26 THE MELON OE THE KALAHAEI DESERT 
it turns to an almost uniform bright yellow. It is of the taste 
and consistency of a cucumber, but some are intensely bitter, 
and it is full of small, very hard, brown seeds. 
The word ‘ desert ’ usually calls to the mind of most 
people a vast expanse of perfectly flat, bare, yellow sand, 
with here and there a gaunt isolated palm tree and perhaps 
a missionary on the sky line, and of course no water. 
The Kalahari is not a desert of this kind, in fact it is doubtful 
whether it is not an injustice to call it a desert at all. It consists 
of a vast extent of comparatively flat or gently undulating 
country of soft deep red or grey sand, and is not open but is 
covered all over with kamel thorn forest, in parts very dense, 
or with low scrub and thorn bush, beneath which there is an 
ample supply of grass. There is no permanent water other 
than native wells long distances apart. The Kalahari under- 
goes much the same seasonal changes as the Athi Plains, except 
that the rains only come once a year, from December to April, 
and during these months and for the month or six weeks 
following numerous * salt-pans ’ or shallow, brackish pools of 
rain-water are to be found widely distributed over the whole 
desert. After this period there is no water to be had except 
at very few places, great distances apart ; and against this long 
drought, until the next rains, Nature has made a most wonderful 
provision in the form of this wild melon. During the rains the 
Kalahari produces a luxuriant crop of grass and herbs, and at 
the same time the melons grow. They do not grow uniformly 
all over the desert but in patches. Sometimes ten, twenty, 
or thirty miles or more will be passed without a single melon 
being seen, and then suddenly, for no apparent reason 
(although of course there must be one), the traveller comes 
upon a patch of melons, sometimes only a few hundred yards 
in extent, sometimes reaching for many miles. In places I 
have seen the sama lying so thickly on the ground that it is 
difficult to believe they have not been collected there by 
natives, and it is a curious fact that in these patches sweet 
and bitter melons are to be found all growing together, but 
I was never able to decide definitely whether they grow 
upon the same plants, although the bushmen assured me that 
they do. 
