arranged form of existence. Here 

 masses of rainbow-tinted crystals, 

 half-fused together; there bands of 

 smooth gray methodically overlying 

 each other. This rock here is cov 

 ered with a delicate silvery tracery 

 in some mineral, resembling leaves and 

 branches; there on the flat stone, on 

 which we so often have sat to weep and 

 pray, we look down, and see it covered 

 with the fossil footprints of great birds, 

 and the beautiful skeleton of a fish. 

 We have often tried to picture in our 

 mind what the fossilized remains of 

 creatures must be like, and all the while 

 we sat on them. We have been so 

 blinded by thinking and feeling that we 

 have never seen the world. 



The flat plain has been to us a reach 

 of monotonous red. We look at it, and 

 every handful of sand starts into life. 

 That wonderful people, the ants, we 

 learn to know; see them make war and 

 peace, play and work, and build their 

 huge palaces. And that smaller people 

 we make acquaintance with, who live in 

 the flowers. The citto flower had been 

 for us a mere blur of yellow; we find 

 its heart composed of a hundred perfect 

 flowers, the homes of the tiny black 

 people with red stripes, who moved in 

 and out in that little yellow city. Ev 

 ery bluebell has its inhabitant. Every 

 day the karroo (plain) shows up a new 

 wonder sleeping in its teeming bosom. 

 On our way we pause and stand to see 

 the ground-spider make its trap, bury 

 itself in the sand, and then wait for the 

 falling in of its enemy. Farther on 

 walks a horned beetle, and near him 

 starts open the door of a spider, who 

 pteps out carefully, and quickly puts it 

 down again. On a karroo-bush a green 

 fly is laying her silver eggs. We carry 

 them home, and see the shells pierced, 

 the spotted grub come out. turn to a 

 green fly, and flit away. We are not 

 satisfied with what nature shows us, and 

 will see something for ourselves. Un 

 der the white hen we put a dozen eggs, 

 .and break one daily to see the white 

 spot wax into the chicken. We are not 

 -excited or enthusiastic about it; but a 

 man is not to lay his throat open, he 

 jmust think of something. So we plant 



seeds in rows on our dam-wall, and pull 

 one up daily to see how it goes with 

 them. Alladeen buried her wonderful 

 stone, and a golden palace sprang up 

 at her feet. We do far more. We put 

 a brown seed in the earth, and a living 

 thing starts out, starts upward why, 

 no more than Alladeen can we say- 

 starts upward, and does not desist till 

 it is higher than our heads, sparkling 

 with dew in the early morning, glitter 

 ing with yellow blossoms, snaking 

 brown seeds with little embryo souls on 

 to the ground. We look at it solemnly, 

 from the time it consists of two leaves 

 peeping above the ground and a soft 

 white root, till we have to raise our 

 faces to look at it; but we find no rea 

 son for that upward starting. 



A fowl drowns itself in our dam. We 

 take it out, and open it on the bank, 

 and kneel, looking at it. Above are 

 the organs divided by delicate tissues; 

 below are the intestines artistically 

 curved in a spiral form, and each tier 

 covered by a delicate network of blood 

 vessels standing out red against the 

 faint blue background. Each branch 

 of the blood-vessels is comprised of a 

 trunk, bifurcating into the most deli 

 cate hair-like threads, symmetrically 

 arranged .... Of that same ex 

 act shape and outline is our thorn-tree 

 seen against the sky in mid-winter; of 

 that shape also is delicate metallic 

 tracery between our rocks; in that exact 

 path does our water flow when without 

 a furrow we lead it from the dam; so 

 shaped are the antlers of the horned 

 beetle. How are these things related 

 that such deep union should exist 

 between them all? Is it chance? Or, 

 are they not all the fine branches of one 

 trunk, whose sap flows through us all? 



. . . . And so it comes to pass, 

 in time, that the earth ceases for us to 

 be a weltering chaos. We walk in the 

 great hall of life, looking up and around 

 reverentially. Nothing is despicable 

 all is meaning full; nothing is small 

 all is part of a whole, whose beginning 

 and end we know not. The life that 

 throbs in us is a pulsation from it; too 

 mighty for our comprehension, not too 

 small. Story of an African Farm. 



IS 



