CHAPTER 1.II.Plans and Bushman Paintings.
At last came the year of the great drought, the year of eighteen-sixty-two.

From end to end of the land the earth cried for water.

Man and beast turned their eyes to the pitiless sky, that like the roof of some brazen oven arched overhead.

On the farm, day after day, month after month, the water in the dams fell lower and lower; the sheep died in the fields; the cattle, scarcely able to crawl, tottered as they moved from spot to spot in search of food.

Week after week, month after month, the sun looked down from the cloudless sky, till the karoo-bushes were leafless sticks, broken into the earth, and the earth itself was naked and bare; and only the milk-bushes, like old hags, pointed their shrivelled fingers heavenward, praying for the rain that never came.
***** It was on an afternoon of a long day in that thirsty summer, that on the side of the kopje furthest from the homestead the two girls sat.