Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/801

Rh voracious appetite, and an enormous capacity for swallowing lizards, rats, toads, frogs, locusts, young chickens, and kittens.

The most serious drawback to the Cape Colony as a place for settlement lies in the long droughts, which "are certainly very trying; indeed, they could not possibly be endured by any country less wonderfully fertile than South Africa, where it is calculated that three good days' rain in the year, could we but have this regularly, would be sufficient to meet all the needs of the land. But often, for more than a year, there will be no rain worth mentioning; the dams, or large artificial reservoirs, of which each farm usually possesses several, gradually become dry; and the Veldt daily loses more of its verdure, till at last all is one dull, ugly brown, and the whole plain lies parched and burned up under a sky from which every atom of moisture seems to have departed.... The stock, with the pathetic tenderness of thirst,



comes from all parts of the farm to congregate close round the house; the inquiring ostriches tapping with their bills on the windows as they look in at you, and the cattle lowing in piteous appeals for water; and you realize very vividly the force of such scriptural expressions as 'the heaven was shut up' or 'a dry and thirsty land where no water is.' Then the hot winds sweep across the country, making everybody tired, languid, headachy, and cross.... Even our pets were sulky on a hot-wind day; and as for the ostriches, they were deplorable objects indeed, as they