His Journey to South Africa 



29 



do their piffling little digging and achieve no 

 more than a hen can do by scratching ? 



So she brought him where some great Vulcan- 

 smith with awful force had crushed that little 

 nut-ball earth between his mighty pincers, 

 cracking its hard shell and spewing through its 

 crevices the soft kernel of molten metal matter 

 that maggot-man now feeds and fattens on. She 

 introduced him to that Old Man, Orange River, 

 who showed him the deep gash he had made on 

 the face of Africa, as he scooped out his terraced 

 million-year-old bed. This old rascal also pointed 

 out to him the sluits and dongas from which he 

 had carried whole mountains on his back down 

 to his distant sea. Where else could Brown have 

 got so near to fathoming the unfathomable than 

 here where Hot Springs bleed bubblingly from 

 the very bowels of this earth? Where was his 

 Elysium, if not in this land which lodged the 

 living Monitor and the dead Dinosaur of his 

 beloved Reptile World ? 



