26 KLOOF AND KARROO. 



burning sun, is capable of supporting a luxuriant 

 vegetation, and when the rains fall the withered 

 shrubs and plants instantly are transformed into a 

 blazing carpet of the most brilliant flowers. Water 

 and irrigation will some day work wonders upon 

 these parched plains. 



Neither is the Great Karroo — ^which is 350 miles 

 in length, and has a breadth of seventy or eighty 

 miles — to be imagined as one huge expanse of 

 perfectly flat ground. On the contrary, it is studded 

 here and there with hills and occasional isolated 

 mountains ; and periodical rivers or water-courses, 

 dry for great part of the year, furrow its surface here 

 and there, their meanderings marked by the stunted 

 mimosas margining their banks. Geologists tell us 

 that this desert, which now sustains, in addition to 

 its indigenous springbok, mighty flocks of sheep and 

 goats, was once a vast lake, whose waters supported 

 the bygone saurians of a primeval period. 



Water has in recent years been discovered at no 

 great depth from the surface in many parts of the 

 karroo, and windmills and wells are being utilised 

 with very excellent results. Coal, too, has been 

 found in large quantities in the neighbourhood of 

 Aberdeen, not far from Graaff Reinet. 



We now began — upon entering open country — 

 to look about us eagerly for game, for in the 

 mountains and bush veldt we had not had much time 

 or opportunity to attend to such matters, in the 

 constant struggle of difficult and uphill travelling. 

 This day we first saw the black koorhaan — one of 

 the magnificent bustards of the Cape. Of these 

 wily birds we secured two brace in the heathy 

 scrub with which the surface of the karroo is 



