The Conquest of the Desert 



also a food for man. The bushmen have 

 various ways of dealing with it, eating it as a 

 fruit, roasting it under ashes, or stewing it 

 with game or vermin (jackals, wild cats, etc.). 

 The seeds are oily and very fattening. They 

 are ground between two stones and made into 

 flour. As a food, the tsamma is, however, not 

 very strengthening, and cattle fed thereon 

 soon lose their flesh when worked. To fatten 

 cattle quickly it has no equal, and it was a 

 common trick during the recent war in German 

 South- West Africa, where slaughter stock was 

 purchased by weight, to put lean cattle on the 

 tsamma for a few weeks before handing them 

 over." 



Surely few can contemplate this extraordinary 

 provision of Nature that enables the traveller 

 to cross the burning sand-dunes of the desert by 

 the trail of the water-melon without remember- 

 ing the words of the Psalmist : 



" And His hands prepared the dry land." 



A little later we came across a mountain 

 range of dunes destitute of any sign of vegeta- 

 tion. Then in the dim morning light loomed 

 out the Desert Camel Post coming towards us. 

 We stopped for a few minutes to exchange 



36 



