The whole expanse is quite
colourless--almost white, or a dirty grey. All day long the blue sky is
unvaried, and the sun glares down unobscured by a cloud; sky and earth
emphasising each other's dull monotony. Only at sunrise and late evening
some richer and purer lines of colour lie across the distant plain, and
the air is fresh and keen. Round about the town, which, like all these
Boer towns, stuck down in the middle of the veldt, reminds one of some
moonstruck flotilla becalmed on a distant sea, the grass is all worn and
eaten to the very dust. Whiffs of horrid smell from dead carcases of
horses and cattle taint the air. All the water consists of a feeble
stream, stagnant now and reduced to a line of muddy pools, some reserved
for horses, some for washing, and some for drinking, but all of the same
mud colour.
And yet even for this country, I think it with a kind of dull surprise
as I look out over the naked hideousness of the land, men can be found
to fight. What is it to be a child of the veldt, and never to have known
any other life except the life of these plains? It is to reproduce in
your own nature the main features of this extraordinary scenery. Here is
a life of absolute monotony, a landscape, huge, and on a grand scale,
but dull and unvaried, and quite destitute of any kind of interest, of
any noteworthy detail, of any feature that excites attention and remark.
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