man beings that was impassable
except by the appointed gaps. No doubt it had a beauty all its own,
but beneath its fantastic, isolated blooms and leaves of Madonna blue,
the gnarled roots sheltered a hundred varieties of poisonous reptiles
and insects. That is why, in Africa, no one likes blue aloes--they
always harbour death.

Dawn on the Karoo more than compensates for its fearsome nights and
torrid noontides. The dew, jewelling a thousand spider-webs, the
sparkling brightness of the air, the exquisite purity of the
atmosphere, and grandeur of space and loneliness rimmed about by
rose-tipped skies and far forget-me-not hills make a magic to catch the
heart in a net from which it never quite escapes.

Christine felt this enchantment as she wandered across the veld, her
eyes fixed on the hills from behind which the sun would presently
emerge to fill the land with a clear, pitiless heat that turned
everything curiously grey. A dam of water reflecting pink cloud-tips
lay bright and still as a sheet of steel. The fields of lucerne, under
the morning light, were softly turning from black to emerald, and
beyond the aloe hedge a native kraal that was scattered on the side of
a hill slowly woke to life. A dog barked; a wisp of smoke curled
between the thatched huts, and one or two blanketed figures crept from
the low doors. The simple yet secret lives of these people intrigued
Christine deeply. She knew little of Kafirs, for she had been in
Africa only a few months; but the impassive silence of them behind
their watching, alert eyes always fascinated her. They said so little
before their masters, the whites. Here, for instance, was a little
colony of fifty or more people living in a kraal close to their
employers. Some of them were grey-haired and had worked for a quarter
of a century on the farm--the men on the land, the women at the
house--yet, once their daily tasks were over, none knew what their
lives were when they returned to the straggling village of palisades
and low-doored huts.

Musing on these things, Christine turned at last and sauntered slowly
homeward. Everything was still very quiet, but smoke was rising from
the solid farm chimneys, and, rounding the corners of some large
outbuildings, she came suddenly upon more life--feathery, fantastic
life of spindlelegs and fluttering wings. Scores of baby ostriches,
just released from their night shelter, were racing into the morning
light, pirouetting