Carcasses of horses, mules, oxen, and other animals lay by the road every mile or so, and spoke rather too eloquently of the toll the terrible drought was taking upon the transport animals, and the flocks and herds of the farmer. Our driver gave us gruesome accounts of farms whose owners had neglected to trek with their livestock whilst the veldt still held good, but had waited, hoping for the ever-promising rain, waited until their last drop of water had dried in their vleys, wells, or pits, and every nibble of herbage had been cleared off the face of the land, and who had lost every head of stock they possessed. Transport was almost unobtainable, for every pound of forage for the animals for the long trek of 150 miles had to be carried on the waggons, leaving room for little else! Water, even at the regular watering-places, was so scarce that a heavy charge was made for each animal drinking, and it seemed that, if the drought did not break very soon, the route would have to be utterly abandoned. And day after day the heavy storm clouds gathered, dark, lowering, and threatening (or rather promising) torrents of the longed-for rain, a promise that seemed never to be fulfilled. This gloomy state of affairs was by no means encouraging, and our driver, when he found out where we were bound for, laughed, and told us that we were mad to make the attempt. He said that the farmers between Upington and Rietfontein had suffered worse than any others, and that a bare week ago he had spoken to a camel policeman from the north, who had told him that not a drop of rain had yet fallen, and there would be no t’samma! So we were most anxious to get to Upington, to find out the truth, for this gloomy account was an entirely different story from the cheery optimism of the recent letters and wires we had received. Apparently, however, whatever might have happened in the Kalahari during the last few months, it was certainly raining there now, for as we got farther north, the whole horizon in that direction appeared covered with a dense bank of clouds, from which lightning frequently flashed. It seemed as though a perfect deluge must be falling there, and we took heart of grace, and even wished we had brought our mackintoshes.