years, in the
remembrance of the great granite boulder that stood on the south shore.

The great boulder had known changes since the old Plutonic forces cast it
upwards, a mere bubble of melted red granite, solidifying as it went into
a stone acorn thirty feet high, which the glacier brought down in a slow
journey of countless ages, and set upright like a phallic symbol, amongst
other boulders of lesser size. The channel the glacier had chiselled was
now full of shining honey-coloured water, hurrying over the granite stones
and blocks of quartz and pretty vari-coloured pebbles, while the boulder
sat high and dry, with the tall-plumed grasses, and the graceful
tree-fern, and the yellow-tasselled mimosa crowding about its knees; and
remembered old times, long before the little Bushfellow had outlined the
koodoo and the buffalo, and the hunter-man with the spear, in black
pigments on its smooth flank, ere he ground up the coprolites gathered
from the river-bed for red and yellow paint to colour the drawings. On the
western side the great boulder was dressed in crimson lake and
yellow-umber-hued lichens from base to summit, and in August, when the
aloes flowered in magnificent fiery clusters upon its crown and at its
base; and in May, when the sweet-scented clematis wreathed it in
exquisite trails, and white and rose and purple pelargoniums made a carpet
for its feet; and in July, when the yellow everlastings bloomed in every
cranny of the rocks, King Solomon in all his glory held less magnificence
of state.

Insects and beasts and birds loved the boulder. The sun-beetle and the
orange-tip and peacock butterflies loved to bask on its hottest side,
while the old dog-faced baboon squatted on top and chattered wisdom to his
numerous family, and the finches and love-birds built in its crannies and
bred their young, too often as food for the giant tarantula and the
tree-snake; while the francolin and grouse dusted themselves in the hot
sand at the base of its throne of rocks, and the springbok and the
wart-hogs came down at night to drink; and the woolly cheetah and the red
lynx came after the springbok and the wart-hog.

The boulder had seen War--War between black-skinned men and brown-skinned
men, adventurers with great hooked noses and curled beards, with tassels
of silk and gold plaited into them and into the hair of their heads,
terrible warriors, mighty hunters, and great miners, who came for slaves
and ivory and g