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PARADISE —LIMITED
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Alexander
Bay. There were no roads from Kimberley or Johannesburg and no bridge
over the Orange River. Today there are roads and a bridge; there are
planes, and a certain amount of railway lines at the coast, and no
wire, but even with all this it is still quite a trip.
Right
from the take-off the terrain was different; it didn't look at all like
the land between Johannesburg and Kimberley, with which I was familiar.
I had thought the veld empty-looking and dry, but it wasn't as parched
as the land we were soon flying over. For miles we flew past formations
that looked like the dried puddles I have seen in gutters in hot
weather; there were long gullies down the middle and veinlike
tributaries spread out on either side, all dry. Here and there as we
approached the river we saw new towns that looked as sharp and empty
as blueprints, and then we crossed the water itself with its
startlingly green belt of irrigated, growing crops—vineyards and
lucerne and orchards and mealies—and found ourselves again over
tan-and-brown country. It was not all flat; here and there was a little
cone-shaped hill. The land grew more and more somber, though I was
assured by the men that the landscape was unusually green and
flourishing after a protracted rainy season. The Orange was in flood,
they said, and the Aughrabies Falls should present a fine sight.
We
didn't have to stop at Upington, the pilot decided; we had enough fuel
to go straight through, and so, without coming down, we crossed the
lower edge of Gordonia, where Cornell got lost in the sand dunes and
nearly died of thirst. Then suddenly—far more suddenly than any
earthbound prospector ever came upon them—we were over mountains. From
this height I couldn't see details of the rock. I wish I had, for Cor-
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