But there was no river to be seen--only a
long line of billows of what looked like the finest cotton-wool tossed
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_ (curdled butter-milk) and a few mealies. As I got 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.
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