up lightly with a pitchfork. It was the fever mist. Out from among the
scrub, too, came little spirals of vapour, as though there were hundreds
of tiny fires alight in it--reek rising from thousands of tons of
rotting vegetation. It was a beautiful place, but the beauty was the
beauty of death; and all those lines and blots of vapour wrote one great
word across the surface of the country, and that word was 'fever.'

"It was a dreadful year of illness that. I came, I remember, to one
little kraal of Knobnoses, and went up to it to see if I could get some
_maas_, or curdled butter-milk, and a few mealies. As I drew near I was
struck with the silence of the place. No children began to chatter, and
no dogs barked. Nor could I see any native sheep or cattle. The place,
though it had evidently been recently inhabited, was as still as the
bush round it, and some guinea fowl got up out of the prickly pear
bushes right at the kraal gate. I remember that I hesitated a little
before going in, there was such an air of desolation about the spot.
Nature never looks desolate when man has not yet laid his hand upon her
breast; she is only lonely. But when man has been, and has passed away,
then she looks desolate.

"Well, I passed into the kraal, and went up to the principal hut. In
front of the hut was something with an old sheep-skin _kaross_ thrown
over it. I stooped down and drew off the rug, and then shrank back
amazed, for under it was the body of a young woman recently dead. For a
moment I thought of turning back, but my curiosity overcame me; so going
past the dead woman I went down on my hands and knees and crept into the
hut. It was so dark that I could not see anything, though I could smell
a great deal, so I lit a match. It was a 'tandstickor' match, and burnt
slowly and dimly, and as the light gradually increased I made out what
I took to be a family of people, men, women, and children, fast asleep.