moisture from nostrils, eyes and mouths had caught 

 the dust and turned it into mud. At Matolla Poort, 

 where the Lebombo Range runs low, where the 

 polished black rocks shone like anvils, where the stones 

 and baked earth scorched the feet of man and beast 

 to aching, the world was like an oven ; the heat came 

 from above, below, around a thousand glistening 

 surfaces flashing back with intensity the sun's fierce 

 rays. And there, at Matolla Poort, the big pool had 

 given out ! 



Our stand-by was gone ! There, in the deep cleft in 

 the rocks where the feeding spring, cool and constant, 

 had trickled down a smooth black rock beneath another 

 overhanging slab, and where ferns and mosses had 

 clustered in one little spot in all the miles of blistering 

 rocks, there was nothing left but mud and slime. The 

 water was as green and thick as pea-soup ; filth of all 

 kinds lay in it and on it ; half a dozen rotting carcases 

 stuck in the mud round the one small wet spot where 

 the pool had been just where they fell and died; 

 the coat had dropped away from some, and mats of 

 hair, black brown and white, helped to thicken the 

 green water. But we drank it. Sinking a handker- 

 chief where the water looked thinnest and making a 

 little well into which the moisture slowly filtered, we 

 drank it greedily. 



The next water on the road was Komati River, but 

 the cattle were too weak to reach it in one trek, and 

 remembering another pool off the road a small 

 lagoon found by accident when out hunting the year 

 before we moved on that night out on to the flats, 



413 



