ABOUT DROUGHTS

Hokitika Guardian, 3 August 1929, Page 7

ABOUT DROUGHTS

SW'EET MUSIC OF RAIN. (By Leonard 'Flemming in “Daily Mail.”) I have been through parts of England during the past few days arid until I read the papers I would nt>t have known that there was drought in the land. 1 saw green trees, green fields—what a glorious green to a veldt-dweller accustomed for years to a grey-khaki coloured stretch of veldt —I saw running streams and little rivers and standing crops and bright blossoms; and I, who have lived my life in the back-veldt of South Africa and who have gone through drought after drought, marvelled, at the freshness and the beauty and the colour of the English country-side. But I was told that there was drought on the land and in vain I looked for signs of it. Our drought and our breaking of droughts in South Africa are on a rather bigger scale than this—but then, South Africa is a big country and does things in a big way. Our droughts last for fjix months—sometimes a year—and during all that time the sun blazes down out of a steely blue sky, and days and weeks pass without even one cloud showing itself. Steely bright burning sun in a steely bright blue sky for days and weeks and months. And the crops turn brown and then yellow and then grey, and the leaves of the trees turn yellow and white and fall off,, and the veldt turns light brown and ‘ crackles underneath your foot like so much dried tinders; and the streams dry up and the rivers cease to run, and the stock pet thinner and thinner and then they begin to die; and round ajbout the farm sheds and buildings is the stench of the skins, and out on the veldt is the smell of the carcases —and over and above everything a deadly, sweltering silence— a scorching, white breathless silence that hangs like a pall over the land through the broiling day and right through the hot, still, starry night. Here and there in the middle of it all. is a man—the veldt' is . dotted everywhere with them—a bit of brown sinew and muscle and nerve and grit, facing the 100 to 1 odds against him. But when a South African drought breaks it lets you know all about it; you heorjn to know about it several days (beforehand. In that country.', of enormous distances and vast spaces' the. man on the land notices one night faint lightning , flashes ever so far away on the distant horizon. \

And the next night the flashes 'are a .little brighter and a little higher up in the sky although still, away on the horizon. Rain .is working up—perhaps it is already falling a hundred miles away where the lightning flashes are seen. And then a night or two later come rumbles of 'thunder —long drawn out deep rumlbles that seem to take a minute or more in the passing. ' . ; • , ; And a great black bank of cloud works up into the sky,, and the thunder gets louder and nearer and the lightning gets more and more vivid,, and then the. wind—a wind that brings you the first scent of rain that you have had for half a year. It comes through the hot droughty air like the fragrance of some sweet flower. RAIN IN THICK STREAMS. The long black cloud mounts up into the sky more quickly now and the first few drops of rain fall. Then comes a peal of thunder, and another, like the crackle of artillery and there are dazzling flashes of lightning that show you hills a hundred miles away and the heavenly, glorious rain pours down in thick i streams on to the dry. parched earth; and within a few minutes you can see in the lightning iflashes bright silvery streams of watery pouring down from the hills and into the valleys and over the long sweep of veldt on every side. The drought has hroken—the deadly silence has broken—and the 100 to 1 odds have come down to evens now. And of all the sweet music in the world there is none sweeter than the pouring down of rain for hours and hours on a corrugated iron roof in the middle of a drought-stricken veldt; and of all the scents none so fragrant as the steamy vapour given off in the rain by a whole continent that has waited half a scorching year for it.