«The day had been very hot even for the Transvaal, where the days still know how to be hot in the autumn, although the neck of the summer is broken – especially when the thunderstorms hold off for a week or two, as they do occasionally. Even the succulent blue lilies – a variety of the agapanthus which is so familiar to us in English greenhouses – hung their long trumpet-shaped flowers and looked oppressed and miserable, beneath the burning breath of the hot wind which had been blowing for hours like the draught from a volcano.»
