THIS SOUTH AFRICAN CLIMATE.

New Zealand Mail, 15 February 1900, Page 53

THIS SOUT H AFRICAN CLIMATE.

(B? J^ian Ral Pb> in the “Daily Mail.”)

To he norm’ll 4 AR > November 8. : “kappy anywhere be- ' traveller shonlnA *j nd t i le Zambesi the ! fi S ]c af for a day- ■ f «rs'fo r the nitu p. Laplander’s suit of .- I&bAAfc P’ght time. V pV'and then Lf law allows every r ! ent i ,but, a t T m , shade of my < ! anj hs4Sl 1 ( o myself up in a i v ets , andk cirio™’ two ordinary blan- 1 to the rattle, lni f’ and be down to i the hegiL ofp ? y teeth > «ntil i I' 38 # daSak Af th T" Bh tke can- t eadejparters at TV a* ° are the i * e ha y ing wLat ei selected weatWefi ca a choice ..line J ? otD «g in eachft’ every klloWD kind 1 Sis^r s - “ da " < f t K, mixe d up^ 1 ! s , ort « of. weather-1 a Wi S teri n sunsifiL 1 t,mes we ba ™ 1 t m !0 T; ‘ £ Soudanese sand- ( lif t - Sun and pi a y i f llrks . that obscure 1 ofe Up the’^skht s o f W A th * he ca ™P. t atln S everything re / the tent «, and t -> ” 1

In one of these whirls you can lay a clean, white handkerchief between two 'oveffeoati; 'axid' whetr you . will; look, as if it had been soaked in "beet | tea. After the dust whirl comes a tror U pical thunder shower, at the end of which f! •i tbo'_suirßeta-:witbra splendour no painter Li ®t#o P ut on; canvas. As H pj ffce climate on man, it S it » healthy and let it | go at that! in may judge; from this 0 . partr of r-Cupe fColQny r Noy«mber, it e B ; United P -Stat.eg;; •

; 1 .TVgo ter nl\&? be a mil- I Bonaire with ljjttg,.*£md you must ! keep your lung and pkri Ayitfc your mil- j lion. But here the rule is to come penniless,Avith'lifrlungsi T’hus established, you.develop, new lungs and.,become a millionaire. All the, African, millionaires started with neither money nor respiratory organs, and are now tiie f most energetic,* able-bodied men of business-alive. Paul Kruger is an exception.. haying bad-luck. But he began - ly with sound lungs. r.)‘ ; ...We are on the edge of the Karoo desert..- It is ar-track which looks like, a rubbish-shooting ground of imperial size. It is everywhere rolling and framed by great bills,,except where the billows of baked and stony earth take, the form of kopjes (called “coppies”) or small- hills. The entire country is about equally spotted with, small atones and little dry tufts of yegitation, mainly -sage brush. These'-'‘areyso. bare and dry. that they look like.-roots. The barren water-courses torture little trees to grow beside them,-,’and these alfjo?are so bare and dead-looking, .that might as well be trees turned bottdrn .upward. - • s /■■■■■

In every direction thb yieiv is'unobstructed for miles, yet you see nothing but the same brown desert ' with the •hot air dancing over it-.- There are occasional little herds of goats tended by .negro children, but they never show- until you are 'close upon tliem. : _ The KaY rco might well be a heaven for snakes, lizards and beetles, but I saw none—nor any living thing except a few goats, a few stately ostriches, a few negroes in rags or blankets, and one small black and white bird that would pass for an undersized magpie at Home. Silence, solitude, desolation—multiply these ly six-figures and you have the Earoo&v- • 1 * It is not without beauty, and it is not without a future. Everywhere, in everything, its colours are wondrous. Close at hand the hills are almost brickred. a little farther away the others

are dove-coloured, while the farthest ones are of varying shades of purple. Tufts and splotches of vivid green appear wherever there is or has recently been water, and even the stones and shrubs are full of colour. I have said it is stony. It is so stony that you cannot make up your mind whether the thin soil is being formed of disintegrating stones or whether there once was a soil which has been washed off down to the broken surface of the. bed-rock. And yet man ean do with it what the Mormons have done with the great American desert, now fast becoming a garden land. ' In some places'the water is SOft. below the surface; in others 1500 f- to 2000 ft-—but there is always water, and once it bathes the surface it acts like a magician’s wand.

"Wherever there is a railway station it is in an oasis of green, with willow and eucalyptus trees, flowers and vegetables. Before I woke up one morning the train was at a- place called

Matjesfontein, and a man was calling out my name. When I was dressed and out on the platform I found Mr J. D. Logan had heard I was passing through, and wished to invite me to breakfast. As I rubbed my eye's I saw far and away on .every side the stony, tufted, shimmering desefrt, yet close beside -me i'wete .tree-shaded cottages; with blooming gardens and lawns around each; j wfis hurried away Trdm the picturesque station to a handsome bouse, where I found a luxuriously-ordered .table, smoking hob'viands led. 1 off by. sahnen. from England, with trained sextants to add to comfort as abundant’ as anyone could wish.

This was Air Logan’s village, and he is building a fine hotel as its chief glory. While we ate breakfast he dictated, to...his, secretary letters of introduction to" people further north, afid before I finished my coffee the letters were handed to me typewritten. When the train took me off Mr Logan went off on a shooting trip. The whole episode was like a tatter of dreamland, a little spring of enterprise gushing cut, in the desert—and yet just file sort of thing one runs upon in South Africa.- -

Close to every railway station, and hugging it for that companionship which all negroes love, are the huts of the Kaffirs. They .are of every sort that costs no money and .little,, labour. . Some are Wholes in the earth; roofed over with till or tarpaulin,; some are low huts of adobe (mud-brick) walls; soibe are made of that corrugated iron which is the eyesore,, of .South,, Africa...... There is ifift;’-'a thing about these Kaffirs or their costumes or their houses that . I , have-not noticed about .the Guinea negroes of the Mississippi and the rest of the “black belt” of tha United States. I begin to think witli Burns that “a (black) man’s a (black) man fpr a* that.” Here and in America he is equally shiftless, equally ragged, equally jaunty in his rags, equally happy in his misfortunes, equally prone to lie in the sun, to laugh, sing, and to pilfer. The queer thing about the Kaffirs here is that, though there are

millions of them in South Africa, they make no mark cn the landscape. They herd in little bands ie the bushes and by the stations and villages, and you never have the faintest proof of their numbers.