The Melon and the Mail 



cooked them. They tasted to me like vege- 

 table marrow, which they closely resembled in 

 appearance ; and seeing how popular pumkins 

 and squashes are in America, it struck me as 

 strange that no one had ever thought of taking 

 some of the seeds and trying them in the sandy 

 wastes of the States." A little further on we 

 find that Farini has had too much tsamma (page 

 179) : " We were all getting tired of the ever- 

 lasting flavour of sama. We ate sama raw ; 

 we ate sama fried ; we drank sama water ; we 

 made our coffee with sama water ; we stewed 

 our meat in sama water ; and altogether we 

 were sick of the taste of the stuff." 



Five years ago an interesting report was 

 presented to the Cape Parliament on the 

 Rietfontein Area. Rietfontein lies 510 miles to 

 the west of Johannesburg, and two miles from 

 the border of German South- West Africa. In 

 his report for 1908 the Assistant Resident 

 Magistrate, Mr J. F. Herbst, speaks of this 

 wonderful water-melon : " Pride of place must, 

 of course, be given to the tsamma, the very life- 

 blood of the Kalahari, without which it would 

 be an absolute desert, closed to man. The fruit 

 in its raw state is chiefly remarkable for its 

 thirst-quenching properties, but cooked it is 



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