucasian, whose 

 birth-rate statistics read like Mene Tekel. I 

 am often inclined to think it would have been 

 better in the long run had Charles Martel lost 

 the Battle of Tours. In that case there would 

 at all events have been no colour question. 



But those deep, dusky eyes haunted me. 

 They were as enigmatic as the only landscape 

 over which they ranged. If one could only 

 have stripped the scales from them, what won- 

 ders might they not have seen? Incalculable 

 potencies might have been in their depths. 

 Others, desert-bred, have caught glimpses of 

 eternal verities which prompted them to utter 

 words that became the hinges of history. 



