CHAPTER FOUR.
A TALK ABOUT LOCUSTS.
It was a night of anxiety in the kraal of the field-cornet.

Should the wind veer round to the west, to a certainty the locusts would cover his land in the morning, and the result would be the total destruction of his crops.

Perhaps worse than that.

Perhaps the whole vegetation around--for fifty miles or more--might be destroyed; and then how would his cattle be fed?
It would be no easy matter even to save their lives.
They might perish before he could drive them to any other pasturage! Such a thing was by no means uncommon or improbable.

In the history of the Cape colony many a boor had lost his flocks in this very way.