d, are spread around. The wonderful
_Composites_ are in flower, and the barren, desert-like flats are for a
few brief weeks transformed into a carpet of the noblest colouring and
pattern. Look closely, and you may see the bleached and blackened limbs
of former growths of low shrub, which stand amid the gallant blaze--
gaunt reminders of the transitory existence of African flower life.

Near at hand lies a vlei, a shallow temporary lake recruited by the
recent rains. At the end of this vlei, farthest removed from the group
of wagons outspanned there, is gathered at this early hour a notable
display of bird life. Duck, geese, widgeon, and teal are there,
cackling and crying in a joyous plenty. Stints and sandpipers whirl
hither and thither, and graceful black-and-white avocets, with their
singular, upturned, slender bills, and long, red-legged stilt-plovers,
haunt the shallows. Upon the plain some small birds have been afoot
some time. You may see and hear the lively, inquisitive Jan
Fredric thrush, with his pleasing song, and his curious
note--"Jan-fredric-dric-dric-fredric." He is racing swiftly hither and
thither through the shrub and flowers, bustling for his food supply.
There, too, are the thick-billed lark, the Sabota lark, with its clear,
ringing call, and a few other--but not many--small birds. Aloft an
eagle is already on the move, and a hawk or two, no doubt meditating
descent upon some of the wildfowl on the vlei. Out upon the plains,
half a mile distant from the wagons, are to be seen a knot or two of
graceful springbok busily feeding in the choice herbage. But now there
is a stir at the wagons yonder. For half an hour past "Ruyter," a
little wizened Hottentot, has been busy blowing up the embers of the
half-dead fire, and making coffee for the _baas_ and _meisje_.

From the biggest of the wagons descends a vast, uncouth figure--that of
Klaas Stuurmann, the Trek-Boer. Almost at the same moment the
_achter-klap_ (flap) at the hinder part of the wagon is thrown back, and
the figure of a young woman, rather dishevelled--for, like her father,
she has been manifestly sleeping in her day-clothes (night-clothes they
have none)--descends. The two approach the fire, greet one another in
stolid, almost mute fashion--the father kissing impassively the girl's
proffered cheek--and then, standing, they drink the coffee handed to
them by the little Hottentot man, and eat a few mouthfuls of bread.
Watch them w