A KARROO FARM. 257 



brown and barren to afford nourishment even to a 

 rear-guard locust — an insect thankful for small 

 mercies. Much of the red soil — rich enough for 

 anything if water be brought to it — is scarcely 

 covered ; there are often great bare patches between 

 the shrubs and plants, and the grasses have quite 

 disappeared. But, droughty and parched though the 

 plains appear to us after eight months without rain, 

 what must they be like when, as is sometimes the 

 case, no moisture falls for two years on end ; two 

 years of scorching suns, of brassy skies, of evaporating 

 dams, and disappearing vegetation ; towards the 

 end, long months of weary struggling, to preserve the 

 constantly decreasing flocks, which day by day die 

 from thirst and starvation. At such times the lot of 

 a Karroo farmer is not merely not an enviable one — 

 it is an existence absolutely maddening. Yet even 

 now, as we amble across the plains, there is in 

 these apparently scrubby feeding grounds an ample 

 pasturage, and the stock as we have seen are in ' 

 good heart and fettle. These dried-up looking 

 shrubs, and the low heathery brush that form the 

 karroo vegetation, are even now full of feeding 

 power ; and when the rains come, as we afterwards 

 witnessed, what a transformation ! Brush and scrub, 

 apparently devoid of life, shoot out a fresh and vernal 

 verdure ; starry flowers spring in profusion, even 

 before the green leaves appear ; fragrant grasses and 

 herbs emerge as if by magic from the soil, and the 

 whole surface of the karroo appears one immense 

 ocean of dark green, spangled with flowers most 

 brilliant and innumerable. A delicious aromatic 

 odour fills the atmosphere. No one, indeed, who 

 has not witnessed this glorious transformation, can 



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