88 HOME LIFE ON AN OSTRICH FARM. 



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

 farmer ; the long drought over at last, the dams full, 

 the parched country revived, the poor thin cattle no 

 longer in danger 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 

 big rain ! and with what eager excitement we look 

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

 come sight, the newly-filled dam ! 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 sheet of water, into which the yellow 

 sluit, 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 



