xix THE DREADFUL SUN 315 



all the bullocks and horses a good drink. At 

 sundown we outspanned, made a hasty meal of 

 dried eland meat roasted on the ashes, washed 

 down with a cup of tea, and then inspanned again. 

 All that night we trekked on with only two short 

 intervals of rest, and when day broke on the 

 morning of December 24, our oxen had done ten 

 hours' actual pulling through the heavy sand and 

 covered some fifteen miles since leaving Tlakani. 

 All this day we travelled slowly onwards through 

 the frightful heat, giving the bullocks an hour's rest 

 after every two hours' pull. The terrific heat of the 

 cruel pitiless sun told upon the straining oxen very 

 rapidly, for it must be remembered that nothing but 

 steady hard pulling by every member of each span, 

 all pulling in unison, could move the heavy waggons 

 through the deep sand, and nothing made of flesh 

 and blood could work very long in such a tempera- 

 ture without drinking. 



Towards the close of the long day it became a 

 pitiful sight to look at the poor oxen, as they toiled 

 slowly and painfully along, with lowered heads and 

 tongues hanging from their gasping mouths. The 

 hot air they breathed was full of fiery dust, which 

 rose in clouds from their feet and hung suspended 

 in the breathless atmosphere long after the last 

 waggon had passed. This hot dust no doubt very 

 much aggravated the terrible thirst from which our 

 bullocks were now suffering, and kept them continu- 

 ally gasping and coughing. 



At last the dreadful sun turned blood-red as it 

 neared the western horizon, and then soon sank from 

 view behind the interminable landscape of stunted 

 thorn bushes. When outspanned during the day. 

 the bullocks had made no attempt to feed, but had 

 only stood about in clusters amongst the shadeless 

 thorn scrub ; I was in hopes, however, that they 

 would graze a little at sunset, albeit the grass was 



