The pages are each punched with two holes and were once bound in the folded brown cover on which appears: I estimate distance from Nelspruit to LM as miles. About 212 from Nelspruit to Pretoria. Machadadorp.

On the text pages: Sat 27.12.52. Left Pretoria 2pm. Mileage 100833.8. At 4.30 at Middleburg outskirts 100917.1. arrived at Hectorspruit 11pm. 3/4 moon. Cool after rain. Mileage 1097.7. It was 1043.8 at Nelspruit at 9pm.

First page: Sunday 10am Somewhere W. of LM (About 26 miles). I exult in the caress of the freeway blowing over my hair and into my frame from a cool breeze. It rained yesterday and the earth is offering up an incense of warm steam. I could be on the Messina Limpopo with Madala palms & other familiar trees!

Second page: 1.1.1953. The Indian Ocean (of the Limpopo Mouth) (& Delagoa Bay) has the poetry of the Mediterranean for it does not bark and growl in anger for ever and ever. This exhausts cry as the sea breaks its heart at the Cape is not heard here. One can hear the calls of Portuguese children on the sand and hear the breeze in the upper bushes. I am glad to be freed of this ocean anguish I have known in the Cape.

I painted a good painting today because, like a game of chess, the moves were right. It had baroque moves right for a brush. [pencil illustration of an artist at his easel on a mountainside] It was so good a Portuguese wanted to buy it & quite upset when I wouldn't.

Third page: Sat 3 Jan 53. My temper exasperated by the humiliaty (sic) of the in-human treatment of an old Portuguese woman & a little girl going to the Tvl in our L.M. immigration Office. Here I am above boulders & resting below the mountain having had the best cup of tea made from the mineral water Ajua de Goba. A hypnotism of pleasure! Above Hectorsspruit I stopped & had lunch at 1.30pm. Shayeans came out of the brush from swimming in a grey pool. A woman was deep in the water washing her baby. A young girl came up to the boys. She had come out of the water & put on a vestment that merely discoloured her shapes. How the Greek sculptors would have done Africa. Brown Aphrodites and Apollos without sentiment. Long torsos, thin necks, thick legs, belly and sex organs. Would they have done them in white marble? No - in coloured marble certainly. Dark stone certainly. Today one could use dark rough metal. But not black since these figures are brown. They stood on the other side of the road & I would offer 2 rusks or buiscuits. It [Fourth page] became a competition finally. I composed a mixed bag. The girl and her brother ran wildly towards me as I tossed it into the air. Too wildly because they ran beyond the flying packet & it fell & split like a star behind them. Behind them followed a thousand piccannis who were sprayed with the edible shrapnel. These last were truly first & they were so near the earth already they bent could give to hold the lion's share. [?] I threw, so she caught it. A big rusk to Aphrodite.