“At last morning broke,” says one new to the country, in a description of the sunrise, “and delicate rosy stripes of light shot up toward the zenith. The colours grew rapidly deeper, brighter, and stronger. The red was glorious in its fullness, and the blue beautiful in its purity. The light mounted and extended itself, ascending as over a new world a thousand times more beautiful than the old one. Then came the sun, big and clear, looking like a great, placid, wide-opened eye.” At night the moon and stars shine with a fire and brilliancy that never fail to amaze the visitor from the northern lands. FOOTNOTES: [1] “Notes on the Geological Formation of Portions of German South-West Africa”--_South African Journal of Science_, June, 1911. [2] Moffat’s “Missionary Labours and Scenes in South Africa,” p. 76. [3] Report of Director of Irrigation for period 1st January, 1912, to March, 1913.--_Cape Times, Ltd._, Cape Town. CHAPTER II CLIMATE AND RAINFALL From what has been said about the diversity of the physical conditions of the country it will be readily inferred that there is a considerable variation of climate. When it is remembered, too, that the land lies within the tropic of Capricorn and corresponds in latitude to the central provinces of India, between Bombay and Calcutta, the reader will be prepared to learn that it is excessively hot in the summer months and very unhealthy. As a matter of fact the climate as a whole is healthy and the heat much less trying than the traveller from India expects to find in such a latitude. Various factors account for this, as we shall see. There are two seasons, summer and winter; summer lasts from October to April, and winter from April to September. The heat is sometimes great on the coast, some little distance from the sea, where the sea mists do not reach, rising occasionally to 120° F. in the shade. But at noon the fresh south-west wind blows strongly from the sea, and the nights are comparatively cool and refreshing. The sudden fall of temperature at sunset is often a source of danger to those who have not learned to guard themselves against rapid variations of temperature. Strangely enough, the hottest day in the year may be a day in the middle of winter, for it is in the winter that a fierce, hot, desert wind from the east comes sweeping across the country, sending up the thermometer with a rush. The winter may thus have the hottest, as well as the coldest, days of the year. A comparison of the temperatures of the principal centres of the country with Kenhardt and Kimberley, two of the hottest districts in the Cape Province, may not be without interest: