South African grassland

Usage examples of veld.

Thither, accordingly, I went in due course, nothing loth, for on the veld between our station and Maraisfontein many pauw and koran--that is, big and small bustards--were to be found, to say nothing of occasional buck, and I was allowed to carry a gun, which even in those days I could use fairly well.

So we started, Hans hanging to my stirrup and guiding me, for I knew well enough that although he had never travelled this road, his instinct for locality would not betray a coloured man, who can find his way across the pathless veld as surely as a buck or a bird of the air.

He spoke of hot middays on the High Veld, when the pans of Ermelo become in the mirage a shoreless ocean.

Across the veld, some miles from the waterworks, there runs a deep donga or watercourse--one of many, but the largest.

At first, nearer the house, there were roses and bougainvillaea, poinsettia and banks of phlox, that formed bright bold slashes of colour, against a veld still brown from the long dry winter just passed, but nearer the stream the fields of maize were tended by convalescents from the mission clinic, and soon on the tall green plants the immature cobs would begin to set.

Working over the blackened veld he swung round in the Barberton direction, and afterwards made a westerly drive in conjunction with small columns commanded by Walter Kitchener, Douglas, and Campbell of the Rifles, while Colville, Garnett, and Bullock co-operated from the Natal line.

Then they scouted the lie of the land around the laager to make certain the Nguni pickets were not creeping up on them through the gullies and the light forests that were interspersed in the grassy veld.

There were two fine English hunting-saddles and tack, common saddles for the servants, two pack-saddles for bringing in venison from the veld, a large bell tent for a kitchen and dining room, folding chairs and tables to furnish it.

Who could have thought that within a little time it would be but a field of blood, that those wagons would be riddled with assegais, and that the women and children who were moving there must most of them lie upon the veld mutilated corpses dreadful to behold?

All day the Boers streamed over the veld with the guns and the horsemen at their heels.

In the grey of the morning of November 6th, Major Lean with forty men of the 5th Mounted Infantry came upon three weary Boers sleeping upon the veld.

The Boers, like their own veld grass, need but a few sparks to be left behind to ensure a conflagration breaking out again.

A veld fire was raging on one flank of this rearguard, and through the veil of smoke a body of five hundred Boers charged suddenly home with magnificent gallantry upon the guns.

By the middle of September the veld had turned from drab to green, and the great drama was fated to last for one more act, however anxious all the British and the majority of the Boers might be to ring down the curtain.

About a hundred and fifty burghers rushed out of the ditches, streaming across the veld upon foot to the spot where their horses had been secreted.