The rocks have been to us a blur of brown: we bend over them, and the
disorganised masses dissolve into a many-coloured, many-shaped, carefully-
arranged form of existence. Here masses of rainbow-tinted crystals, half-
fused together; there bands of smooth grey and red methodically overlying
each other. This rock here is covered with a delicate silver tracery, in
some mineral, resembling leaves and branches; there on the flat stone, on
which we so often have sat to weep and pray, we look down, and see it
covered with the fossil footprints of great birds, and the beautiful
skeleton of a fish. We have often tried to picture in our mind what the
fossiled remains of creatures must be like, and all the while we sat on
them, we have been so blinded by thinking and feeling that we have never
seen the world.

The flat plain has been to us a reach of monotonous red. We look at it,
and every handful of sand starts into life. That wonderful people, the
ants, we learn to know; see them make war and peace, play and work, and
build their huge palaces. And that smaller people we make acquaintance
with, who live in the flowers. The bitto flower has been for us a mere
blur of yellow; we find its heart composed of a hundred perfect flowers,
the homes of the tiny black people with red stripes, who move in and out in
that little yellow city. Every bluebell has its inhabitant. Every day the
karoo shows us a new wonder sleeping in its teeming bosom.

On our way back to work we pause and stand to see the ground-spider make
its trap, bury itself in the sand, and then wait for the falling in of its
enemy.

Further on walks a horned beetle, and near him starts open the door of a
spider, who peeps out carefully, and quickly pulls it down again. On a