The Boer cleared the land of the wild beasts and savages as expeditiously as he could. But they were not his main difficulty, as we have seen. On those arid, sparsely vegetated up-country plains, water and food for his flocks varied with the time of years, and sometimes were not to be found at all. It was seldom desirable or even possible, in those days when artificial reservoirs or springs were unknown, to remain more than a few months on one spot. So when the bushes were eaten, and the water began to dry up, he spanned in his ox-wagon and moved away with his flocks and herds in search of fresh pastures. Or, if he had no flocks and herds and lived by the chase alone, he moved yet oftener, following the droves of the springbok and hartebeest[44] as they themselves trekked in search of fresh pasture. He built no house, or, if he raised a temporary shelter, it was composed of a few cross-parts thatched with bushes, resembling a high-pitched roof placed on the ground; but his real home was his wagon. [44] Hartebeest = an antelope. With a constant tendency to go northward and north-east these men moved slowly on; visiting for the first time plain after plain in the karoo and grass-veld, and piloting their huge canvas-sailed wagons across the infinite expanses of sand and rock, as their sailor forefathers a few generations earlier had piloted their ships across the sea. In many cases for generations this wandering life was continued. Men were born, grew up, grew old, and died, who knew no home but the ox-wagon, and had no conception of human life but as a perpetual moving onward. Even at the present day there are still to be found a few of these men, hunters and nomads, whose fathers and forefathers also led this wandering life. They are generally large-limbed, large-handed men, powerfully built, but somewhat loosely, and a little slouching about the shoulders; often with long, straggling, yellowish-brown beards.[45] [45] There seems some tendency in South African climate and conditions of life to produce this physical type, as it is often closely approximated to by the descendants of British settlers. The South Africans as a whole appear to be larger, and not quite so closely knit as the European folk. They are generally somewhat silent of tongue, their blue or grey-blue eyes often dull as though not fully awakened, but starting into keenness and life when they catch the glimpse of a springbok across the plain or a korhaan on wing overhead; and striking forth sparks of fire when you mention to them the benefits of taxation and a foreign government--as the flint-lock guns of their forebears struck fire, when the old flints hit the steels.