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.