54 A Breath from the Veldt 



Senega lensis), Ruppel's bustard [Otis RuppelH), Ludwig's bustard [Otis Lud-wig), 

 and the black-bellied khoorhan (Otis melanogaster) , the last-named bird frequent- 

 ing the high plateau in the vicinity of Salisbury, and though larger than any 

 of the khoorhans proper, resembling in its habits the Bush khoorhan, to which 

 it is probably akin. 



And now back once more to our waggon, the Boer and the boys whom I 

 left, some pages ago, about a week's journey north of Johannesburg. The 

 locusts were now arriving — had been coming, indeed, for some weeks past — 

 and according to the report of natives and dwellers in the Transvaal, never 

 before had been such a terrible locust year as this month of April opened up. 

 Even before we reached Johannesburg we had a foretaste of their presence, 

 being overtaken in the train by one of these great " black snowstorms," as the 

 natives call .them. They rained down upon the roofs of the carriages ; and, 

 as to the railway, one could hardly see it for the moving mass of insects, each 

 about four inches long. Thousands came to an untimely end by passing under 

 the wheels of the train ; but these had their revenge, for their mangled remains 

 made the rails so greasy that for the rest of the journey no more than five or 

 six miles an hour could be got out of the engine. The roads, of course, were 

 covered with them ; so, too, was the courtyard of the hotel at which we 

 arrived at last. Nor were they lacking in any of the apartments on the ground 

 level. The floor of my bedroom was alive with them, like a carpet ■ of living 

 green, pleasant enough in point of colour, but hardly agreeable to walk upon. 

 These locusts are, in fact, the curse of the country. Coming in clouds that 

 sometimes even obscure the rays of the sun, they suddenly descend upon the 

 earth and eat up every green thing for miles around, leaving the land black and 

 bare, and the poor farmers without any forage for their cattle. Here and there 

 a man succeeds in diverting them from their course by lighting a large fire 

 the moment the swarm is sighted, but Boers are no match for locusts in 

 nimbleness of movement, and many of them won't even take the trouble to 

 collect materials for a fire, in readiness for the enemy. 



It was amusing to watch these insects upon the top of the high veldt (some 

 7000 feet high) eastward of Johannesburg. There was a hard frost in the 

 early morning, and they crawled about in a half-frozen and comatose condition 

 till about 7 o'clock, when, as we were at breakfast, the rays of the sun warmed 

 them up into a general chirp and jump and a scramble for the tops of the 

 ant-hills or other little excrescences that offered a drier and warmer resting- 

 place. By 1 1 o'clock they were as lively as ever ; and having eaten all there 



