o 5,000 feet, the warmth increasing, as said before,
proportionately with the descent in altitude, and on occasions of tardy
summer rains.

The winter is the most enjoyable of the seasons, being an almost
uninterrupted continuation of fine sunny weather. On occasions there
would be spells of boisterous weather with a rather sudden and inclement
decrease of temperature, brought on by cold south-east winds; if these
are accompanied with rain in winter, which, however, rarely happens, it
would sometimes turn to sleet or even snow, or else to hard freezing at
night. The snow would, however, thaw with the warmth of the sun, and so
restore the temperature as before. The bracing quality of the climate
mostly consists just in those variations of cool nights and warm days,
and the occasional days of comparatively cold, boisterous weather. The
latter must indeed be provided against, for even in December--that is to
say, in the middle of summer--it would be imprudent to travel without
great-coats as well as waterproofs, so as to be protected against
unexpected changes, from say, 100 deg. in the sun, almost suddenly to 40 deg.
with a driving wind, accompanied perhaps with rain. Such transitions are
trying in the open, even if one is well clad, and the blustering weather
is sometimes so severe, if it happens in winter or early spring, as to
approach the character of a blizzard. One such lasted about thirty hours
in the early spring of 1881. It swept over the entire South African
plateaux and destroyed great numbers of sheep and cattle. These fell
exhausted in their flight before they could reach some sheltering hills
or ravines. In situations where such protections from the cold
south-east wind were far apart the veldt was on the following day found
strewn with their carcases, and upon the still more extensive and
unbroken plains antelopes even perished in enormous numbers simply from
exhaustion in trying to escape and find shelter from the cold wind.

I will just describe one of those occurrences, the severest in my
experience and well remembered by the Free State and the Transvaal
Boers--it was, I think, in 1881. One sunny day, early in August (spring
time), at a place about twenty miles east of Reddersburg, in the Orange
Free State, the wind veered to the south-east, and by afternoon had
begun to blow fairly hard and cold, about 35 deg. Fahrenheit--that is to
say, about 35 deg. below the temperature of a few hours previously. I h