her troops steadily and relentlessly pushed north; and
even to the east the well-nigh unexplored dunes of the southern
Kalahari proved no safeguard to the Germans, for Union forces invaded
them even there: and all eyes in South Africa are to-day turned towards
this new addition to the Union and the Empire.

Whilst imagination has naturally played the chief part in these tales,
the descriptions given of certain parts of this little-known region are
accurate, and by no means overdrawn; at the same time, though they
treat principally of the dangerous and waterless desert, it must be
borne in mind that although the sand dunes form one of Damaraland's
most striking features, yet it is by no means altogether the barren,
scorching dust-heap it is popularly believed to be.

For once the sand region bordering the coast is traversed, and the
higher plateau begins, vegetation and water become more abundant, the
climate is magnificent, and cattle, sheep and goats thrive; whilst in
the north much of which remains practically unexplored there is much
fruitful and well-watered country teeming with game, and akin to
Rhodesia, awaiting the settler.

Mining and stock-raising are the two great possibilities in this new
country, where water conditions are never likely to allow of extensive
agriculture being carried out successfully.

But above all mining! For much of the country and especially the north
is very highly mineralized. Copper abounds; tin and gold have been
found and there can be but little doubt that the former will eventually
be located in abundance and, above all, the diamond fields of the
south-west coastal belt have since their discovery in 1908 added
enormously both to the value of the country and to its attractiveness.

To refer again to these tales; the description of Rip Van Winkle's ride
through the desert, the sand-storm, the huge salt "pans," and indeed
most of the earlier incidents, have been but common-place experiences
of my own in the wastes of the southern Kalahari, slightly altered for
the purposes of the story. Even the "poison flowers" exist there and no
Bushman will sleep among them, beautiful as they are. And lest the huge
diamond in the head of the "Snake" in the same story be considered an
impossibility, let it be borne in mind that the Cullinan (enormous as
it was) was but the fragment of a monster that must have been every
whit as big as the one I describe. The cataclysm is also a possibility;
for