2110-1-11-7

High Commissioner's Office, Johannesburg.

Oct: 16: 1902

My dear old Nan

I was very glad to get your and mother's & William's and Aunt Aggie's letters this week. Tell Mother that I shall buy her a sealskin as a Xmas present. The cigarette-case has just arrived. Thanks very much indeed for it: it is very pretty & just what I wanted. You may observe that this letter is sealed with the crest from

it.

Last Saturday morning I started off for the N. and lighted at Warm Baths in blazing heat about 3 o'clock. I rode for 5 hours, & saw all our settlements & our new irrigation. The country is a parched wilderness, simply red hot, as the rains are late this year, & the heat is always worst just before them. I found one beautiful little wooded glen with a clear stream flowing through it, & there I had a bath in a hot spring. I suppose

there must have been something poisonous in the pretty glen, for I woke next morning shivering with fever. I filled myself up with quinine & rode 40 miles over burning flats with the roof of my head splitting. It was so hot that inside a tent one had to keep one's hat on. It was a miserable day, but I saw all our tanksinking experiments, which are very good. I got home somehow or other, & sought out a district surgeon who gave me more quinine & put me in bed to sweat. I woke next morning rather better & rode 20 more miles round

the remaining settlements. Then I had a very hot & miserable journey to Johannesburg, which I reached about 11 at night. I have now (Thursday) got the fever out of me, but I am still heavily colded.

I am very nervous about the delay in the rains this year. Last year when it didn't matter twopence we had them in the middle of September. This year, with all our struggling settlements, we have not had any to speak of. It doesn't matter about the cool high-veld, but up on those red-hot Northern plains, it will mean ruin if they are delayed another fortnight.

The Clerk of the Weather is really not playing the game, any more than he used to play it in our old springtimes. But there's one above wot will settle with 'im. Tell my father to put up a petition about it.

H.E. is very fit & well just now, & a fearful moss-trooper for rushing about the country. All my various departments are getting organized now & my work will shortly cease in them. I see before me a long wild vista