alarming proximity to the edge of precipitous ravines. What a splendid
position for defensive purposes! Had the present war been declared three
weeks earlier De Aar would have been quite unable to stand against the
Boers, and thus the enemy might with his amazing mobility have made a
swift descent along the railway and occupied the Hex River pass. Out of
this position not all the Queen's horses and all the Queen's men would
have dislodged him without enormous loss. With the armed support of all
the Dutch farmers from Worcester to the Orange River, a Boer occupation
of this strong position would have been a terrible menace to Capetown
itself. As it is, shots are occasionally fired at trains as they run
northward from Worcester, and as a few pounds of dynamite would wreck
portions of the Hex River line for weeks the government patrols in this
locality cannot be too careful.

Our first passage through the Karroo was by night, but during the busy
days of service which followed we frequently saw this dreary expanse of
desert in daylight. Some mysterious charm, hidden from the eyes of the
unsympathetic tourist, dwells in the Karroo. The country folk who
inhabit these vast plains all agree that to live in them is to love
them. Children speak of the kopjes as if they were living playmates, and
farmers grow so deeply attached to their waggons and ox teams that Sir
Owen Lanyon's forcible seizure of one in distraint for taxes appeared a
kind of sacrilege in the eyes of the Boers.

At times nothing can be more unlovely than the stony, barren wilderness
of the Karroo. The Sudan desert with its rocky hills and the broad Nile
between the yellow banks is infinitely more picturesque than this vast
South African plain. Still, at certain periods of the day and year the
Karroo becomes less forbidding to the view. Sometimes after heavy rain
the whole country is covered with a bright green carpet, but in summer,