We had left the bare, bleak kops and tall strange trees of Bechuanaland far behind now, and had crossed the last of its wild and fearful rivers. Everywhere about us stretched level country, which gave a curious impression of the sea, for the thick, hay-like grass, bleached almost to whiteness and as high as a man’s waist, swayed perpetually like pale waves. Even when the land seems a heated brazen bowl and the upper air is faint and heavy with breathlessness the veldt grass has some hidden air, some “wind from a lost country,” flitting amongst it making it sway and gently whisper.
Patches of trees grew against the horizon, but they were short and scrubby and in the nature of “bush,” though occasionally one was to be seen by itself, sprayed like an ostrich feather upon the skyline. Others, of a singularly gnarled squat type, sent all their branches up to a certain height and then flattened them out and wove them together so that the top of the tree presented the appearance of a strong, but rather stubbly, spring-mattress.
Far away on the edge of the landscape, never seeming to come nearer or recede farther, was the usual line of amethyst hills. Nearer hills were saffron coloured, and some turning pale pink in the evening light. Everywhere the eye was feasted with colour. Sard-green bushes stretched branches like candelabra high above the pale grass, and from each branch sprouted forth flowers that were like leaping scarlet and yellow flames. Creepers that had great black-pupilled crimson eyes hung from trees; and purple clematis, tangled with “old man’s beard” and some waxen white flower that gave forth an odour like opopanax, dripped and clung from huge rocks that, standing alone, looked as though they had jerked themselves loose from some mighty mountain of the moon, and dropped abruptly into the silence and solitude of this wild place. Sometimes an enormous boulder with a massive flat top would be balanced on a single narrow point, showing like a miniature Table Mountain set amongst seas of swaying grass. I imagined it would be very pleasant to sit on one of them, high above the dust and the unfragrant odour of the mules, but the rocky sides looked steep and inaccessible; and my fate was still to swaggle wearily across the landscape.
I was so tired that even the glorious hues of sunset could not comfort my soul. I drank them in, it is true, but I would rather at that time have had a cup of tea. My skin was parched with heat and dust, and I was wearied to death of being bumped and banged and sitting crumpled up in a ball.
The driver had put back the hood of the cart so that we might get what air was going, but when suddenly some large, drops of rain began to fall on me I felt, like Job, that my sorrows were too many.
“Driver!” I cried, “you don’t mean to tell me that it is now going to rain!”
“Ach! That’s nixney,” he replied. “We’ll be in Fort George before ten minutes. See the lights? Vacht till I wake them up.”
He produced the post-horn, and I hastily stopped my ears, but that did not prevent me from hearing the series of frightful blares that he gave forth. The noise cheered the mules, and they took heart of grace and threw themselves into a last desperate run. The road became smoother and the barking of dogs could be heard. I slipped on my coat and tied the ends of my veil under my chin into a big enough bow to hide behind, for I had learnt with diminishing enthusiasm what it meant to be an occupant of the mail-coach, arriving in a small township in the African wilds. I well knew that every man, woman, and dog in the place would be there to meet and examine me with curiosity. I rather liked it at first, when I could still contrive to be fresh and uncrumpled after a day amongst the mail-bags. But after a fortnight in one gown, my face decorated with tan and mosquito bites, and absolutely a crack in my best lip (the top one, of course, though the other one is charming, too) I naturally did not feel ardent about meeting a lot of people. I held a hasty consultation with the driver between his yells at the mules.
“You say there is a good hotel here, Hendricks?”