irrigation, where not a drop of
the fountain-water ever now flows. Other parts, fourteen miles below the
Kuruman gardens, are pointed out as having contained, within the memory
of people now living, hippopotami, and pools sufficient to drown both
men and cattle. This failure of water must be chiefly ascribed to the
general desiccation of the country, but partly also to the amount of
irrigation carried on along both banks of the stream at the mission
station. This latter circumstance would have more weight were it not
coincident with the failure of fountains over a wide extent of country.

Without at present entering minutely into this feature of the climate,
it may be remarked that the Kuruman district presents evidence of
this dry southern region having, at no very distant date, been as well
watered as the country north of Lake Ngami is now. Ancient river-beds
and water-courses abound, and the very eyes of fountains long since
dried up may be seen, in which the flow of centuries has worn these
orifices from a slit to an oval form, having on their sides the tufa
so abundantly deposited from these primitive waters; and just where the
splashings, made when the stream fell on the rock below, may be supposed
to have reached and evaporated, the same phenomenon appears. Many of
these failing fountains no longer flow, because the brink over which
they ran is now too high, or because the elevation of the western side
of the country lifts the land away from the water supply below; but let
a cutting be made from a lower level than the brink, and through it to
a part below the surface of the water, and water flows perennially.
Several of these ancient fountains have been resuscitated by the
Bechuanas near Kuruman, who occasionally show their feelings of
self-esteem by laboring for months at deep cuttings, which, having
once begun, they feel bound in honor to persevere in, though told by a
missionary that they can never force water to run up hill.

It is interesting to observe the industry of many Boers in this region
in making long and deep canals from lower levels up to spots destitute
of the slightest indication of water existing beneath except a few
rushes and a peculiar kind of coarse, reddish-colored grass growing in a
hollow, which anciently must have been the eye of a fountain, but is now
filled up with soft tufa. In other instances, the indication of water
below consists of the rushes growing on a long, sandy ridge a foot