Their dwellings--ordinary mat-houses and ramshackle wagons--as well as the furniture thereof, indicated that they must have become habituated to extremes of heat and cold. They were cleanly in their persons; this I knew through having vaccinated them all,--from the patriarch to the youngest baby. Small-pox at the time was reported to be raging among the Bondleswartz Tribe, just beyond the Orange River. But these people can never develop a type that will persist; the desert they inhabit is too small. Besides, their sons and daughters are continually being enticed away to regions with a kinder soil and a less severe climate. There they further complicate the South African race question. This question will not be confined to South Africa; it will soon be one of worldwide import, and one that is not necessarily to be answered in favour of the Caucasian, whose birth-rate statistics read like Mene Tekel. I am often inclined to think it would have been better in the long run had Charles Martel lost the Battle of Tours. In that case there would at all events have been no colour question. But those deep, dusky eyes haunted me. They were as enigmatic as the only landscape over which they ranged. If one could only have stripped the scales from them, what wonders might they not have seen? Incalculable potencies might have been in their depths. Others, desert-bred, have caught glimpses of eternal verities which prompted them to utter words that became the hinges of history. However, up to the present, there is no sign of a prophet arising in Bushmanland with a message for a land that sorely needs it. The half-breeds had heard of the springbuck; a few days previously the latter were credibly reported to be somewhere about thirty miles to the northward, near Kat Vley. And we were assured of the almost incredible fact that Kat Vley contained water. That was certainly an _annus mirabilis_ in the desert. At midday we took our departure, making for the vicinity where the springbuck were said to be. In the afternoon dense clouds rolled up from the south-westward and a deluge of hail struck us. Within the memory of men no similar thing had happened in Bushmanland. Andries and I were comfortable enough in the wagon; Hendrick and Piet Noona fixed a sail to the windward wheels and lit a big candle-bush fire to leeward. After travelling about twenty miles we had camped for the night, for the hail-clouds had been rolling up at intervals of about half an hour, and there appeared to be no likelihood of the weather clearing. The poor horses,--they were in for a time of misery!