Owing to the scarcity of wood on the high veldt, kraal fuel used formerly to be the staple substitute.  This would be obtained by penning up sheep over-night.  The deposits were after a month or two dug out in thick flags, which, after being stacked and dried over the kraal wall, would burn nearly as well and as brightly as wood.  The discovery of coal beds in so many accessible places in the Cape Colony, Natal, and in the two Republics has since superseded that sort of fuel to a great extent.

The small divergence between summer and winter temperature upon the high table lands will be seen from the following table taken from observations at 5,500 to 6,000 feet altitude in the Transvaal:—­

Fahr.  Fahr.

In winter—­28 deg. to 40 deg. at night; 35 deg. to 70 deg. by day in the shade.  In summer—­40 deg. to 60 deg. at night; 50 deg. to 90 deg. by day in the shade.

It is not often that 85 deg. is reached, and rarely above.  This applies equally to the more southern and thus colder latitudes of Queenstown, at 3,000 feet elevation, and to the eastern half of the Orange Free State, at 4,000 to 5,000 feet, the warmth increasing, as said before, proportionately with the descent in altitude, and on occasions of tardy summer rains.

The winter is the most enjoyable of the seasons, being an almost uninterrupted continuation of fine sunny weather.  On occasions there would be spells of boisterous weather with a rather sudden and inclement decrease of temperature, brought on by cold south-east winds; if these are accompanied with rain in winter, which, however, rarely happens, it would sometimes turn to sleet or even snow, or else to hard freezing at night.  The snow would, however, thaw with the warmth of the sun, and so restore the temperature as before.  The bracing quality of the climate mostly consists just in those variations of cool nights and warm days, and the occasional days of comparatively cold, boisterous weather.  The latter must indeed be provided against, for even in December—­that is to say, in the middle of summer—­it would be imprudent to travel without great-coats as well as waterproofs, so as to be protected against unexpected changes, from say, 100 deg. in the sun, almost suddenly to 40 deg. with a driving wind, accompanied perhaps with rain.  Such transitions are trying in the open, even if one is well clad, and the blustering weather is sometimes so severe, if it happens in winter or early spring, as to approach the character of a blizzard.  One such lasted about thirty hours in the early spring of 1881.  It swept over the entire South African plateaux and destroyed great numbers of sheep and cattle.  These fell exhausted in their flight before they could reach some sheltering hills or ravines.  In situations where such protections from the cold south-east wind were far apart the veldt was on the following day found strewn with their carcases, and upon the still more extensive and unbroken plains antelopes even perished in enormous numbers simply from exhaustion in trying to escape and find shelter from the cold wind.