Читать книгу Thoughts on South Africa онлайн

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As you travel through it after fifteen, twenty, or fifty miles, you may come upon a farm. The house, a small brown or white speck in the vast landscape, lies at the foot of a range of hills or a small "kopje," with its sheep kraals on the slope behind it, of large brown squares, enclosed by low stone walls. Sometimes there is a garden before the house also enclosed by stone walls, and containing fruit trees, and there is a dam with willow trees planted beside; sometimes there is no dam and no garden, and the little brown mud house stands there baking in the sun with its kraals behind it; the only water for men or beasts coming from some small unseen spring.

Throughout the Karoo there are few running streams; the waters of any fountains which may exist are quickly drunk up by the dry soil, and men and animals are largely dependent on artificial dams filled by rain-water. The farmer makes his livelihood from flocks of sheep which wander over the Karoo, and which in good years flourish on its short dry bushes.