d them to change their opinions."

The column swung out into the great dry Karoo prairie. It was a
comfortless trek. Earth and sky seemed to have forgotten the rain of
preceding days; or it may have been that the storms which had
distressed us had been purely local, for we had struck a great
waterless plain which showed not the slightest sign of moisture. The
shuffling mules and lumbering waggons churned up a pungent dust; a
great spiral pillar of brown cloud mushroomed out above the column; no
breath of air gave relief from the vertical rigour of the sun; the
great snake-like column sweated and panted across the open, reporting
its presence to every keen-sighted Dutchman within a radius of fifteen
miles.

We have seen the beauties of the Karoo; but we cannot blind ourselves
to its defects, for they are the more numerous. At its best it is a
great stagnant desert, studded here and there with some redeeming
oases. Its verdure smacks of the wilderness. Stunted brown and grey,
the heather from which these rolling steppes take their name is
stranger to the more clement tinge of green, which is the sign of a
soil less sapless. Yet a peculiar fascination militates against a
general condemnation of the pitiless Karoo. One cannot altogether
banish from one's mind the memories of a summer night upon those
wastes. Those of you who have laboured in the desert of the Egyptian
Soudan will realise what is meant--can feel as we feel towards the
veldt of the Karoo. There is in that mysterious, almost uncanny,
fascination of those cool nights which succeed a grilling day a
something which you always look back upon with delight. What this
influence is, you can never precisely say; but it is impossible to
forget it....

At midday the New Cavalry Brigade came to a halt at some mud holes,
which furnished sufficient clayey water to allow the sobbing gun-teams
and transport animals to moisten their mouths. Water for the men there
was little, except the pittance which they were allowed to draw from
the regimental water-carts. Neither was there shade from the merciless
sun. The six inches of spare Karoo bush, though it served as a nibble
for the less fastidious of animals, was useless either as bed or
shade; other vegetable growth there was none within sight. Men crawled
under waggons and water-carts if they were fortunate enough to find
themselves near them, or, unrolling their blankets, extended them as
an awning, and burrowed underneath.