few hundred yards distant from this
uninviting homestead, sits its owner. Nobody but a Boer could dwell in
such a place, would be the first thought succeeding that of wonder that
any white man could be found to inhabit it at all. But a glance would
suffice to show that he now sitting there is not a member of that dogged
and pachydermatous race. The face is a fine--even a noble--one, whose
features the bronzed and weatherworn results of a hard life have failed
to roughen. A broad, lofty brow, and pensive dark eyes stamp their
owner as a man of intellect and thought, while the peculiar curve of the
well-formed nostrils betokens a sensitive and self-contained nature.
The lower half of the face is hidden by a dark silky beard and
moustache.

One brown, sinewy hand grasps a geologist's hammer, with which it chips
away listlessly at the ground. But, although the action is now purely
mechanical, it is not always so, as we shall see if we use our
story-teller's privilege and dip into his inner thoughts. Briefly
rendered, they run in this wise:

"Oh, this awful drought! When is it going to end? Not that it much
matters, either way, now, for there's hardly a sound hoof left on the
place; and, even if a good rain did come, it would only finish off the
whole fever-stricken lot. Well, I'll have to clear out, that's one
consolation. I've held on as long as any man could, and now I'll just
have to go."

His gaze wanders over the arid plain. Far away through the shimmer it
rests on a multitude of white specks--a flock of Angora goats, striving
in desperation to pick up what miserable subsistence it may.

"There's nothing to be done with the place--nothing," he muses, bringing
his hammer down upon a boulder with a despairing whack. "It won't sell
even for an old song--no one will so much as touch land now, nor will
they for a long time to come, and there isn't a `stone' [`Diamond' in
digger parlance] on the whole farm, for I've dug and fossicked in every
likely place, and unlikely one, too. No; I'll shut up shop and get
away. The few miserable brutes left are not worth looking after--not
worth their _brand ziek_ [Scab-affected] skins. Yet I'll have one more
search, one more crazy fool's errand, after the `Valley of the Eye,'
before I trek. This 'll make the fifth--but, no matter. One may as
well make an ass of oneself five times as four. I can't exactly believe
old Greenway took all that trouble to dictate an infer