The Project Gutenberg eBook of Yankee Girls in Zulu Land, by Louise Vescelius Sheldon

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Title: Yankee Girls in Zulu Land

Author: Louise Vescelius Sheldon

Release Date: August 29, 2011 [EBook #37264]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ***

Louise Vescelius-Sheldon

"Yankee Girls in Zulu Land"

Chapter One.

New York City, November, 18—.

My Dear Children:

Your Affectionate Mother.

P.S. George wants to know what has set you thinking of going to South Africa, where there are only Zulus and missionaries. Of course if the physician orders it for Frank’s health, you know what is best.

Chapter Two.

Well, it had rained, and snowed, and “fogged” for six months during the year we were in London, and we had seen the sun only on ten separate days during that period. The doctor ordered a change of climate for Frank, to a land of heat and sunshine, and advised us to go to South Africa, that land of “Zulus and missionaries.”

The old strain ran through my head, “From Greenland’s icy mountains, From India’s coral strands, Where Afric’s sunny fountains,” etc, and as anything that suggested sunshine, even if it were in a diluted state, was what we wanted, we considered that a health excursion to the antipodes was worth a trial, if it wrought the desired effect.

There lived in the house with us an African lady who had recently come “home” for a trip to see the wonders of a civilised world. You must not imagine that by African I mean a Zulu or a Kafir or Hottentot. Oh, dear, no! The lady in question was as white as we, and very much more fashionable. She never tired of expatiating on the glories of her country, its marvellous fertility, its thousands of miles of grasslands, its myriads of birds of dazzling plumage and bewitching song, its flocks of sheep, flocks so large that even their owners could only approximately count their numbers, its mighty rivers, and above all, its immense wealth in gold and diamonds. Then the hospitality of the farmers, the way in which they welcomed strangers and treated them to the best of everything, was quite beyond the conception of any one who had not visited this wonderful country.

These descriptions, tallying with the doctor’s directions, decided us, and having counted up our pounds, shillings, and pence, we made adieus, packed our Saratogas, and took passage on board the mail steamer Trojan, Captain Lamar, sailing from the London Docks.

We had left ourselves so very little time to make our final arrangements that, as soon as the cab started, there commenced a running fire of questions.

“Did you pack the gloves in the big box?”

“Did you put the thin dresses on top, for we shall want them in the tropics,” etc, when all of a sudden Louise sprang up with a gasp and a shout:

“Stop the cab! stop the cab!”

“What for?”

“Stop the cab, I say!”

“She must be ill,” we cried. “Stop the cab!” and an unharmonious trio immediately assailed the ears of the driver: “Stop the cab!”

The cab stopped. “What’s up anyhow?” inquired the London Jehu.

“I have left my diary on the dressing-table!”

If any of you have kept a diary you will understand the dread horror that overwhelmed us all at this awful announcement: one gasp, one moment of terrible silence, and then—action. “I must go back for it at once. You go on. I will take a hansom and gallop all the way. If I miss the boat, I will catch you at Dartmouth. I would sooner die than have that diary read! Hi, driver! Montague Place, Kensington! A half-sovereign if you drive as fast as you can.” Bang! slam! a rush! a roar! and Louise is whirled away in the hansom cab, with the white-horse and the dashing-looking driver, with a flower in his button-hole. How the horse flew! What short cuts the driver took, darting across street-corners, shaving lamp-posts and imperilling the lives of small boys and old women selling apples, as only a London hansom-cab driver can! Everybody turns around as the white horse with the short tail, dragging the cab with its pale-faced occupant, dashes down the street, through the squares, across the park, round the crescent, where the policeman looks almost inclined to stop it, until he sees the anxious look of the girl inside; up the terrace, down two more streets, and finally, with a clatter, rattle, bang, a plunge and a bump, horse, cab, and “fare” come to a standstill at Montague Place. The door is thrown open by the servant-girl. “Have you seen a red-covered book with a brass lock that I left on the dressing-table in my room?”

“No, miss.”

“Very well, where is Mrs — Oh! there you are! Oh! please, have you seen a brass book with a red lock, that I left on the—Why, there it is in your hand! Oh, thank you ever so much! I know you were going to bring it to me. Good-bye! I shall be just in time.

“London Docks! Cabman, quick! Catch the Trojan before she leaves.” “All right, miss!” A twist, a plunge, a flick with the whip, and the bob-tailed nag is half-way down Oxford Street before the astonished landlady can realise the fact that her chance of finding out all the secrets of Miss Louise is gone forever.

Meanwhile Eva and Frank are anxiously awaiting her arrival on board the ship: they have visited their state-room and seen their luggage carefully stored away, and are now left with nothing to do but speculate as to the result of Louise’s expedition. Presently the clanging of the bell on the bridge gives warning that the warps are to be cast off, there is a rush to the gangway of the weeping friends of the passengers, and the hoarse cry passes along the quay: “Ease her off gently there! Forward! Stand by the cast-off!” The two girls are almost in despair, and have resigned themselves to the possible postponement of the journey, for Louise’s catching the boat at Dartmouth seems to them only a bare possibility; when the people idling on the quay suddenly part from side to side, and a hansom cab with the self-same short-tailed “white” horse and knowing-looking driver dash triumphantly up the gangway, already in course of being drawn from the ship, and deposit the diary (for that seems to be for the moment of the most importance) and Louise into the arms of the quartermaster. Blessings on that London hansom cab, its horse, and knowing driver. They had nobly done their duty and at 11:29, one minute before the ship casts off to drop down the river, the three sisters with the recovered diary are safe on board the steamer.

Moral: Don’t keep a diary.

Chapter Three.

Soon after nightfall the lights along the coast began to fade slowly out of sight, at length entirely disappearing, and we were left in our little world bounded by the bulwarks of the ship, with the ocean on all sides, and the star-studded heaven above, sailing out into that “summer voyage of the world,” as it is called. Certainly to us the recollection of it is like a long, happy summer’s dream, passed under the bluest of skies by day, and the brightest of stars by night. On the sixth day after leaving Dartmouth (a long passage, we were told) we sighted the beautiful Island of Madeira. The weather had cleared, the air was deliciously fresh and balmy, the sea calm; and every one on deck to view the purple cloud slowly rising from the sea, which, they informed us, was Madeira.

Gradually the cloud assumed shape, then deeper shadows appeared here and there, till at last we could discern the graceful uplands, the mountain island, and the fantastically formed rocks strewn along the coast, with the sea breaking into foam on the picturesque beach.

For half an hour we skirted along the coast, seeing no other signs of human habitation than an occasional hut among the boulders on the cliffs, until, rounding a point, we came suddenly upon the beautiful village of Funchal, which is built on the beach of a romantic bay, with the verdant hills rising in grassy terraces in every direction. Low, white stone buildings peeped out from small forests, and the air was soft and balmy as it gently fanned the cheek, giving one a delicious sense of rest and warmth, only to be felt and appreciated on the borders of the tropics after a cold, damp, cheerless English winter. Scarcely had we dropped anchor ere the deck of the ship was swarming with men and women from the shore, offering for sale native work of every description, wicker basket chairs, sofas, tables, inlaid work-boxes, feather flowers, parrots, canaries, such lovely embroidery, and, what was most acceptable to many of us, the varied fruits of the island. Whilst feasting ourselves with bananas, mangoes, oranges, etc, we had an opportunity of observing the strange jumble of humanity on our decks, and surrounding the ship in row-boats of all sizes and shapes. Scores of half-nude, dark-skinned boys were in the boats chattering and tempting passengers to throw coins into the water for them to dive after, and the amount of dexterity they displayed in diving after a sixpence, catching it before it had sunk apparently more than five or six feet, sometimes bringing it up between their toes, was truly remarkable.

On the deck everything was noise and confusion; the sailors at work unloading cargo were hustling the swarthy half-breed Portuguese peddlers out of their way, while they, with one eye on their customers and another on their wares (for Mr Jack Tar is not at all particular about throwing overboard anything that happens to be in his way), were chattering away in a polyglot tongue half English and half Portuguese, praising their own goods and deprecating their neighbours’.

They will take generally before they leave the ship less than one-half what they ask for their goods when they first come aboard, and we noticed that passengers who had been to Madeira before did not attempt to make a bargain until the vessel was just about to start. As we were to remain at anchor five or six hours we wished to take a run on shore, and, together with a married lady and her husband, chartered one of the queer cheese-box-looking boats for the expedition.

All appears delightfully clear while in the distance: the convent on the slope, and the green hill itself, form an agreeable background; but ashore the prospect changed, and the streets turned out to be narrow and dirty, with the exception of the principal boulevard, which runs up from the beach toward the hill.

The queer-looking covered conveyances with runners like a sled and drawn by two undersized oxen, not larger than calves, arrested our attention, and we regretted our inability to take a jaunt in one up the hill to the convent, which had been spoken of as the most interesting place on the island, where the beautiful embroidery is made; but our time was limited, and we could only make a hasty tour of a few narrow, unhealthy-looking streets lined with trees of dense foliage, sip a glass of Madeira wine, so bad in quality it nearly choked us, and then return to our boats.

During the ramble we entered a large, ancient cathedral, that must have been built ages ago, whose decorations were well worth more than the hasty glance we gave it. We passed on to some shops where we found costly hand-made laces. One lace shawl which we bought could be rolled up in a ball in one hand without any injury to the fabric. As we hurried down to the beach we passed several invalids, lying in hammocks swung on upright poles at head and feet and protected from the sun’s rays by awnings; these were carried by servants, and in this gentle manner they enjoyed the air and saw the sights offered on the beach without much fatigue.

What an English graveyard the Island of Madeira is! It is sad to see the feeble creatures there with the deluded idea that Madeira will give health to their tired lungs. It may in a few cases, as some plants will flourish in the climate that will kill others; but no one can see the purple cloud slowly settle over the island and envelop it at sunset, as we did, and believe that in that damp atmosphere, that island home, the consumptive can be cured of the deadly disease. He must go farther south and inland to that dry, sunny upland country, with its dewless nights and hot, sunny days, where health and new life blood have filled the veins of many who would have been along with the others in the English graveyard of Madeira, if that had been their home.

Arrived on board, we found everything in readiness for departure, and, having cleared the decks of the parrots and their owners, the anchor was weighed, the decks washed of the débris caused by the peddlers, and with the ship’s head pointing south, we steamed away from Madeira.

Chapter Four.

Life at sea is necessarily monotonous, and our voyage, though most enjoyable, did not differ from others in this respect. There were the usual athletic sports for the gentlemen, and occasional concerts in the evening, when one or another of the amateurs would cause considerable amusement by his nervousness. One young gentleman, who had volunteered to sing “After the Opera is Over,” found himself when he started to sing minus the words, the tune, or any idea of how to extricate himself. He sang “Aftah the op’ra is ov’ah! Aftah the op’ra is done! Aftah the op’ra is ov’ah! No—oh—confound it!—I sang that befo—ah! Aftah the op’ra is ov’ah! After the op’ra is ov’ah—ah—is done. Aftah the op’ra—No—what is it?” Then he softly hummed over to himself two or three times, and then, “After the op’ra is ov’ah! We swells—we swells—of the—we swells of the op’ra is ov’ah! Oh, doothe take it, I must have a brandy and sodah. Excuse me.” And he suddenly disappeared in a deck cabin immediately behind the piano, but as he was serenaded so frequently afterward by those who were anxious he should learn the air, there is very little doubt that he will ever forget it. The nights were very oppressive when crossing the equator, and the gentlemen would take up their rugs and sleep so pleasantly on deck, whilst the female passengers would pass sleepless, hot nights below in the close state-room. But one bright night one of the heavy showers which come and go so suddenly in the tropics, without a note of warning, came sweeping down and inundated the sleepers, who came clattering and chattering, wet through, down the saloon stairs at three o’clock in the morning, calling to the stewards for creature comforts and dry blankets and disturbing every one of the passengers who had managed to defy the stifling closeness of the state-rooms and get to sleep.

There were a number of young men in the second-class saloon who were going out to the diamond and gold fields to seek their fortunes. These were continually bothering the merchants and diggers who had been out before for any particulars of the country they could give them. One of these latter gentlemen, talking about their eager inquiries one day at table, told an amusing story of a previous voyage he had made, which is good enough to bear repeating. He said he was on his way out two or three years before, when the diamond fields had only recently been opened up, and the ship was full of eager adventurers going out to seek their fortunes on the fields. Among the passengers in the saloon was a wealthy digger who had been home on a business trip, and who, having a strong appreciation of the ridiculous, was continually amusing himself by giving the most grotesque accounts of the life on the fields, and the many ways in which fortunes had been found or made.

It chanced that the ship was short of hands, and the captain and chief engineer were in great straits to get the coal properly “trimmed,” or broken up for the furnaces, the few available stokers being in constant requisition at the fires. One day our facetious friend proposed to lay a friendly wager with the captain that he would, before the next day was out, have half the passengers in the fore cabin volunteering to break up coal.

He strolled down into the engine room that afternoon, taking care to choose a time when a number of the embryo diggers were loitering about, and carelessly taking up a piece of coal he suddenly started and said: “Good gracious, engineer, where did this coal come from?” The engineer, who was in the plot, said: “Some we brought from Cape Town to last for return trip.” “I thought so. Why this is the very same coal in which the diamonds are always found on the fields.”

“No!” said the engineer. “Yes,” repeated our friend, “and I will give you a sovereign to let me overhaul the next lot of coal you get out of the bumpers.”

“Oh, for the matter of that,” said the engineer, “you are welcome to go over the whole lot; it is all in great lumps and isn’t trimmed yet.”

“All right, lend me a coal hammer,” and into the bunker stepped our joker, followed by the interested gaze of a score of the emigrants. In less than a quarter of an hour he emerged with five or six rough diamonds in his hand. “Well, boys,” said he, “that isn’t bad work for the time, is it? Now, I don’t care to go working about in a ship’s coal bunkers. Besides, I don’t care for the stuff. That coal wants breaking up; go and get permission of the captain to let you do it, and I’ll wager half of you will be rich before you arrive at Cape Town.”

No sooner said than done. Permission was granted, and, in less time than it takes to tell it, fifteen or twenty of the diamond seekers were hard at work banging at the coal, and straining their eyes in vain for the diamonds which seemed so easy to find. But their quest was fruitless, and the joker kept them at it by telling them they did not break the coal properly, that it had to be broken across the grain, and so on. Every bit of coal the ship required for her voyage was soon beautifully trimmed for the fires, and no diamonds found.

Chapter Five.

The voyage from Madeira to the Cape was simply delightful. A fortnight, during which we had crossed the equator through the heat of the tropics, had elapsed, when we found ourselves one morning at dawn of day approaching the rocky and precipitous shores of the Island of Saint Helena. It had a most rugged appearance, which was heightened by its lonely position, the island rising almost perpendicularly on all sides, in some places of to the height of one thousand to twelve hundred feet. Our steamer was to remain several hours, and many of the passengers took advantage of the delay to go ashore and see the spot made so famous as the scene of exile of Napoleon. The entrance to the island is guarded by natural walls of stone towering above the steamer, and looking so stern and cruel. A feeling of desolation was on us as we walked up the one narrow, deserted street, with its filthy, repulsive-looking inhabitants of dusky-coloured men and women. This spot was once all life and glitter with the pride of the British Navy, when Saint Helena was the port for the finest of British vessels to harbour in, on their way to India by the Cape but all that glory belongs now to history. What a terrible sense of desolation must have filled that great man’s heart in his rock-bound prison, where escape was impossible; his jail possessed but one gateway, and that led into the boundless ocean.

We chartered some cadaverous frameworks which some dirty little boys assured us were horses. Getting into a clattering vehicle, we were taken to Longwood, for six years the home of the weary exile. ’Tis a long, low building, very prettily situated at the head of a lovely valley in the centre of the island.

His tomb lies lower down the glen. As we stood there, we could not but think of the other tomb in Paris, with its gilded dome, vying with the surrounding pinnacles to reach high heaven. I remember one sunny day in Paris entering this temple; the sun was streaming through the yellow stained-glass windows upon the marble pillars in the rear of the building, making them appear like columns of gold; everything seemed to be praising the life of their great hero.

Quite different, this, his resting-place. On this misty morning at Saint Helena, as I stood in the grand silence beside this simple tomb, which seemed to tell the story of this weary-hearted man, I felt that no one could doubt, after visiting this spot, that Napoleon believed in a Higher Ruler, a Superior Being; otherwise his own hand would have cut short his dreary existence.

This visit of a few hours’ duration was sufficient to cast a gloom over us. So, picking a few leaves from the grave, we came down to the shore again, and the dear old ship seemed like a kind heart waiting to receive us, and cheer away our loneliness.

We still had an hour to spare, and several of our party decided to ascend “Jacob’s ladder,” by which name is known a long flight of steps reaching from the beach to the heights, said to be the longest stairway in the world. The barracks are built on the cliff, and an English garrison is stationed there. We climbed these hundreds of steps and walked on to the parade ground, where the men were drilling; as soon as the officer in command spied us he seemed to lose his presence of mind, and the end man in the line turned one eye over his shoulder to see what was the matter, so did the next man; in time it was a funny sight to see the body of the whole line of men in position, but all heads turned to see the visitors. The sentry stationed there welcomed us with an expression of delight. Poor fellow! he said that they had received no mail for sixty days, the steamers calling at the island only at long intervals. When asked if it was not a dreary life, he shook his head and looked out to sea with moistened eyes, more eloquent than any words in expressing the monotony of the existence.

I have heard of a man who, wanting to see the world, enlisted in an English regiment, and was stationed on the island of Saint Helena for fourteen years.

As we were leaving the island one of the little nondescripts came laughing past, and in the most workmanlike manner picked my pocket of its purse. He was caught before he could get away, when he cried bitterly, not so much, apparently, at being detected as for not being allowed to keep his ill-gotten gains.

Here is a spot for one whose soul is yearning for untried missionary fields. The interior of the island is said to be beautiful, flowers and foliage growing in great luxuriance.

Leaving Saint Helena, we sailed southeast in a straight course for Table Bay; for two days after leaving the island, our table was decorated with fresh tropical flowers and fruits in great variety. We here felt the influence of the heavy ground swell, which the sailors say is a peculiarity of those latitudes, and has given rise to the burden of a sailor’s song, “Rolling Down to Saint Helena.”

At sunrise of the twenty-eighth day after leaving London, having passed through the “summer voyage of the world,” we sighted the long, flat-topped mountain which has given its name to the bay that lies at its foot.

When we first sighted it, it appeared like a huge solitary rock standing in the midst of the ocean, but as we gradually steamed up to the arms of Table Bay, which opens to the north-west, the town nestling at the foot of the mountain became visible, and as we brought up to allow the port captain and health officer to come on board, the scene came more clearly into view. The mountains outlined clearly against the sky, the mauve and golden-tinted clouds, the deep blue water of the bay, edged with a white and curving shore of singular beauty, surmounted by bold, rocky mountain ranges, combined to form one of the most striking views we had ever seen.

We will never lose the impression of South African scenery received that morning. We had bidden farewell to the smoky fogs of London, and had changed them for a country that was rich and brilliant, where the atmosphere was surprisingly bright and clear, and the scenery bold, spacious, and grand.

The long range of mountains which completely separates the Peninsula of the Cape of Good Hope from the mainland, though at a distance of seventy miles, stood out with a sharply defined outline in the morning air, the ravines, water courses, and terraced heights appearing with almost supernatural clearness. The characteristic beauty of light, which distinguishes South Africa, was seen in the full and even splendour with which every object, near and remote, became visible. Small boulders, cavernous hollows in the rocks, patches of brush at the head of the kloofs, at an elevation of two thousand feet, could be seen without difficulty. We gazed spellbound at the distant mountain, seemingly so near that we could have seen a human figure were it climbing the heights, or heard a human voice if it broke the silence of the kloofs. And it was not until the revolving of the screw warned us that we were to enter the docks that we awoke from the reverie into which the first view of the country had thrown us. Hastening below, we made preparations for leaving the ship which had been our home for four pleasant, all too fleeting weeks, and on emerging on deck we found the vessel had already entered the well-built stone docks, and was then being made fast to the quay. Shaking hands with Captain Lamar and our other friends on the ship whom we should meet later on in our journey up the country, we told the Malay porter where to find our belongings amongst the luggage of the two hundred passengers aboard, took one last look at the good ship, walked down the gangway, and found ourselves fairly on South African soil, ten thousand miles from the “Old Folks at Home.”

Chapter Six.

One of the first things that attracted our attention on landing was the motley appearance of the people on the quay.

There were the Europeans, some in black frock coat and pot hat—a ridiculous costume for a hot climate—others more sensibly clad in white linen suits and pith helmets. But when we turned to the coloured people who formed the larger proportion of the loiterers, we found ourselves at a loss to say how many different nationalities they represented, and certainly did not know which to pick out as the representatives of the native African.

They were of all colours and all garbs, from the simple costume of rags which distinguishes the Hottentot loafer to the gorgeous silk robes of the Malay priest. It was not till we had been in the colony some time that we were able to distinguish from one another the Kafir and the negro from the west coast and the Hottentot and the Malay.

Having passed our baggage through the custom-house at the entrance to the dock, we took a cab, a regular London hansom with a Malay driver, and drove along a white dusty road to the town, distant a mile from the docks. As is the case on going behind the scenes of a theatre, much of the beauty that had impressed us from the sea disappeared when we came to the town itself. The houses, which had looked spotlessly white and very pretty from the steamer, we found to be little, old-fashioned, square, tumbledown edifices, evidently some of the original Dutch homesteads.

Presently, however, we came to a handsome street of fine stores, and an imposing railroad station, and, rounding the market square, a large rectangular piece of open land in the middle of the town, drove up to the Royal Hotel, where we were received by the proprietor and wife, who were Germans, and made very comfortable. As soon as we had rested, Eva and I sallied forth to view the town.

Our first impression of Cape Town, with its sixty thousand inhabitants, black and white, was that it was composed principally of old-fashioned Dutch houses with individual steps, so that the pedestrian had the choice of either dancing up and down the steps or walking in the middle of the road. We found that although the older houses preponderated, there were several streets of handsome residences. The streets were actually dirtier than those of New York.

The principal business streets run parallel with each other from the sea to the mountain, and are crossed at right angles by narrower streets.

On Adderley Street, which is the Broadway of Cape Town, are the elegant Standard Bank Building, the Commercial Exchange and Reading-room, and, at the further end, the large Dutch Reformed Church, which is the church found in every town in Africa. There are many other imposing buildings, beautifully decorated and built with all the modern improvements architecture can offer. Adjoining Adderley Street is Saint George’s Street, with the towering Saint George’s Cathedral rising at the end of the street; here are to be found the Post-office, club-houses, banks, and the leading newspaper office, the Cape Times. Branching off of these streets, the old-fashioned Dutch mansions of the early settlers may be seen.

They are situated in the midst of beautiful grounds overrun with tropical vines and flowers. Near by are the charming modern English villas and cottages. But the most beautiful and admired suburban houses are to be found at Rondebosch, Wynberg, and Constantia, on the east side of Table Mountain, connected by railway with Cape Town; they lie at an elevation from the town and are delightfully cool during the summer months. A drive through the groves of grand old pine and oak trees, with a glimpse of mountain, precipice and sea, beautiful houses on terraced heights, with vineyards beyond, is a delightful event; these features make it a veritable paradise, not imagined by the English traveller; instead of hot, dry, sandy Africa, we have here majestic scenery, dense forests with a wild beauty of their own, and an atmosphere so clear that every object is distinctly revealed. There is a quaint old castle down by the sea, originally erected by the Dutch, who founded the town about 1650. It is square and podgy, like the pictures we have seen of its founders. The Dutch built many forts along the base of the mountain, possibly to keep off the wild beasts that used to prowl about the back windows of His Excellency, the Governor; these forts lie in ruins.

At the upper end of the town are the Public Gardens, a kind of half park, half Botanical Gardens, and a very pleasant, shady, sleepy, restful place it is, in which to spend an hour on a hot afternoon. There is also a capital museum, full of curiosities, and a handsome public library, containing over forty thousand volumes and all the leading English periodicals of the day.

The House of Parliament is a fine building, and the legislators are Dutch, English, Scotch, Irish, everything but American. The Government house is situated in the midst of beautiful grounds facing the Botanical Gardens, and is a long, low building covering much ground. We attended an afternoon reception there. The guests, after being presented to the Governor and his wife, passed through the rooms into the large, park-like grounds, where some of the musicians of a Highland regiment, dressed in the Scotch dress, were playing on the bagpipes. Some people call it music; it may be music in the Highlands.

A second military band was stationed in another part of the grounds. The gathering was a distinguished one; the ladies displayed great taste in their toilets, making the scene appear quite like an English garden party. But the interest of the traveller is not in the pale-faced colonist, but in the dusky, many-hued, coloured inhabitants.

The Malays, although originally coming from the Malay Peninsula in Asia, are natives of Cape Town and have been there for several generations, being the descendants of the former slaves of the Dutch East India Company and its servants. They seem to have retained all their national characteristics and are as distinct from the Hottentot and the Kafirs as is the white man. They are peculiarly a feature of Cape Town, being seldom met elsewhere in the country, except in small numbers at Port Elizabeth; they have adopted Dutch, the language of the old colonists, as their tongue, are generally strict Mohammedans and sober, clever mechanics. They are as noticeable in the town as on the quay. The picturesque, dusky-coloured Malay woman, with her really beautiful features, her rich-coloured, full skirts hanging straight from the waist, and containing from fifteen to eighteen yards of material, and her bright red, yellow and variegated silk handkerchiefs tied around the head and shoulders, looks like a gorgeous balloon sailing down the street in the wind. The balloon, however, is kept to earth by wooden sandals, held to the foot by a wooden peg between the big and second toes, which make a clattering noise as she walks along the street.

She is generally loaded down with gold and silver ornaments; her whole person is scrupulously neat and clean. The Malay women are the washerwomen and upper servants of the household.

The men dress in blue cloth coat and trousers, coloured vests, a bright-hued handkerchief around the neck, and a huge straw hat. They drive cabs, sell fruit and fish, and are waiters at hotel tables. The opinion they have of themselves is not to be crushed out by anything a colonist may have to say to them, and it is best for the newcomer to let them alone.

Then the Mohammedan grandee is interesting, with his finely chiselled features and tall form robed in a long, coloured, embroidered silk and satin gown of great value, whilst round his head, wound in graceful folds, is a soft white scarf of the finest cambric. The costume of the coolie woman from India, who sells fruit, is a picture; it consists of bright-hued handkerchiefs draped in the shape of a divided skirt on her small figure, a low-necked, sleeveless waist, over which is thrown a velvet low-necked, sleeveless jacket, cut short under the arms, trimmed with golden braid and dangling ornaments. Her small bare ankles are ornamented with solid silver anklets; bangles are on her arms above the elbow; there is a gold ring through the nose, and earrings around the edges of the ears. The rings adorn a dusky face, which has eyes that reflect the warmth of the atmosphere and is crowned by a wealth of jet-black hair, glossy as the raven’s wing. The whole makes a picture for the painter’s brush.

The holy woman who has made a pilgrimage to Mecca is seen with her head and face covered, leaving only the eyes free to gaze upon the things of the world. These odd people, through their contrast to the quiet Dutchman, make the town look as if in holiday attire.

Chapter Seven.

No matter in which direction one goes, the great Table Mountain, at the foot of which Cape Town is built, makes its presence felt. You cannot look along a street without seeing it; it is the first object that meets the gaze on rising and the last impression the drowsy brain relinquishes at night. It is a fine old mountain, rising sheer from the sea in an almost perpendicular wall above the first slope on which the town is built to a height of 3,852 feet. Its summit is cut off perfectly square, thus suggesting its name. It is four miles long and is very often crowned with a huge white cloud that slowly rises like a vapour from the other side, and then gradually settles over the top of the mountain, hanging like a tablecloth on it.

This always brings with it a storm of wind and sand or rain that can be heard shrieking and tearing down the mountain-side, while the town lies in sultry heat and silence. This cloud is almost like a barometer to the residents. When asked if there will be a storm, the questioned one will quietly look at Table Mountain and will tell you the strength of the storm that may be coming by the size of the tablecloth on the mountain.

It rises and falls like a veil of steam. The moon clearly defining the outline of the mountain with its vapour-covered summits on glorious nights with the bluest of skies above, the wind thundering down its sides, screaming and filling the ear with strange sounds, and the sea rolling in and breaking at its base, make a grand scene.

Imagine the tremendous surface this almost vertical mountain-side presents to the ocean, four miles long and three-quarters of a mile high. How the heart of an American manufacturer would sigh if he saw it, to think of such a “stand” being unutilised for advertising purposes!

The mountain is flanked on the north by a peculiarly formed hill, shaped like a crouching lion, the lion’s head, 2,100 feet high, which is nearest the sea, being used for a signal station. On the southwest extremity is the Devil’s Peak, an ugly-looking spiky-topped mountain, with an elevation of 3,300 feet. The sides of the lion’s head and the base of the mountain are covered thickly with the “silver-tree,” only found here and in Natal. The leaves of this tree are three inches long and one inch wide, and are like an exquisite piece of silver-coloured satin, with a white, hairy surface. Only a few short weeks had elapsed since we left the cold, wintry shores of England, and here in December the flowers were growing in abundance around us; for a very small outlay we converted our room into a conservatory.

The number and diversity of the flowers, both wild and cultivated, that thrive in the colony is unlimited, but alas! the perfume is so faint as to be almost imperceptible. We had huge bunches of roses of all shades, vying in beauty with the very finest of their species to be found anywhere, but almost entirely scentless. The plants of South Africa are of great beauty and fill the conservatories of Europe. This southwestern region is the home of the Cape flora. Orchids innumerable abound on the streams of Table Mountain and the Hottentot Holland Mountain, thirty miles inland. Some of the enthusiastic collectors we had met in England would surely have been made happy by the privilege of classifying them. There are said to be 350 species of beautiful heather in this region, at times making the whole mountain-side look like a warm-hued carpet. There are geraniums, asters of all sorts, heliotropes, lobelias, and so many sorts and varieties of lovely twining vines and beautiful ferns that I give up all hope of ever recording one-half of them.

During the winter months of May, June, July, and August rain falls, and from January to April it is very dry. The climate is warm and moist to an almost sub-tropical extent, owing to the currents of the Indian Ocean, so that flowers are to be found the year round. The lovely “Lily of the Nile” is so common as to be designated by the less euphonious name of “Pig Lily.”

During a few days in the month of December the heat was intolerable, but not more so than the summer heat of New York; and it did not last long. It was a dry heat with generally a breeze stirring, and then the nights were cool and lovely beyond description. In the dryness of the climate is to be found the reason of its giving such comfort to the invalid. There is immunity from ague or bronchitis. But the invalid suffering from pulmonary disease must not think that Cape Town is going to cure his tired lungs, but must hasten on up country, where the great physician Nature receives him and restores him healed to his loved ones at home.

There are three climates to choose from in Africa: the coast climate with more or less moisture; a midland climate, cooler and drier; and a mountain climate drier still, with a bracing atmosphere.

The hotel, although as good as any in the colony, would be considered a very ordinary one in America. The smells exhaled on all sides from the blacks who wait on you and from the ditches over which you take your constitutional walk, the sand, filled with fleas that make you occasional visits unless grease and ointment are used freely on the body, these are the chief annoyances offered the health-seeker; but the colonist will tell you they are nothing as an offset to the “great and glorious climate,” and he is right.

Before the end of the first week we came to the conclusion that South Africa was charming. We were hasty in thus concluding, for, in truth, the scenery in and around Cape Town gives the newcomer an impression of the country which subsequent experiences of sandy plains and barren hills fail to justify. We were invited to visit the home of a wine merchant, who owned the most extensive vineyards at Constantia, some distance from town, reached partially by train. From the train you go then by carriage, through delightfully shady roads, to the cool, rambling old house.

In the rear were the vaults, in which were many hogsheads full of wine made from the grapes grown on the place. The grapes of Constantia are said by some enthusiastic visitors to be the finest in the world; they are certainly most luscious, and the wine really delicious. They grow on low bushes about two and a half feet high and are similar to our California grapes, though, if possible, even more palatable.

The manufacture of wine is the principal industry of the suburbs of Cape Town. Pontak and Cape Sherry, the native sweet wines are the favourite beverages and within the reach of the purse of all classes. In the garden was a beautiful flowering vine, and as we stood admiring it Eva spied what appeared to be a lizard on one of the tendrils; it was about two and a half inches in length, with a long, flexible tail and funny little bulging eyes which seemed to act independently of one another, turning in any direction, up, down, in front or behind. As we watched it, it crawled on to a green leaf, and gradually began to assume the same tint as the leaf itself; at last the little creature, from being of a light brown hue, became almost invisible, so thoroughly had it assumed the shade and tone of the surrounding foliage. Suddenly it shot out a long tongue, apparently longer than itself, and “snaked” (the word expresses the action) a fly that had incautiously approached too near. It was our first introduction to the chameleon, and we watched it with wondering interest during the afternoon.

After remaining three weeks in Cape Town, we found that the changes of temperature caused by the south-easters retarded Frank’s recovery, and we hastened our departure for the upland region.

Chapter Eight.

Pearls and diamonds are words that have a charm in themselves. Not only do they represent exceedingly beautiful things, but the words themselves are pretty. The diamond fields of South Africa, the “ninth wonder of the world,” lay within a few days’ journey of us in the interior of the country.

We left the Royal Hotel, with its attentive landlord and lady, one hot morning late in December, and boarded the train that would take us up into the country about three hundred miles, where the coach would receive us and carry us on to Kimberley, the diamond fields. The railroad was well constructed, and passed over mountains with steep grades, through wild scenery, one thousand feet above the level of the sea.

As we neared “Beaufort” the scenery began to change gradually, and before night the view from the car windows presented a scorched desert-like prairie, with not a particle of vegetation except parched little bushes resembling the sage brush of our Western plains.

The horizon was bounded on all sides by ranges of forbidding mountains, which feature is one marked characteristic of African scenery generally, there being no spot, we believe, in the country where mountains are not seen on every side. Our car was provided with a primitive contrivance for sleeping, consisting of a kind of hammock which was stowed away under the seat during the day and at night was adjusted into slots in the wall of the car; drawing the blinds and shading the lamp at the top of the car with its own little curtain, we laid ourselves down to sleep. In the morning the same prospect met our view that we had bidden good-night to the evening before, and the prospect continued the same until we reached Beaufort. About nine o’clock we stopped at a way-station for breakfast; then on again all day we journeyed through the same deserted country, which is called the “Karoo.” Nothing was growing on it but the monotonous bush, and there was not a house in sight; by midday our eyes ached from looking so long at the same objects. We might have been crossing the Great Sahara Desert. At five o’clock in the evening the train, which had kept up one tantalising “dawdle” all day, began to slacken speed and blow the whistle, and we almost hoped that we were about to have an accident or a break-down, or anything, indeed, to break the dismal monotony. But the locomotive only slackened its speed to a crawl and puffed up with great importance to a low shed with the word “Booking Office” painted over the door. We found we had arrived in Beaufort, which proved to be a pretty village with two or three hotels.

From here our heavy baggage was sent on by ox-wagon, as sixty pounds is allowed to each passenger on the coach, all over that amount costing thirty-five cents a pound.

The next morning at five o’clock the coach which was to carry us to the fields drew up to the door of the hotel. It proved to be one of the original coaches which had been used to cross our American Continent, and had been pushed by the iron horse from our Western prairies and imported by the enterprising Cobb and Co, well known both there and in Australia. It was found to be admirably adapted for the rough South African roads.

Eight handsome horses were inspanned, and two Malay drivers, one to handle the long whip, were seated on the box; our luggage was fastened on behind with reins. When the fifteen passengers, including ourselves, were seated, with a wild eldritch shriek from the driver, a yell from his assistant and a crack of his whip, which sounded like a rifle shot, the Kafir boy who held the leaders sprang aside, the eight horses leaped forward into the air, then tore away, plunging to this side and then the other, shaving the corner with the hind wheel which made the crazy old coach lurch like a ship in a gale, and broke into a wild gallop, soon leaving Beaufort West far behind.

For some time after leaving the town our way lay over a long level plain reaching on all sides far into the distance; the curtains were soon lowered to keep us from being stifled by the penetrating, choking, powdery sand.

The horses had started off as if fully determined to make Kimberley before nightfall, but had now settled down into a good swinging trot, jolting us from side to side, one moment banging our heads against the sides of the coach, the next throwing us violently against our neighbours, until attempts to get into a comfortable position were given up as hopeless. The journey up country was a gradual ascent, for the interior of South Africa is a succession of elevated plateaus, rising from the sea in terraces, marked by mountain chains, until the plateaus culminate in the vast plains of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, which are some 6,000 feet above the sea. In climbing a steep hill the male passengers were often unceremoniously ordered out of the vehicle by the half-caste driver and compelled to walk to the summit.

Our experience of farmhouse meals, which were taken en route, was anything but agreeable, but it taught the lesson never to travel through such a country again, no matter how short the journey, without carrying a hamper, even if it cost a shilling a pound for extra luggage.

At one of these resting-places where we changed horses, we paid one dollar for a cup of coffee and a sour sandwich. At times there was absolutely nothing to eat; then again a palatable dinner would be ready, but on such dirty linen and served with gravy so full of flies that it was impossible to eat it.

None of the other passengers seemed to have learned the lesson of bringing hampers of food with them, although most of them had passed over the same road many times. With all the discomforts of travelling the people of Africa are great travellers, two or three hundred miles by coach or cart being considered no great journey.

Very little life or attempt at cultivation was to be seen on the road Occasionally we came across a herd of cattle grazing, and the sheep seemed to have learned to eat stones, so little of anything else was there for them to feed upon. The open country is universally designated by the Dutch word “Veldt” translatable as “open field,” which it is in the best or the worst sense of the term.

At seven in the evening we arrived at a farmhouse, completely tired out with the continual bumping and jolting we had been subjected to all day, and felt strongly tempted to remain there for the next coach to pass through, but finding we should have to remain a week, preferred to take the jolting to remaining seven long, hot days in that spot. At daybreak next morning the loud banging at the door, and the notes of the driver’s bugle outside, warned us that the coach was ready to start; it seemed that five minutes had not elapsed since we fell asleep, we were so tired.

Climbing sleepily into the coach and yawning in chorus with our fellow-passengers, the driver shouted “right,” the boys let go the heads of the leaders, and off we went to the shrill notes of the driver’s horn in the still, cold, morning air. We slumbered uneasily for an hour after our start, waking up with a painful start as some one’s elbow would insinuate itself into his neighbour’s side, at any extra jolt of the coach. We really did not care if we never reached Kimberley, provided the coach would only stop for two or three hours to let us finish our sleep. The sun came out and warmed up the flies that had left us in the first half hours of our journey. These completed what the jolting had commenced and everybody was soon wide awake. Late in the day we stopped to change horses at a farmhouse, the owner of which was a typical Dutch woman weighing three hundred pounds. She sat in her chair from morning until night, everything she needed being brought to her; her daughter assisted her from her chair to her bed, which was the only exercise she had all day. She was not the sole representative of her kind that we saw in the country.

The second night we were climbing into the upland region, where the nights grew colder, requiring heavy, warm wraps, the stars shone like fiery gems, and threw a white, weird light over the country, in which not a sound could be heard but the rumble of our wheels and the cries of our Jehus. Frank bore the journey as well as any of the rest of us, and her condition of health spoke volumes for the climate.

The third night the coach rumbled quickly over a pine bridge spanning the Orange River, the river being about half a mile wide at this point; when once across we were in Griqua Land West, the land of diamonds!—but still one hundred miles away from Kimberley.

One more day and night on the road through very heavy sand, and we reached the Medder or Mud River, a considerable stream with very deep and precipitous bank’s, down and through which we rumbled with much difficulty, giving the wielder of the “whip” plenty of work to get us over. Toward the afternoon we began to see unmistakable signs of our nearing a large settlement.

We passed some two hundred wagons with their long teams of labouring oxen, while wayside stores became more plentiful and closer together.

At four o’clock we drove up to the Queen’s Hotel, where we alighted, tired and travel-stained, heartily glad to get to the end of our journey.

Chapter Nine.

I can hardly hope to give any idea of our first impression of Kimberley. The town consists entirely of stores and dwelling-houses, covered sometimes with coarse canvas, but more generally with corrugated iron. One cannot help being very much astonished when one considers that every scrap of wood, canvas, and iron has been imported from England or America, and brought six hundred miles in an ox-wagon through a country little removed from a desert.

The “Queen’s Hotel” was the resort of most of the better class of diggers and diamond merchants in the camp. A noisy crowd of fine-looking men usually filled the long, low dining-room at meal-times, a large number bearing the unmistakable stamp of the Jewish race, nearly all of them being representatives of the diamond trade in London and on the Continent. On the evening of our arrival several acquaintances we had made on board the steamer coming out to the Cape called on us, and they seemed like the faces of old friends; through them we were made acquainted with the Kimberleyites.

For the first few days we could do nothing but wonder at the extraordinary energy and resource that men’s brains can display when incited thereto by the hope of wealth. The town is unlike any other place in the world, and looked at first sight as though it had been built in a night, being more like a huge encampment than a town. It is usually spoken of by the residents as “the camp,” and they use the expression of going “up camp” or “down camp” just as we would say “up town” or “down town.” The day after our arrival we paid a visit to the mine, and were rewarded by a sight of the very biggest hole in the world, covering between twenty-five and thirty acres, shaped like a huge bowl, and over four hundred feet deep.

The first diamond in South Africa was found in 1867 by one of the children of a Dutch farmer named Jacobs, who had it in his possession for months, in perfect ignorance of its value, before the accidental calling of a traveller, Mr Van Nierkirk. Mr Van Nierkirk sent it at once to an eminent geologist, Dr Atherstone, of Grahamstown, who discovered the fact that indeed it was a diamond.

Natives and Europeans began to search, and the result was that several other diamonds were very soon found, and the hopes of the Cape Colony, which at that time was in a bankrupt condition, began to revive.

The first diamonds were found in the boulders and under the Vaal River, so that it was not until 1872 that the diggings at Dutoitspar and Kimberley attracted any attention. But they very soon eclipsed the old diggings, and the present town sprang up around the claim. For some time the claims were kept distinct from one another, but as they dug lower and lower, it was found impossible to retain the roads separating the claims, so the whole was thrown into one large mine.

The diamondiferous soil is quarried out below by Kafirs and deposited in great iron buckets which run on standing wire ropes, and are hauled up by steam to the receiving boxes on the brink of the mine. Everywhere is activity and bustle, and a loud hum comes up out of that vast hole from three or four thousand human beings engaged at work below.

The men themselves look like so many flies as they dig away at the blue soil, and the thousands of wire ropes extending from every claim to the depositing boxes round the edge have the appearance of a huge spider’s web, while the buckets perpetually descending empty and ascending full might well represent the giant spiders.

The mine having recently been worked by companies owning large blocks of ground, there could still be traced the individual claims of the original diggers, some carried down to a great depth and others left standing like square turrets with the ground all dug away round them.

The effect is weird in the extreme, and it does not require any very great stretch of fancy to imagine these isolated claims to be the battlemented castles of the gnomes who inhabit the underground regions. As we were gazing down the mine, the whistles from the engine-houses began simultaneously to shriek out the signal that it was time for men to cease working and come up from the mine for dinner.

The buckets ascended for the last time and stood still; the tiny ants at work below threw down their picks and shovels and began to toil up the sides of the hole. Gradually they grew larger and larger till the ants became moles, till the moles looked like rabbits, then larger till the rabbits became boys, and finally emerged full-grown men.

They were principally Kafirs, with very little clothing beyond a cloth round their loins; some sported old red military jackets, and the appearance of their bare black legs beneath was comical in the extreme. Every thirteen or fourteen Kafirs at work in the mine have a white overseer, to prevent as much as possible that wholesale robbery which goes on amongst them.

One would think they would find it rather hard to steal, and still more difficult to conceal a diamond on their naked persons under the eye of the overseer; but, despite all precautions, they do steal a vast number of stones, picking them up and carrying them away in their mouths or between their toes.

The largest diamonds are usually unearthed in the mines before the stuff is washed, and an overseer must keep his eyes well open, for he cannot be sure of the honesty of any one of his “boys.”

Chapter Ten.

Diamonds are mostly found in a hard, bluish-green rock which has to be blasted, the safest time for doing this being the noon or midnight hour. The noise of it sounds like an enemy bombarding the camp. We stood on the edge of the mine and saw a solitary man down below, who looked as big as a rabbit, light a fuse and then run from it for his life, when, with a report like a thousand cannons, the earth rose two hundred feet in the air and then fell to ground again, probably dropping a Koh-i-noor on a neighbouring claim.

There are somewhat poorer and smaller mines at Dutortspan, Bulfontein, and old de Boers, all comprised within a radius of three and a half miles, and the cab-carts plying for hire in the streets have no lack of custom in carrying people from mine to mine.

Most of the property in the mines is now owned by companies, individual claim-holders finding that it paid them better to consolidate than struggle with the immense working expenses of a single claim, surrounded by blocks owned by wealthy companies. When the companies first formed, there was some wild speculation with the stock, and several fortunes were made and lost in a few days by amateur stock speculators. We were invited to inspect the washing-ground of one of the large companies, and very interesting we found it. The blue ground is taken as it comes up from the mine to a plot of ground rented for the purpose, called a depositing floor, and, after being dumped down in heaps, is spread out on the ground in large, coarse lumps, just as it leaves the pick and shovel of the miner. Water is then liberally poured over it and it is left for two or three days to the action of the atmosphere; at the end of that time it loses its rock-like appearance and shows itself to be a conglomerate of pebbles, ironstone, and carbon.

It is then thrown against coarse sieves to separate the larger stones, which are flung aside, and is afterward taken to the washing-machine. This consists of a circular iron tub, rather shallow and some ten or twelve feet in diameter, in which are fixed from the centre six or eight rakes, with long teeth six inches apart, which are kept perpetually revolving by a small steam-engine, or by a whim worked by horses or mules.

Water is kept flowing into the tub through one opening, as the diamondiferous soil is worked in through another. The revolution of the rakes causes a thorough disintegration of the stuff, the lighter portion of which is forced over the upper edge, carried away by the engine, and thrown on the refuse heap. After sixty or eighty loads have been passed through the machine, the rakes are lifted up and the contents of the box carefully taken out. It will be at once understood that only the heaviest portions of the precious soil, and therefore the diamonds, if there are any, have been left in the machine, the lighter parts having been washed over the upper edge of the box.

When taken out, the residue, which consists of nothing but heavy ironstone and carbon in a pure state and crystals of various hues, is carefully sifted through sieves of different degrees of fineness, sometimes placed one under the other in a cradle and thoroughly rocked. Then, when every trace of foreign matter has been carefully removed, a dextrous turn of the hand, as the sieve with its contents is held in a tub of water, brings the diamonds, garnets, and the heavier lumps of ironstone into a little heap in the very centre, so that when the sieve is reversed on the common pine sorting-table they lie together. The white, alum-like appearance of the rough diamond contrasts strongly with the rich-hued garnets, with which the surrounding blackness of carbon and ironstone is studded. It is only by practice that one is enabled to tell at sight what is a diamond; the sieve appeared to be full of them, but we were told they were only crystals, which could easily be detected from diamonds by taking one between the teeth; the diamond resists their action, but the crystal crumbles away. Thousands upon thousands of garnets roost exquisite in colour are found in every sieveful, but they are thrown aside contemptuously, being almost valueless.

We were allowed the fascinating pleasure of sorting over a sieveful of the pebbly-like residuum of the washing-box, and I can give no idea of the feeling of excitement that came over us as we pored over the table, each armed with a triangular piece of zinc for raking over the stones.

We found several diamonds, and felt like breaking the tenth commandment as they were calmly pocketed by the manager of the “floor,” but were each somewhat consoled by the present of a small diamond as a souvenir of the day’s wash-up.

No one would believe from the appearance of a rough diamond, looking like nothing so much as a piece of alum, that it could ever be cut into a beautiful, fiery gem.

Of course the expenses of a company owning a block of claims are enormous, and a large number of stones have to be found before the margin for a dividend arrives. From the opening of the mine in 1871 to the end of 1885 the yield of diamonds amounted to 100,000,000 dollars. The Kimberley mine produces almost twice as much as the three other mines combined. The expense and difficulty of reaching the diamond field in the early days kept away the rowdy element to be found in our Western mines.

Such diggers as have remained on the field since the “early days” seem never to be tired of talking of the life they then led as the happiest they have ever known. Then, each would peg out his claim and go to work therein with pick and shovel, depending scarcely at all upon the uncertain help of the lazy Kafir, but with his own strong arm attacked the hard, pebbly soil in which the diamond was imprisoned, and in a primitive way “washed” the soil for diamonds. They are not to be picked up walking through the streets or over the “floors” where the soil lies becoming pulverised by sun and rain. They hide away and peep out sometimes after several cartloads have been washed through the machine.

The days have gone forever when a lucky blow of the pick, or a fortunate turn of the spade, might result in a prize worth a fortune to the finder. Now there are no poor man’s diggings, and one must possess great wealth before he attempts to seek the diamond in its rocky bed. The time when a poor man could go to the fields and possibly make a fortune in the first week of his stay, has passed away.

The mines are now drifting into the hands of a few large companies, and everybody is looking to the Transvaal, with its budding gold fields, as the scene of the next South African Eldorado.

Chapter Eleven.

So interesting and novel was the life at the fields, that although in many respects our surroundings and mode of living were rough and primitive, there was a charm about it that atoned for most of its shortcomings.

After much difficulty, soon after our arrival we succeeded in finding a small house, which we rented, as being more comfortable and affording greater privacy than a hotel. We fortunately obtained an excellent housekeeper, a worthy Scotchwoman, whose husband was engaged as overseer in the mine for one of the companies.

Our house contained one large room, with four other very tiny ones opening out of it. The kitchen was, after the manner of South Africa, situated away from the house, at one corner of the large plot of ground which surrounded the house.

The roof and walls were, like its neighbours, of corrugated iron, and a spacious verandah encircled it; a high rush fence which inclosed the compound served to keep out intruders and prevent the curious gaze of any inquisitive passer-by.

Here we led a happy life, with Frank improving in health every day of her existence. Our rent was 125 dollars a month. Wood was 75 dollars a wagon-load: it had been known as high as 200 dollars, but coal, having been found in the immediate vicinity, had been brought into the market by some of the more enterprising of the farmers and had taken the place of wood for fuel in the furnaces.

Edibles were reasonable, considering the place, excepting vegetables. On one occasion when we wished to have a particularly tempting, large cauliflower we paid 2 dollars for it. This did not enter into our menu very often of course, for we decided to like other things not so necessarily expensive, until we two (or three) might find a Koh-i-noor.

There were two cafés, one kept by an American and the other by French people, where one could be served, at a reasonable price, with a meal that could vie in variety, delicacy, and culinary perfection with the first-class restaurants in London or New York. After eating one of these meals it was strange to go out into the crowded thoroughfare and hire a cart and drive four or five miles in a country in which one might imagine one’s self in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Surely one could but say that Kimberley is one of the wonders of the world.

The domestic servants are of a different kind to those working in the mine, who are usually raw Kafirs from the interior. The Kafirs generally remain only long enough to save sufficient money to buy a gun or a few head of cattle and return to their kraals. There they trade off their cattle for a wife, and then she does all the work for her husband, whilst he sits down the remainder of his days and tires himself out in watching her do the work, till the soil, and do everything else, telling her the while pretty stories of his adventures, and how he loves her, she thinking it only an honour to work and slave for such a brave boy as hers!

These Kafirs are continually arriving, coming from long distances, walking sometimes as far as 1,500 miles in the interior; but the household servants are different; they are a heterogeneous mixture of Malays from Cape Town and Kafirs and the imported coolies from Natal. It is difficult to say which makes the worst servant; at any rate, we found, no matter from which race we selected our help, it was never safe to leave anything of value, at all portable, within their reach.

Ladies are quite a rarity on the fields, few of the married diggers of merchants caring to subject their wives to the discomforts of the life and the unreliable domestic help. Consequently they remain at home in Europe or in the more civilised towns of the Cape Colony or Natal. The few married ladies resident on the fields are very social, and helped much toward making our stay a pleasant one.

On the evenings when we were “at home,” the capacity of our one reception-room would be tested to its fullest extent. There was always some subject for conversation, some startling event continually occurring to form a theme for discussion.

Now it was the breaking out of the Basuto War, with the report concerning the regiment of mounted irregulars to be raised in the camp for active service; then again a stone of more than usual size and brilliancy had been discovered; or some illicit diamond buyer had been “trapped” by the detectives. This latter topic was always of absorbing interest to the digger or merchant.

It is the illicit diamond buyer, or as they term it, tout court, I.D.B., who has been the sharpest thorn in the digger’s side. He it is who incites the Kafirs who are employed in the mines to steal, and then secretly buys of them the stolen gems. The temptation to become possessed for 400 dollars of a stone clearly worth 4,000 dollars is very great, and occasionally even a detective is found by his associate to be engaged in the illicit trade. It is illegal to own a diamond unless one is a claim-holder or a licensed buyer. If a private individual wishes to purchase a stone or two for himself, he must first obtain a permit from the authorities.

These precautions will be seen to be necessary, because the value of the diamond, its portability, the facility with which it can be concealed, and the uncertainty regarding its existence make it a source of temptation to dishonesty among all classes. It is therefore against the law for any one, even if a licensed buyer, to purchase a diamond from any one not a claim-holder, unless he can produce his permit.

The law has become so stringent and the detective force so active that terror has stricken the hearts of the I.D.B.s, for it is now a matter of fifteen years’ hard labour to be convicted of buying a stolen diamond. Before this stringent law was passed, many went away rich in a few years who could not have possibly made “their pile” in any legitimate business in that length of time. Men who have been suspected for years, but have managed to evade detection, have been pounced upon by detectives at most unexpected moments; but the temptation is so strong that, despite the penalty, the practice still goes on, but to a smaller extent than before.

It was astonishing to find out how often the culprit turned out to be a man in a good and responsible position, and often the very men who were the loudest in the denunciation of the crime were themselves practising it. We were in a café one evening when there was a sudden hush, followed by a startled buzz of conversation, and we heard the name of a well-known man followed by the word “detectives.” A man standing near who was suspected of carrying on the same trade became suddenly pale and bit uneasily on his cigar, and with a careless laugh said, “Serves him right,” in a tone of voice which spoke louder than words, “What a fool not to be more careful!” Before we left the camp that same man was working in convict dress.

Detectives themselves have been tempted to dabble in the trade, and have been trapped, and are now working in convict dress by the side of the men they have helped to hunt down. This fascinating trade of gems offers great temptations to the weak-willed, and it takes a certain amount of bull-dog courage, combined with caution and patience, to continue in this dangerous business.

On mail days great envelopes of diamonds are sent to London. Some of these packages contain flawless diamonds; others smoky diamonds used in machinery for polishing and cutting the stones; others again would contain stones of all colours, sizes, and purity. One day we handled some packages of spotless gems that the broker had been months collecting; they were beautiful indeed. One package, worth many thousands of dollars, contained yellow diamonds, selected stones in size, colour, and purity. Those of yellow tinge are bought and worn by the East Indians.

The pure white stone is of more value than the yellow because not so plentiful. It is a strange fact that these diamond merchants seldom wear diamond jewellery; they prefer rubies or corals to the too common gem, the diamond.

The famous Porter Rhodes diamond was found, it is said, by one of his overseers. A director of one of the companies called one morning and I opened the door to him; he assured himself that no one could overhear us before handing me an envelope within which lay this great, pure white diamond, which only some millionaire with plenty of ready money can afford to be the possessor of. I felt highly complimented when told I was the first lady who had had the diamond in her hand, and there was no need for wonder at his caution, for no one would care to let it be known he had such a prize about him.

It looks like a large lump of alum with a light like white satin through it, and weighs 150 carats.

Mr Rhodes placed it on exhibition later on for the benefit of the hospital, and 5 dollars admission fee was charged to merely have a peep at it. It made some of the old diggers who had been working for years so sick at heart, that they did not feel like work for a week afterward: It is said that when Mr Porter Rhodes had an audience with Her Majesty, the Queen of England, to exhibit the diamond, he had been told that he must not contradict her. But when she remarked she did not think it as large as the Koh-i-noor, he could not endure that, even from a crowned head, and said: “It is larger!” His pride, however, is not to be wondered at, for I believe Mr Porter Rhodes is the only Mr who can boast of owning one of the few big diamonds in the world.

Some enterprising ladies own Scotch carts, which they send to the wash-ups in which their husbands and brothers are interested, and get the small pebbly refuse that has been hastily looked over at the sorting-table. This is brought to the house and sorted over by them more carefully for the tiny diamonds that have been overlooked in the haste of sorting out larger prizes. A few of the ladies dressed themselves on the money they made at this work.

It tires the back and eyes, to be sure, but not any more than other woman’s work.

Chapter Twelve.

The diamond fields of South Africa, though of recent discovery, have eclipsed all others in the world, both in richness and extent. One of the first diamonds found, worth 125,000 dollars, named the “Star of South Africa,” is owned by the Countess of Dudley, its weight being 46.5 carats. The colour of the Kimberley diamonds makes them much more valuable than those of Dutoitspan or Bulfontein. Those found in the latter mines are larger, but yellow or slightly coloured; all the mines seem inexhaustible. The largest diamond ever found in South Africa came from the Dutoitspan mine in 1885 and weighed 404 carats, but was spotted and of a yellowish tinge. Every man interested in these mines expects and hopes daily to “go one better.”

American products are liked, our carriages and heavy wagons wearing better in the hot, dry climate than those of English manufacture. Corn comes from home to these shores in ship-loads, and the American light and strong furniture is liked.

Mark Twain’s and Bret Harte’s writings are universally read, and the South Africans say that all they need to open up the country’s interests is about “twenty-five ship-loads of live Yankees.”

Some of the houses are furnished beautifully with American furniture. One lady’s bedroom I entered had blue silk and lace coverlet and hangings to an elegant black walnut bed, marble-topped dressing bureau, and the remainder of the room furnished in keeping; but there is no satisfaction in furnishing a house richly or dressing elaborately, on account of the great dust storms. They come up suddenly, without the slightest warning, obscuring the light of day. Solid moving columns of red sand, resembling water-spouts, are whirled round and round and blow like a tornado over the town. These sand storms are quite a feature of Kimberley and a very disagreeable one, but they clear the air of any pestilence. The climate, though scorchingly hot during the middle of the day, is otherwise a very pleasant and healthy one.

A low camp fever is prevalent during the summer months, but it comes more from the defective sanitary arrangements than from any fault of the climate. Women and children succumb to this African fever very quickly in the hot summer, when the air quivers with the heat; the only hope of recovery is in being taken away immediately from “the camp” to Bloourfontin, a beautiful town in the Orange Free State, or to breathe the sea air. The nights everywhere in South Africa away from the immediate coast line are invariably cool, no matter how hot it has been during the day, so that one can always obtain a comfortable night’s rest. But that delightful twilight hour, so much enjoyed at home, is not known here, the sinking of the sun being followed immediately by darkness.

A beautiful black Newfoundland dog attached itself to us, and was as faithful a body guard as any human being, for when once outside the door at night, no one dared to come within his reach, and when we went out of an evening he was locked in to guard the house.

One evening on returning home from a social gathering we found the lock had been broken, the act evidently the work of a white man bent on robbery during our absence; but Hector’s growls had frightened him away. We had no fears after that of its being attempted again, but we reckoned without our host. One evening, a week later, we made preparations to go out, but as soon as Hector saw us putting on our wraps, he watched his opportunity and slipped out. No coaxing could bring him back, and so he followed our cart. This time the burglars did not hurry about their work, but made a most leisurely examination and overhauling of our belongings.

We returned to a house which was a scene of the greatest confusion. Every trunk was empty, with its contents piled up on the floor; every pocket in dress and cloak turned inside out, and all jewellery and souvenirs that had not been locked up in the safe, of course, gone. We did not let it frighten us, for, after notifying the police, we shut and barricaded the doors and sat up till dawn; but there is no use denying the fact that if a mouse had made its appearance we should have screamed.

Many balls are held during the cool winter evenings, a few of which we attended; one, conducted under the auspices of the ubiquitous Freemasons, was held in the Iron Theatre building, and a very brilliant affair it was. There were four hundred and fifty invitations, of course many more gentlemen than ladies being present, but it was interesting to see what an elegant company assembled so many hundreds of miles from the nearest point of civilisation. Many of the ladies were attired in London or Parisian imported costumes of satin and lace; some of the wives and daughters of the wealthier residents being literally ablaze with diamonds, the result of their husbands’, or fathers’, own pick and shovel, which they had had cut and set during one of their numerous trips to Europe. It was when returning from this ball at three o’clock in the morning that we first visited the mine by moonlight, and it may be said without hesitation that such another sight cannot be found in any other part of the world.

The moon and stars seem to shine with a brighter light in the magnificently clear atmosphere than they do in our northern hemisphere, and the ghastly shadows cast by the immense perpendicular and horizontal excavations in the mine gave a weird look to a scene the impression of which can never be effaced. The moonlit chasm resembled a vast deserted city that had slowly crumbled into ruins.

Another interesting feature of Kimberley is the arrival of the interior traders’ wagon trains, for every wagon is full of precious and various wealth, the result of a long, risky venture. Not infrequently the costly wares are sold by auction, in the morning market, and the tusks, teeth, skins, horns and feathers are spread out upon the ground as if they were no better than field stuff or garden produce.

It is no uncommon thing to see wagon cargoes worth 50,000 dollars exhibited for sale in this unceremonious way, amidst a crowd of onlookers, some of whom look almost as wild as the animals which produced the barbaric spoils, and as black as coal. Professional hunters also bring the result of their trips, though the labour of getting together the skins and ivory is yearly becoming greater, as the game is driven farther and farther north. No doubt the rapid increase in the value of farm produce will tend to lessen the inducements to hunting. Civilisation and barbarism are such mixed quantities in this land that it seems as if the former will never conquer the latter.

The inhabitants of Kimberley, numbering 20,000 whites, are determined to make a fine city of it. The old one-storey iron and canvas houses were being moved aside for larger and finer dwelling-houses.

Capital was being invested in water-works which would bring the water in pipes from the Vaal River, some seventeen miles away. Government was putting up stone buildings for post-office and telegraph offices. Churches were towering up above the surrounding dwelling-houses and stores. A club-house, the finest in the country, was built at a cost of 90,000 dollars, and they still keep on improving the streets, which extend over twenty miles. There are some very fine jewellery stores and dry goods houses, as attractive as any in American cities of double its population. An air of activity pervades the place. Thirty-two electric Brush lights, of two thousand candle power, light up the city.

Wishing to see how far civilisation had crept into the interior and also to breathe the wonderful air of the Transvaal for a little while, we left our house in charge of our worthy housekeeper and drove away from the coach office early one bright summer’s morning.

Chapter Thirteen.

We were told that the Transvaal Republic was an entirely inland territory; nowhere does it touch the sea, from which its nearest point is quite one hundred miles. It extends from the Vaal River to the Limpopo, and from the same river and the colony of Griqua Land West (the diamond fields) on the west to the Zulu country and Portuguese settlements on the east. It is exceedingly healthy, lying from 6,000 to 7,000 feet above the sea level. Our road for some distance after leaving Kimberley was through thick sand; indeed, Kimberley seems to lie in the centre of a veritable sea of sand, sometimes so loose and deep that to go through it is like wading through deep snow. The coach required constant changing of its six horses at stables en route to make any progress.

On the second day from the Fields we passed through the village of Bloemhof, the first place after leaving Kimberley. It is quite a pretty little spot, the only street being wide and clean, with tolerably well-kept grass-plots on either side of the road. It formed an agreeable contrast to Clerksdorp, a wretched hamlet we reached the following day, where the hotel (save the mark!) boasted one room and parlour, with an individual in charge who was collectively clerk, proprietor, waiter, bartender, and chambermaid.

As we neared Potchefstrom there was an agreeable change in the appearance of the country, the characteristics of the lower veldt, which were alternately a plain and a mountain pass in unvarying succession, giving place to a park-like landscape, forming the most delightful of prospects.

The country was everywhere beautifully fresh and green, the monotony of grassland being varied with clumps of thorn bushes and stunted trees. The variety of thorn is almost endless, from the beautiful, fragrant, flowered “mimosa” to the prickly pear, and the suggestively named “wacht een beetje” or “wait a bit” bramble. Three days’ and three nights’ almost constant travelling brought us to Potchefstrom, and there, a thousand miles from Cape Town, we were obliged to confess that we had reached the prettiest village in the country.

Alighting at the Blue Post Hotel, we were received in a manner which almost made us doubt the existence of such places as we had passed through on our way.

We were shown to a very nice room, and sat down to as good a dinner as the heart of a tired American girl could desire.

The worthy hostess, Mrs Jenkinson, a ruddy-faced, buxom Englishwoman, who seemed to bring with her all the freshness of her native Devonshire, made us most comfortable during our visit; her kindness was appreciated, coming, as it did, after the extortions of the grasping hovel-keepers of the roadside. The town itself is like a large orchard, so abundant are the fruit trees. Every street is a boulevard of orange and peach trees, which here grow side by side. The very hedgerows are figs and quinces, while everywhere may be seen grapevines, lemons, shaddocks, and bananas. Between the sidewalk and the street is a well-kept grass-plot, with a stream of clear water running in the midst of it, a veritable rarity in South Africa. The Mooi (Dutch for “beautiful”) River takes a horseshoe curve round the village, which is built on a slope. The furrows which hold the water are led from the upper to the lower bend, and thus a perpetual stream passes through the town. Eight mills were situated at the entrance of the town, and several more were in course of erection.

We met an American gentleman, Mr C—, who had made a considerable fortune in the Gold Fields, and who was conducting one of the mills; this he had fitted with machinery brought from the—Philadelphia Exhibition. His wife was a pleasant-faced, cheerful little woman, whose history, as it was told us, sounded like a romance. He had first met her at Pilgrim’s Rest Gold Fields, where she had gone from Natal with her two brothers. She, following their example, had pegged out a claim. She had hired natives, had worked at it herself, and had turned out more gold than either of her brothers.

We began to hear the most alarming rumours of the disaffection of the Dutch Boers with the Government. Several prominent farmers had called a large meeting, at which it was unanimously voted to pay no taxes to the hated “Englanders.” Such startling stories began to be circulated about the attitude of the country people that we hastened to gather up our skirts and get on to and out of Pretoria before the threatened rising took place.

At the end of three most enjoyable weeks in Potchefstrom we again took seats in the coach, and after one hundred miles of jolting, bumping, and general discomfort, arrived at Pretoria, then the seat of the English Government, and now the capital of the Republic. On the way we passed the sources of the Limpopo River, and at a place called Wonderfontein were shown a remarkable phenomenon. The water, which runs in a clear, tolerably rapid stream, suddenly disappears into the sand, and appears again a considerable distance further on, as bright and clear as though its progress had never been interrupted. There are also gold diggings on the road; a rush had been made to them some time previous to our arrival, but they had now been nearly abandoned, and a stray prospector or two were the sole remaining signs of the presence of the metal.

Chapter Fourteen.

Pretoria presented quite a lively appearance when we first saw it. The presence of the British military, with their bright uniforms, gave a gay appearance to the town. The playing of the band every evening on the market square was an agreeable event, but one could not help remarking the sullen looks of the few Boers who were loitering about, and the lowering glances they from time to time directed toward the detested “red-coats.” There were many churches and a number of stores. Although the town was not as pretty as Potchefstrom, the surrounding country district was exceedingly rich and fertile.

The northern portions of the districts, being warmer and at a lower elevation than the rest, could produce, besides the various cereals, tobacco, indigo, and the orange tree, the sugarcane, coffee, cotton, and the different kinds of tropical and semi-tropical products.

The people of Pretoria and Potchefstrom, to whom we expressed our admiration of the country, told us we should go to Rustenberg, distant about sixty miles from Pretoria, which place they declared to be a veritable paradise. All the temperate and most of the tropical plants and fruits were to be seen there side by side, the whole country around presenting the appearance of a garden.

The gold fields are situated in and about Leydenberg, a town two hundred and twenty-five miles north-west of Pretoria, where considerable gold had been found, although the gold-bearing tract was declared by prospectors to be “patchy.”

Since the fields had first been discovered various rushes had taken place, resulting, as such rushes do, in various fortunes for the rushers, some coming away on foot, bringing their worldly wealth in their blankets and tin pans, and others bringing theirs in carts, which were loaded with the precious metal.

Our hotel proprietor had been one of the unfortunates. He said the prospects in the gold fields had never been great, and were then daily diminishing. “Gold,” he said, “there is, but not in payable quantities; it is too patchy. One man will wash out ten or fifteen dollars’ worth in a week, while the claims around him will not come near paying expenses. Sometimes a large nugget is found, as, for instance, the one recently exhibited in Durham, weighing 214 ounces. Young men frantically rush to see such a nugget, and immediately imagining the country is covered with gold, are eager to leave a good situation and go to the fields.

“Deceived humanity! Let them be wise men for only five minutes, and ask themselves how much did that nugget cost the finder, and how many didn’t find the nugget at all? I possess a quantity of gold that cost me ninety dollars the ounce, whereas the market value is from fifteen to twenty dollars the ounce. I am neither an Australian nor Californian miner, but, having always been in partnership with the latter, I have had the benefit of their experience, and I claim to be a practical miner. Labour is scarce. Kafirs are paid four dollars a month (they now receive much more) and have the usual diet, mealie meal, which is fifteen dollars a sack and sometimes twenty-five. No,” said he, “prosperity is the exception, and the great cry is. How can I get away from here?”

The attitude of the Boers had become more and more menacing during our short stay in Pretoria, and it seemed prudent to retire whilst we could. So giving up with a sigh all our half-formed resolutions to see the wild country and enjoy the glorious climate where the regaining of health was a certainty, we packed ourselves away in the down coach. The easiest way to ride with comfort in a coach is to imagine one’s self India-rubber. Don’t sit too firmly on the seat, but sway about with the motion of the coach until you can’t imagine yourself India-rubber any more. By the time the body is numb and pretty nearly paralysed, the coach stops, and on trying to descend the limbs refuse to act. But the India-rubber idea has rested the body in some measure. The farms we passed on our way down were deserted, all the occupants having trekked to Potchefstrom to attend a monster meeting fixed for the following week. There had been heavy rains, and we crossed several streams which had changed into rivers since our journey up. One, the Yorksey, which was only just fordable, had been but a stagnant puddle when we passed it before.

Just calling in on our kind hostess, Mrs Jenkinson, in Potchefstrom, and taking a last look at the beautiful orchard-like village, so soon to become a terrible scene of bloodshed and slaughter, we continued on our way without incident other than the usual discomforts attendant on a South African coach ride. At several points in the roads we passed groups of Kafirs going to the diamond fields, and other groups returning from them, and it was amusing to note the prosperous appearance of the latter compared with the half-naked, destitute condition of their brethren going in the opposite direction. Most of them carried huge bundles on their heads, and it was funny to see the strange medley of articles some were carrying home as curiosities. Two of them carried ragged umbrellas, with scarcely a shred of material on their skeleton frames. They seemed to fancy bright tin pails and pannikins; and a new white flannel blanket, with several bright-coloured stripes decorating the ends, was an indispensable article in the kit of every one of them.

We passed through Clerksdorp and Bloemhof, as on our journey up, arriving in Kimberley on the fourth morning, travel-stained and weary, and most heartily sick of Messrs Cobb and Co’s coaches. Apart from the travelling we had enjoyed our trip very much, having seen the most interesting country in South Africa. Although the poor Transvaal seems to be doomed to years of political trouble before it can become truly prosperous, it is undoubtedly, with its undeveloped mineral wealth, its rich soil, the game which abounds there for the hunter, and, above all, with its glorious climate, the country of the future of South Africa. The farmers seem to want rousing; they lack ambition. Large tracts of country, capable of producing almost anything, lie dormant, waiting for employment. The best thing that can happen to the country is the successful opening up of some paying gold fields. This would bring many men of the right sort to the country, men with energy and determination, and above all, some healthy ambition. To the stranger newly arrived in the country the people seem lazy and listless, but after a year’s residence there this same listlessness gradually begins to steal over the newcomer. He then greets the latest comer, who is energetic and indifferent to heat, with the remark: “Wait till you have been out here as long as I, and see how you will like it then.”

Experts believe the mineral wealth of the Transvaal to be enormous. The diversity and variety of the minerals found there is unsurpassed. It has lead, cobalt, silver, plumbago, saltpetre, sulphur, iron, the best coal, and above all, gold! Echoes reach the ear of a story that there are signs on the western coasts, and not far distant, of the mines of Ophir. One also hears of an impregnable country beyond, and of a tribe kindred to the Basutos, ruled by the great chief “Sekukuni.” Everything one hears in Africa that is weird and strange one easily believes.

As a grazing country the Transvaal is by far the best in South Africa. Sheep, cattle and horses thrive there, and certain districts are especially suited to one or another class of live-stock. It is in some parts well wooded, particularly in the north, while its producing capabilities are practically unlimited. When traffic can be easily extended to Delagoa Bay, it is confidently expected great changes will take place.

It remains to be seen whether the Boer, left to himself, is capable of self-government with progress. Will he utilise the advantages of his country, or will he rest from generation to generation in stagnant content, comforting himself with the maxim: “What was good enough for my father is good enough for me.”

Chapter Fifteen.

We found our motherly old housekeeper awaiting our arrival with everything fresh and clean throughout the house, and we were glad once more to be “at home.” The ten months of our life in “the camp” had been full of interest and pleasure, and its sun’s rays had given health to the invalid. But such a desert region of country could have no attraction for any one but the speculator. After a thoroughly good rest we turned our thoughts toward the first stage of our return.

Frank had gained so wonderfully in health that we thought a change to the coast would do no harm. If harm did come, however, we could return, for we were decided to remain in the country until she had regained her health. It seems that human beings belong more to the vegetable than to the animal kingdom. They are like plants that flourish if they are put in the right soil, and grow in the climate best suited to them. The damp, heavy air of London, that necessitated exercise and food, was delightful to Eva and me, whilst Frank pined away under it as if she were breathing a deadly poison.

At the beginning of the new year we prepared to go by coach the usual way to Grahamstown, the principal town in the eastern province of the Cape Colony, and the point of our destination. In a few days our furniture was disposed of, our housekeeper dismissed, and we took our places in the coach to leave, and bade good-by to Kimberley and many kind friends we had made. For seven months it had not rained, but rumours of heavy rains had reached us a few weeks before our departure, and we feared we should find impassable the river we should have to cross on our way to Fauresmith, near which “Jagersfontein” (the new diamond fields) is situated. The roads we found in no better condition than those in the colony, and the coach threw us about and jolted us against one another and the sides in the old familiar way.

On arriving at the bank of the river, we found it was rushing down like a torrent, and almost level with the top of the precipitous banks, some sixty feet high. At another time we should have found the river at the foot of these banks, meandering along in an easily forded stream. The only contrivance for crossing, provided for such an emergency as the rising of the river, was a stout wire rope stretched from bank to bank, upon which was swung a common pine box of fair dimensions, but full of gaping holes, and looking, in itself, by no means capable of sustaining the weight of a healthy body. But it was the only possible mode of transit, so, screwing our courage to the sticking point, we prepared to cross. The box could only accommodate one individual at a time. So Eva stepped in to face the danger of the passage alone. One portmanteau was carried over with each passenger. How the heart beat as the Kafirs on the other side commenced to haul on the pulley lines attached to the frail machine.

We watched Eva with breathless interest as she was slowly pulled along in jerks, now and then coming to a dead standstill and dangling over that swollen stream, whilst the haulers rested before taking a fresh grasp of the lines; pulling a few seconds, then resting a few seconds, leaving the subject to dangle over the torrent with the heart thumping wildly. The rest of us followed in due course. As the opposite bank was reached, and we were lifted on to terra firma, the hand of that black man was clutched with as much fervency as we had ever grasped the hand of our dearest friend.

Having landed, we got into a coach which was waiting, to receive us. By night we reached Koffyfontein, a small village which had sprung up around what was supposed to be another diamond mine. Although a good deal of money had been invested in the neighbourhood, we did not hear of any fortunes having been made. We travelled all the next day, traversing a level plain well covered with grass and swarming with game. We often passed large herds of spring-bok, which started off with their graceful, springing gallop at sight of the coach. When we arrived at Fauresmith late in the afternoon we were tired indeed! The town has become prominent since the diamond mine at Jagersfontein (distant about four miles) has been opened. It is a long, straggling village with an unpronounceable Dutch name. Soon after our arrival the town was visited by a thunderstorm, which broke upon the hills round about us with terrific force, preceded by that deathly stillness and darkness which is so very ominous. Africa can deal out wonderful thunder and lightning. The lightning flashes incessantly, and seems to strike something every time it descends, the air quivers with electricity, and the atmosphere constantly changes from purple to gold. For any one who enjoys seeing a thunderstorm, Africa meets all requirements. The rain fell in torrents, but in an hour passed away, leaving the early evening cool and delightful.

We took a stroll to the banks of the river, which had swollen into a torrent, and was sweeping down over rocks and boulders. A number of Kafirs, who had been working in the town, stood gazing dismally at it, whilst their wives and children looked on from across the stream. Several diggers from Jagersfontein, formerly of Kimberley, were stopping at the wretched hotel we were obliged to stop at. The mine is in a more workable condition than that at Kimberley, but not so large, and with ground not so rich, but the stones found there are said by the miners of Jagersfontein to be whiter and purer than any others. The mine produces about 250,000 dollars worth annually. The diggers complain as bitterly against their foe, the I.D.B., as their Kimberley brothers. The penalty attached to the crime in the Orange Free State, where the mine is situated, is greater than in Kimberley, but the detective system is not as complete. There is less risk of conviction, therefore, but the diggers have formed a detective system amongst themselves, and woe to the man who falls into their clutches! It is estimated that from one-fourth to one-fifth of the diamonds found in the mines never reach their rightful owners.

At dawn of the next day we continued on our journey, passing through the village of Phillopolis, once the principal place of the native tribe of the Griquas. It is a typical Dutch village, ill built, and in every way insignificant and uninviting. Close by the village is a very large Kafir kraal. As we passed it many came out to see the coach go by. A few hours later we crossed one of the bridges which span the Orange River, and were again in the Cape Colony. We passed through Colesberg, a village of considerable size, and the centre of a large sheep and ostrich-farming country. A thriving wool-washing establishment is situated there. Wool is the most important production of the farming industry of Cape Colony, but the best farmers in sheep-raising are not among the native Dutch, but among the English, German, and Scotch emigrants. I never saw Boer women knitting; the Boer women, in fact, seem to have little capacity for the kind of work peculiar to women in other civilised countries. From Colesberg we travelled through an uninviting country, usually a plain, studded, here and there with isolated hills, and having very little timber. We reached Grahamstown in the cool of the evening of the next day, alighting at the Masonic Hotel.

Chapter Sixteen.

On the day following our arrival at Grahamstown the thermometer stood at one hundred and thirty degrees. The air fairly quivered with the intensity of the heat, and although nowhere in South Africa can the song of birds be heard, our ears were tired with the sound of busy insect life. The continuous hum made by the myriads of locusts and other insects in the trees sounded like the buzzing of a saw-mill with twenty or thirty great circular saws in full swing. The climate of Grahamstown is considered almost perfect for the English invalid. Frequent rains in summer make the heat endurable; the winter is drier than at Port Elizabeth.

It is called the “City of Churches,” for many fine churches and a cathedral make the town interesting. The houses are in the midst of beautiful grounds filled with trees of dense foliage and with rare plants. The people are very social, and a fine class of English the descendants of the early settlers are to be met with here. They are very kind, and make the life of the invalid endurable, if not pleasant. To be ill and alone in the midst of unsympathetic neighbours is certainly worse than to linger a hopeless invalid amongst loving friends. The society of Grahamstown tries to welcome the stranger; and male visitors find amusement in hunting in the surrounding district, where game is plentiful. It is a fact that many English youths who have been threatened with hereditary consumption have gone to Grahamstown and made it their home for several years, and then returned to their island home, a wonder to all their friends.

British settlers of 1820 took root in this district around Grahamstown. This settlement is one of the most important events that ever happened in the history of the colony, and is a standing example of the utility of intelligently assisted emigration. The whole country at that time was in great trouble on account of a series of terrible Kafir wars, and, just before the importation of the new blood, the district in and around Grahamstown, which was then a military post, named in honour of its commander, had been swept by a marauding tribe of Griquas.

The town is the seat of an episcopate, and has numerous churches, banks and public buildings. It has also a large military barracks, now no longer occupied. It is a great place for church controversy. The portly figure and priestly countenance of the “Dean of Grahamstown” belongs as much to the history of the place as his own cathedral spire. We were invited after service one Sunday evening to supper at the Deanery, where we met the Dean’s wife, and some pleasant people. The house was a large, one-storey building, comfortably furnished. As we all sat around the well-provided table, chatting merrily, we noticed the Dean did not talk much, but was listening with a very interested countenance. Sitting in his big chair, his feet stretched under the table, and the tips of his fingers in his trousers pockets, he looked with his round face, round features, and rotund figure, and his half-shut but sharp eyes peering out through his gold-rimmed spectacles, a picture of contentment. At last, with a little sniff peculiar to him, he said: “Now let me hear you talk American.” Imagine our astonishment at his request, to which we replied with a merry peal of laughter. Because we were not speaking with a rasping Yankee twang, and “guessing,” and “reckoning,” he began to doubt whether we were Americans. No man could enjoy a joke or anything funny more than the good-natured Dean, but I don’t think he was convinced that we were speaking our native language during our visit to him.

The “twang” of the Yankee girl, though frequently a matter of jest, is, I notice, when connected with the Yankee dollar, very much sought after by many of the world’s so-called great ones, who are very ready to exchange old family plate, ruined castles, and historical deeds of valour, and thus become easily reconciled to the “twang” once so laughed at.

At the hotel we met a gentleman and his wife, whose acquaintance we had made on our arrival in the country. They had recently bought an ostrich farm, some thirty miles from the town, and pressed us warmly to pay them a visit, which invitation we were delighted to accept. They proposed bringing the ox-wagon from the farm to take us out. The wagon arrived, and our friends had prepared it for our use, neglecting nothing to make our ride as easy and comfortable as possible. The coloured boy, with a tremendous crack of the long whip and shouting “T-r-ek,” started the long train of sixteen oxen into a slow walk along, the town road. When we got into the country on the hilly road, where ruts were many, we all got out and walked. Our road lay through a thick, thorny wood, and along by steep, rocky cliffs, upon which we could see and hear hundreds of monkeys leaping from rock to rock, chattering and screaming. They seemed greatly frightened at us, and yet fascinated, for they would run along the face of the cliff ahead of the slowly toiling oxen, keeping up a startled clatter, and peering at us from behind stones or branches of trees. We had started late in the afternoon, and before we reached the farmhouse at which we were to stop for the night the moon had risen, and dense black shadows and silvery streaks of light were thrown ghost-like before our path. After reaching the house we sat up till late, watching the beauty of the moonlit scene.

Chapter Seventeen.

Next morning we resumed our journey, and after five hours’ trek, made most enjoyable by the mode of travelling and the rugged beauty of the scenery, we arrived at “Grasslands,” the home of our friends. The house was of one-storey, well built and roomy, and being on a rise, commanded a fine view of the wild, uninhabited surrounding country. Our host was a handsome, high-spirited Englishman, with a little English child-wife, a dainty little piece of humanity.

As the young wife leaned against the veranda talking to us in her pink calico dress, broad-brimmed straw hat trimmed with a bit of lace, and a spray of jessamine she had pulled from the vine covering the front of the house, she did not look much like one to live where wild monkeys chatter in the trees, and savage beasts come within rifle range of the front door.

Our friend was engaged in ostrich-farming, and many of these queer-looking bipeds, with their long necks and floating feathers, the beauty of which is certainly wasted on their own backs, were wandering around the house. It had been an addition to our stock of information to learn in the Cape Colony that ostrich feathers were as much the product of regulated human labour as wool, mohair, or silk. We had always supposed ostrich feathers to be procured by hunters, and had in mind stories of their tactics in the chase of the fleet-footed bird. We learned that Cape farmers buy and sell ostriches as they do sheep, and fence their flock in, stable them, and grow crops for them. The eggs are not yet considered as belonging to the Cape dairy, and are not sent to market with bread and cheese. They are too precious for consumption, and too valuable even to be left for hatching to the rude methods of nature. The act of laying has not yet been dispensed with, but as soon as the eggs have been laid the nest is discarded, the parents are “locked out,” and the mechanical certainties of the incubator are substituted for parental instinct and affection. We were glad to learn, for the sake of our cherished traditions, that this farming was only of comparatively recent date, a domesticated ostrich being fifteen or twenty years ago unknown. There are now 150,000 of these domesticated birds in the Cape Colony, giving employment to not less than 8,000,000 dollars capital.

Our host informed us that the rearing of ostriches was an extremely difficult operation, as the bird itself, although devouring everything that comes in its way, from a steel fork to a lemon, is very delicate, and liable to injury in all sorts of ways. They are housed at night in circular kraals, surrounded by a low rush fence, the ostrich, despite his fleetness and strength of legs, being unable to mount or jump over any obstacle, and turned out during the day into the veldt in charge of a herd.

An ostrich can give a mighty kick, sufficient to break a man’s leg, but you may easily choke him by throwing your arms around his neck. The bird can then do nothing, for he has no strength in his wings to beat his enemy off, and is only able to use his formidable legs, like a horse, backward. Still, he is an awkward enemy to engage, for it requires some courage to rush up to a bird and embrace him until help arrives, or until you succeed in choking him. Despite the strength of his legs they are easily broken if the bird accidentally strikes them against any obstruction, such as a hanging bramble or a wire fence. He must be carefully watched to prevent such accidents, and it is also necessary to drive him away from any food likely to disagree with him. The feathers are sometimes plucked, and sometimes separated from the body by a sharp curved knife, each feather being taken separately. To do this the fanner drives them into a small inclosure, where there is little room to move about, and insinuates himself in among them, selecting such feathers as have arrived at maturity, and leaving the others to grow. The bird has a fresh crop of feathers every year, and as the prime feathers are very valuable, it may easily be believed that a lucky breeder finds the occupation a very profitable one.

The prettiest sight to see on an ostrich farm is the nursery, where, in a large room, in inclement weather, a score or more of little chicks are attended by a black boy, whom they follow everywhere.

Many farmers are unfortunate and meet with accidents, and thus lose heavily. Sometimes the soil is unfitted to grow the herbage necessary for the ostriches’ food, and there are many accidents they are liable to, such as dangers from prowling jackals or from severe storms. Then there are tigers and vultures to be guarded against. It will thus be seen that the ostrich farmer’s life is not necessarily a happy one. Our stay at Grasslands was made very pleasant by Mr M— and his wife. What with picnics in the wild surrounding country day after day, musical evenings on the moonlit lawn, a week passed away before we knew it.

It was here we noticed Frank had something on her mind which she wished to communicate to us. We said nothing to assist her, although we had a strong suspicion of what was coming. One morning she began: “Well, I want to tell you something.” She didn’t get any further, for we interrupted with “Oh, we know; you are going to marry Mr A—, whom you met on the diamond fields last year, and we are to dance at the wedding. Didn’t you think any one suspected? Why, my dear, it was very plain to us that he was to be your future husband long before you thought so yourself!” After we had congratulated her, we inquired how soon the event was to take place. She proposed having the wedding from the cathedral at Grahamstown, as we had many warm friends living there. So the matter was settled for the time being.

One evening a musical friend of our host, a gentleman from Port Elizabeth, and a violinist of no mean order, joined our circle, and we sat for hours listening to his music. After treating us to some choice selections, he began to play some of the songs of the farm Kafirs, who were listening about in numbers. They had learned to sing at their Sunday-schools in the town such hymns as “Hold the Fort,” etc, and took up the airs and began to sing, after their manner, in a chanting drone. Soon the sound of their own voices and the strains of the violin wrought them up to a high pitch of excitement, and they began to walk around us in a circle, keeping time with their hands, feet and head. Before long the musician, who had a touch of the grotesque in his humour, placed himself at the head of the procession. The music grew faster and faster, and the monotonous tramp of the Kafirs quickened gradually into a wild war dance. The scene which followed baffles description; there was the musician scraping away like an infernal Paganini, producing tones from his fiddle that seemed to excite the Kafirs to a pitch of frenzy. We joined in the singing, and sang at the top of our voices, while the black men, dancing, whirling, shouting, and gesticulating, grew wilder and wilder in their antics. The music suddenly ceasing, they sank exhausted to the ground. It was a weird scene in the moonlight, and one we shall long remember.

Our stay at Grasslands came to an end all too soon, and we looked long and lingeringly at familiar objects as we were driven back to town in Mr M—’s handsome Cape cart behind a dashing span of horses.

Chapter Eighteen.

Soon after our return to Grahamstown we put the finishing touches to everything we had left undone toward making the wedding a joyous occasion. The bride’s white satin dress and veil were made by the hands of a competent dressmaker. There was a dress for Eva, as chief bridesmaid, which consisted of soft trailing drapery, and one for me, who was to take a place in the organ loft, and sing on the occasion. The day arrived, bright and smiling. The wedding bells pealed from the tower of the cathedral. The “sympathising” and well-wishing friends were gathered within when the bridal party arrived. The knot was tied, and as the bells pealed forth the bride passed out on her husband’s arm; an old crone stood in the door and showered blessings on her.

As soon as congratulations were over, the wedding breakfast eaten, and the usual rice and lucky slipper flung after them, they took the train for a short vacation in a mountain hotel on the Zuurberg, whilst we bade good-by to friends around us, and flew away the same night to the sea at Port Elizabeth, five hours distant by rail.

Our rooms in the Hotel Palmerston overlooked the open bay and the long pier or jetty, which runs out some two hundred yards into the sea, and is a favourite promenade for the townspeople. This made an ever-changing picture before us, and our hearts were stirred by the sight of our Stars and Stripes floating at the peak of two barks lying at anchor in Algoa Bay. Port Elizabeth, with its twenty-five thousand inhabitants, seemed different in many respects from any of the towns we had visited. It is a thriving, active, bustling town, with many handsome stores and buildings, three or four banks, a public library, which is in the Town Hall, a building that would grace any metropolis, and several churches of various denominations.

A public park, built on the hill, is one of the especial prides of the place, the original site having been a stony waste, and all the soil having been brought from the valley back of the town. In fact, the whole city stands on a barren, sandy cliff, the business portions lying along the beach, and the residences stretching away up the face of the cliff to “the hill.” There is a strong rivalry existing between Port Elizabeth and Cape Town as to which shall have the lion’s share of the importing trade of the colony. The former is more advantageously situated for the interior trade, but unfortunately has no docks for shipping, and is exposed to the prevailing southeast gales.

Great sums of money have been spent in the construction of a breakwater, which it was fondly hoped would form a refuge for ships during the heavy storms. But before it could be finished it proved itself useless, for the sand would “silt up” on the lee side, until it threatened to form a wide strip of beach between the landing place and the sea. All goods are landed by means of lighters, which are either unloaded at the jetty, or are driven on shore as near as practicable, and moored head and stern, when their contents are taken out by Kafirs, who, stripped almost naked, wade out in twos and threes, and carry the bales and cases on their heads. Sometimes a heavy wave comes in, throwing them off their feet, and causing precious freight to fall into the water and be broken to fragments. The merchant who deals in perishable articles thus runs great risks.

A number of large warehouses lie close to the water’s edge, where all goods, as soon as landed, are received, to be sent up the country by ox-wagon or mule train. This will be done by the railway on its completion. A sea wall has been built a mile along the shore southwest of the jetty, and forms, in fine weather, a most delightful promenade, but, being away from the fashionable quarter of the town, is seldom patronised by the swells.

There are a large number of German residents representing foreign houses in Port Elizabeth, who form a society of their own. They have built for themselves a fine club-house in grey stone, costing many thousands of dollars, which would do honour to any Continental city, and have some handsome residences.

“Society” in Port Elizabeth endeavours to be very select. We attended several social gatherings, and found the citizens, as a rule, large-hearted, hospitable people, always glad to give a hearty and warm reception to the stranger within their gates.

Chapter Nineteen.

One of the most interesting objects in Port E— is the Donkin Memorial, a pyramidal monument erected on the first ledge of the hill by Sir Thomas Donkin to the memory of his wife Elizabeth, who died off this point on ship-board while on her way from India, and after whom the town is named.

A signal station is built by the side of the brick pyramid, and the fine open stretch of green turf which surrounds it and overlooks the sea forms a pleasant promenade at all seasons of the year. There are several well-edited newspapers, the Herald being the most enterprising and the leading one, excelling in matter and printing any of the Cape Town journals, excepting the Cape Times, edited by the genial and popular Mr Murray. Although Port Elizabeth has not the fine harbour and docks of Cape Town or the beautiful suburban surroundings, still a more energetic spirit exists in the business community, and the style of entertaining is on a far more liberal scale than in the latter place.

As in most South African towns, a place is set aside for the black people at the upper end of the town.

There they live, coming down to the stores and beach in the morning, and returning to their respective kraals at night. Several tribes are represented among them, and they form separate kraals, keeping themselves as distinct as though they were of a different species, although it would trouble most people to tell the difference between a Gaika and a Fingo, or a Zulu.

The Fingoes, who have in all the Kafir wars been the white man’s ally, are cordially hated by the other Kafirs, who fight with them continually. The quarrel on one occasion during the latter part of our stay assumed such a threatening aspect that the town was alarmed for the consequences. For nearly a week not a Kafir came to the town, and it was rumoured that the Gaikas had grievously routed the Fingoes and were preparing to make a night raid on the town to massacre the inhabitants. It was at a time when the whole country was disturbed, there being two or three tribes at war with the colonists on the eastern borders. The report was then easily credited, and every available measure was taken for the protection of the inhabitants and to prevent surprise, the local volunteer corps being under arms for several days.

One Sunday night we in the town could hear them singing their peculiar war chant, and such wonderful precision have they in time that the mighty chorus from the thousands of voices came down to us like the beating of a great heart. The effect of their deep melodious voices, as they rolled out on the moonlit midnight air in a great wave of sound, was weird and fearsome to a degree. We could not tell whether their fury might not rise to such a pitch as to send them rushing down upon us like naked fiends, yelling, stabbing, and spearing. But they seemed to be satisfied with a little bloodshed among themselves, and the Gaikas and Fingoes, after a few days, resumed their work on the beach and in the store side by side.

But the alarm brought home to the colonists the danger existing in their midst. The black population outnumbers the white throughout the colony by almost six to one. In the town it is quite three to one, and a general uprising under an intelligent head could not but result in the total annihilation of every white face in the country. The colonists never seem to think such a contingency likely, relying on the internal dissensions between the different tribes and the moral force the white man seems to possess over the untutored black man.

After remaining in Port Elizabeth seven months, we held a family conclave and came to the conclusion that we did not wish to leave the country until we had tried the climate of the Orange Free State, which we had heard lauded to the skies. So we bade adieu to Port Elizabeth, thinking it a very pleasant place to visit, and taking a parting look at the sea, we were whirled away to Grahamstown. From here we left by railroad for Cradock, a town some sixty miles east. Like Grahamstown, Cradock is the centre of a large wool-gathering district, and is laid out in boulevards and watered streets. It is situated on the Great Fish River, over which there is a fine stone bridge. It is at least forty feet above the surface of the water, which, at the time of our visit, flowed slowly between its arches in a sluggish stream, some fifty feet wide. Several years ago, after heavy rains up country, the river became suddenly so fierce, rapid, and swollen that the whole structure, solid as it was, was swept away by the first wave, which is described as advancing, with little or no warning, like a solid wall of water, fifty feet high. There is a Dutch Reformed Church, a well-built Town Hall, and a few houses and stores, with a population of three to four thousand inhabitants.

We had experienced so many discomforts in our previous journeys by coach that we resolved here to have no more of it. So we provided ourselves with a comfortable and roomy Cape cart and four strong horses to make the journey up country, and we were prepared for once to take things easy. When travelling by coach one has no alternative between pressing right on, or waiting over in a dreary village for a week, until the next coach passes through. But with your own cart you can do as you like, going or staying, as pleases the fancy.

Passing some of the villages we had been through by coach, in a few days we had reached the Orange Free State, more frequently called simply “Free State.” Our introduction to this thinly populated upland region was not calculated to put us in the best of humours, either with the country or our tired selves. We remained long enough to find out there were many things of interest about it. The Free State is embraced within the boundaries of the Vaal and Orange Rivers, and was first settled by the Dutch farmers, who had emigrated from the Cape Colony; the farms are very large, and by no means all occupied.

About nine o’clock one night we stopped to give our horses a rest at a miserable house built of mud bricks. On either side of the door was a small window, in one of which was a sputtering candle. The house was occupied by Dutch people, but as it did not look sufficiently inviting to tempt me out of my seat even for a change, some coffee was brought out by a daughter of the family; a girl of sixteen. In the moonlight her face was very pleasing, and on asking her a question she answered in such pure English that we asked where she learned to speak so correctly. She replied that she had learned at the English school in Bloemfontein, called the “Home,” belonging to the Church of England. She was so bright and chatty, yet modest withal, and her surroundings so wretched and uninviting, that I thought the educational institutions of B— must be something superior to those usually found in the colony, which, on further knowledge, proved to be true.

When we reached the brow of the hill overlooking the town of Bloemfontein, we saw with pleasure, under the bright moonlight, the town filled with fine trees and gardens. As we drove through we passed large buildings of both church and state which would not be excelled in any town of the United States of double the size.

Chapter Twenty.

We at last reached a cool, inviting-looking hotel, and we thoroughly enjoyed that well-served dinner laid before us on clean linen and bright silver, the delicious viands seeming all the better for our temporary deprivation. If any one troubled with dyspepsia should travel for three months through Africa, and live as the people do, never hurrying, and occasionally getting a jolting in a long coach ride, his would soon be a forgotten malady.

Bloemfontein, being the seat of government, is by far the largest, best, and most important town in the Free State. It is a very pretty town, well planted with trees, the streets wide, the houses well built, and an air of cleanliness pervading everything. It nestles at the base of a long, low mountain, one of a range of hills that fade away in the distance and form a pretty picture in the red and golden tints thrown by the rays of the setting sun. It looks like a pretty toy town.

Many of the leading men both here and elsewhere through the country are Germans, and excellent colonists they make. To be sure, we found a number of adventurers of the same nationality of a totally different sort, agitators and demagogues. There are, indeed, many who say that it is owing to the German element in the Transvaal that the dissensions existing in the country are directly owing. But the greater number are good citizens, readily adopting the country and state in which they live as their own, and training up their children to protect its interests. An enterprising German is the leading dry goods merchant in this upper country. His storerooms were stocked with merchandise, from hardware to the finest laces. His home was in the midst of well-kept grounds, laid out like a park, in which were planted many Australian gum trees. These are trees which, with a little care, grow thriftily and to a great height wherever they are planted in Africa.

On one of our drives in the neighbouring country we drove to the farm of the merchant, and chanced to meet him there. He had planted hundreds of young trees on his large farm, mere saplings. We remarked, “Why do you pay so much attention to the planting of these slips of trees? They grow so slowly they will never give much shade during the lifetime of any of us.”

“Well, well,” he replied, “the children of the next generation may come out here from B— and enjoy their picnics under the trees I have planted for them.” We found the same spirit among most of the German land-owners. They propose for the sake of their children to make no mistakes.

Among the first settlers were German missionaries, who have in time amassed wealth and founded schools, built churches, and assisted in making the laws of this successful little republic. The town is largely given over to educational and religious establishments. The English Episcopal and Roman Catholic churches have each a bishopric and a cathedral. The former is very active, particular attention being paid to the college and schools attached to it. One of the institutions connected with the English church is the “Home,” carried on by the sisters of the church, who come from England to assist in the schools and hospitals, most of them being ladies of fortune and culture. The good that has been effected through them and their institutions cannot be computed by figures. They dress like the French sisters of the Roman Catholic Church. Although every now and then one of them marries, as a rule they do not marry. They live lives of strict self-denial.

The Roman Catholic Church is a large structure, with a convent and school attached. We listened to an excellent sermon here during the visit of the Bishop, and heard some good music, as the tenor brother had a fine voice, and travelled, it was said, with the Bishop. The nuns’ voices were very sweet, one especially having such a sad, plaintive tone that it made the listener wish to see the face hidden behind the grating.

Many English visitors go to Bloemfontein for the benefit of their health, but they do not look so robust nor gain strength as quickly as persons who have been six months in the Transvaal. The fine climate of that country, if sought in time, is almost a certain cure for any lung disease or asthmatic trouble. The dry climate of this upland region cannot be too highly extolled, and the best way to gain the full benefit of it is to try the primitive mode of travelling by ox-wagon. This, however, should be done as comfortably as possible, and during the dry season. The hotels in Bloemfontein and the Transvaal are so superior in point of comfort and table to those in the colony that they are greatly appreciated by the tired invalid. Our hotel parlour had a fine Brussels carpet on the floor, tinted walls, comfortable and handsome furniture, a Bimsmead piano, and lace curtains.

During the several hot months we were there we had an opportunity of studying the characteristics of the Dutch Boer, who is met with in this part of the country in his primitive state. The Africander Boer is usually a tall, lanky, narrow-chested individual, with black hair, straggling beard and whiskers, cautious, suspicious, and undemonstrative, his countenance expressing little imagination and his body great physical endurance. He is never quarrelsome if it can be avoided; he is as shrewd at a bargain as any Scotchman, and in all his dealings displays an odd mixture of cunning and credulity. His contradictory history, however, makes it difficult to determine whether he is a brave man or the reverse.

He is usually dressed in a yellow cord jacket, vest and trousers, with a flannel shirt, and veldt schoen (low shoes of untanned leather with no heels), the whole surmounted by a broad-brimmed slouch hat with a green lining. When he wishes to be particularly fine, as, for instance, when he goes a-courting, he sticks an ostrich feather in his hat, squeezes his long feet into a pair of patent leather congress gaiters, and encases his legs in showy leather leggings. He then mounts a horse that “kop-spiels,” gets into a new saddle with a sheepskin saddle cloth, and imagines himself just lovely!

Chapter Twenty One.

The language is the queerest jumble of Dutch, Kafir, and colonial war shouts, which, when spoken by a fluent Dutchman, sounds more like the tearing of strong linen than anything else. It certainly is a fine language with which to urge on the drooping spirits of a tired team of oxen. As a class the Boers are extremely strict in religious observances. The periodical “Nachtmaal,” literally “night meal” or “sacrament,” held every three months at the large and fine Dutch church, they attend faithfully.

The farmers will pack their whole families into a wagon, and leaving the homestead to take care of itself, will “trek” into town, where some of them will occupy little clay houses of two rooms, or camp outside until the services are over, when they will “in-span” and return home. They always take advantage of these visits to do their shopping. At such times the stores wake up and put out their smartest calicoes and their yellowest saddles with which to tempt the wary Boer and Boeress. It is interesting to enter the village at night where a Nachtmaal is to be held next day. There is almost a second village of tent-covered wagons all around it. The various fires have each a group of men and women sitting round it, while in the shadows lie the slumbering oxen and chattering “boys.”

After remaining at the hotel until we were tired of hotel life, we secured board at a farmhouse about two hours’ ride from Bloemfontein.

The owner of this farm worked incessantly to improve his several thousand acres, which included some very fine land. The land showed what industry can do by simply keeping on day after day. The farmer had no white help which could be depended on; there were many Kafirs, but none he could rely on.

Water is the great need, and although, by digging deep enough anywhere through the country, water is reached, not a single windmill did we see in factory or on farm to aid in pumping water. For months the dry season prevails, and our farmer, in order to be independent in his water supply for his many cattle, sheep, and Angora goats and ostriches, had thrown up banks of earth around three large dams.

The wife was a large, comfortable woman, the mother of six children, the eldest thirteen years of age; when she sat down to rest they seemed to swarm over her, but they did not ruffle her temper any more than so many flies. She superintended and sometimes cooked all the meals; fourteen people often sat down to dinner, and three courses were served, usually by hideous Hottentot girls, dressed in bright calico dresses, coloured beads, and ribbons. These girls, dressed thus, consider themselves irresistible. The Kafir servants have to be told each day what to do; they have no memory for the simplest household duties. Their huts are some distance from the house, and if a notion seizes them to go to a wedding or a funeral, or to have a gossip with some stray Kafir, they will not come near the house, and the wife does the work alone. It was a wonder how she got through her work so easily, for she supplied a hotel in B—, which had thirty boarders, with butter, made the children’s every-day clothes, besides attending to many other household duties. Yet she was no light-footed woman, but had an avoirdupois of two hundred and fifty pounds, which is not an unusual weight for an Africander woman of thirty years.

When coming into the house on a visit, whether one is acquainted or not, it is the custom to shake hands with every white person present. An English acquaintance drove to the farm to call upon us, and in thoughtlessness left without walking to the barn to shake hands with the farmer. The farmer was so indignant at this affront that nothing would make him overlook it. We shook many a hard and horny hand of traders who passed that way and remained to a meal. Some of these never looked up from their food or made a remark until they took their departure, when they shook hands again and uttered some unintelligible Dutch word.

By living with such thrifty and pleasant people as this farmer and wife one learns what patience means with dumb, lazy servants, and how much can be accomplished by keeping steadily at work, doing little at a time. That is the way in which the Dutch people have made a success of their little republic. They are satisfied with small things, and move slowly. It thus happens that few mistakes occur in their governmental affairs, and that there are few bank failures and consequent suicides.

Their ancestors must have been splendid fellows, for their deeds proclaim it. But long years of inactivity and the habits of intermarriage have weakened the race sadly. The descendants of the men who were foremost in every land are now content to sit on the same farm from generation to generation, caring for nothing, and having no ambition beyond raising a larger family than their neighbour.

The “vrouws,” or wives, are either very thin and bony, or tall and “massive.” They dress in black, full skirts that skip the ground when they walk, and black poke bonnets with thick veils, which preserve the complexion from tan and freckle. They have really fine complexions. One farmer near Bloemfontein boasts of a family of twenty-three children, all by one wife. Fancy all the cousins and the aunts in the next generation! There will certainly be many marriages among these cousins. So much has there been of this habit of marrying in families that one frequently, especially in the older parts of the Cape Colony, finds whole districts where every farmer has the same surname, and is only distinguished by his given name. These so quickly give out that the good people are forced to adopt the old-fashioned way of coining surnames, and a man is known as Hans Meyer, C’s son, or Pieter Van Dyk, Karl’s son, and so on.

But there is a reverse side to the picture. We meet some fine men among the Boers, President John Brand being as fine a specimen of a pioneer statesman as any one would wish to find. The government of the republic consists of the President and the Legislature, called the Volksraad, elected every four years.

Chapter Twenty Two.

The President, who had been elected so often that the office promised, so far as he was concerned, to be a perpetual one, is a hearty, genial gentleman, beloved by all who know him. He is a native of Cape Town, and received his education in England. The welfare of the little republic, over which he has so long and so wisely ruled, is the dearest object of his heart.

We met the President and his wife, who invited us to call at their residence, a large, two-storey “White House,” as it is called, surrounded by extensive grounds in the prettiest spot on the outskirts of the town. We were told by residents that our visit would be very formal, but it did not prove to be so. We found them both most charming and affable people. A luncheon of delicacies and choice fruits from their own orchard was laid for us, and Mrs Brand, or “Lady Brand,” as she is more generally called, was so bright and witty that an hour passed away very pleasantly. She is a large, striking-looking woman of noble features, and with a mind capable of assisting her husband in matters of state. Her best sympathies are with her people, and no one deplores more than she the lamentable ignorance to be found in the remote districts. It rests with the people themselves to remove this ignorance; excellent boarding-schools, both government and private, are established in every village throughout the country. She has unbounded confidence in the capabilities of the Dutch to govern themselves. Certainly, if the country can produce more such people as her noble husband and herself, they will have no difficulty in finding a leader.

The President seemed greatly interested in us as being Americans, and asked us question after question about our customs and form of government. A special session of the Volksraad was called while we were in the town, to discuss the condition of the Transvaal, which was now in open revolt, and we had an opportunity of seeing the representative men of the country. They came to town in all sorts of vehicles, European and American carriages, Cape carts and ox-wagons. The many vehicles, all drawn by handsomely matched horses, made the town very bright and gay.

The men who gathered together were, many of them, aliens by birth, but all showed signs of more than average intelligence. The question they had come to discuss, viz, what should be the attitude of their country in the present state of affairs in the Transvaal, was important, for the people of that territory were united to them by many ties. News was brought by post cart that the Boers in the Transvaal, who had long wished to govern themselves, had risen up against English rule, had come riding into Potchefstrom from all the country around, and had taken possession of the town. There we were in the midst of people closely related to the Transvaal, which was but a few days’ ride from us.

As news came that Pretoria, so isolated, was in a state of siege, and that English troops were coming out as fast as the steamers could bring them to put down the Boer rebellion, things began to look interesting. In addition to the troubles in the Transvaal, the Cape Colony was also embroiled in a war with the Basutos, a warlike tribe occupying a large tract of country east of the Free State. What with war with the Basutos on the one side of us, and the Boers on the other, South Africa was not precisely a country to which one felt the Millennium would soon come.

Fighting against the natives, either Zulu or Basuto, is an entirely different kind of warfare from meeting the deadly aim of the Boer on his own soil. In this dry, cruel country, with its natural fastnesses and dry river beds, the Boer from his boyhood wanders, gun in hand, trained to handle it as easily as the English soldier handles his cane when not on duty. When news came in that every officer of a fine English company of brave fellows had been shot, picked off like birds on a fence, a wave of horror swept over the hearts of those friendly to the British flag. The English troops went on nothing daunted, and when fighting on one of the heights were beating their foe, who was turning to flee. At this critical moment they discovered that their leader had neglected to bring sufficient ammunition up the mountain-side. When the Boers saw the situation, and rushed back upon them, the brave English fellows, in their desperation, picked up stones and threw them at their foe, and then, rather than be taken prisoners, jumped down a declivity of a hundred feet to effect their escape.

I quote a descriptive account of the engagement at “Lange’s Nek” from the special war correspondent of the Natal Witness:—

“No unfair means were taken by the Boers yesterday. We attempted to take the hill, and in our endeavours to reach the summit they repulsed us. This is the whole thing in a nutshell; men who were in the engagement stated that the Boers had entrenched themselves, and this is more than probable when it is considered that natural trenches must abound in the positions they occupied. It was also represented that they had numbers of Kafir allies to assist them. This may or may not be true. I was posted near the cannon, and although I had a magnificent view from that point, I observed no Kafir force whatever. It is perfectly true that many of the Boers used fowling-pieces loaded with buckshot, and they did fearful damage in wounding men, but whether this can be regarded as unfair when rockets are used on our side, I leave any one to decide. Mere words are tame to express the manner in which the gallant 58th behaved on this occasion. Their conduct throughout, even against overwhelming odds, and the knowledge acquired too late of the enemy’s position being impregnable, left nothing to be desired.

“The attempt to eulogise these men seems like mockery; their deeds speak for them far more eloquently than words can. So true and deadly was the Boer aim that Colonel Deane, in command of the 58th, fell almost immediately upon fire being opened. Officers and men were shot down in every direction. Every volley of the Boers carried its fearful freight too true, and thinned our already meagre force. Still they held on to the last, hoping against hope, and dying martyrs. Every man on the field yesterday was more than a soldier—he was a hero. The word ‘Retreat!’ was at last given, but oh, what a retreat! Men walking over their dead comrades’ bodies, ever and anon another addition being made to those already down—wounded men imploring that their rifles should not be thrown into the enemy’s hands.

“The sight was grand, but awful, and those who witnessed the engagement at Lange’s Nek yesterday are likely to carry the impression to their graves. Had it not been for the shells, which unquestionably created great havoc among the Boer ranks at this period, few, very few, of the 58th would have survived that day. On reaching the foot of the hill the 60th Rifles were drawn up to protect their retreat, and, if possible, induce the enemy to follow up. The Boers, however, retired to their position under cover of a ravine.”

This was what the fighting was like; it seemed more like a massacre of the gallant Englishmen than a battle. But what seemed most astonishing to the English population was that these quiet, peaceful people, who nobody thought would fight, rose up in a day as one man, without any such purpose being known to the English!

The colony of South Africa is always in a flourishing condition when war breaks out. Then English gold and foreign speculators come to its shores; everything is at fever heat; towns are built and beautified. Afterward comes the reaction; the breath of life and vigour dies out, leaving the colony hopelessly in debt. The colony then remains a drain upon the exchequer of England, which pays out thousands of pounds for the war “epidemics” that every few years break out between the native and the English, or the Boer and the English.

These wars yield nothing in return to England but mourning hearts at home for brave sons who lie buried under African soil.

Chapter Twenty Three.

Before leaving Bloemfontein we met two fellow passengers of ours on the Trojan. They were brothers, and one was so ill that we never expected to see him again in this life, when lo! here he was the picture of health, entirely owing, he said, to the wonderful effects of the climate. By living and travelling for over six months in an ox-wagon, he declared, he had taken a new lease of life. Despite the fact of our lives having been insured in America, we thought that a new lease would be a comfortable thing to have by us. So we made up our minds to try the experiment.

It was not an easy thing to find a wagon which we could hire for the trip, but fortune favoured us. Mr A— met an English friend, Mr Heeler, from Pretoria, who had, like many others, managed to escape with his portable property and his wagon before the Boers beleaguered the town. He was undecided what to do until the difficulties were over, and soon consented, in consideration of a fair daily hire, to place his wagon and span of sixteen oxen at our disposal.

We provided ourselves with serviceable clothing, and were each measured by the local cobbler for a pair of strong, thick, laced shoes. But when the boy brought them in, we gazed at them for a moment, and then politely told him that some mistake must have been made, for none of our family wore number eight! They were monstrous.

But we were to leave the following day, and had to take them. We stuffed the toes and overlapped the leather when tying them up. We found, before we had been many days on the road, that our cowhide boots could brave anything, and were infinitely better for what we wanted than a stylish, neatly fitting shoe.

Laying in provisions for the wagon was like victualling a ship for a voyage. We laughed at the formidable list of canned goods that Mr A— had provided for our journey. “Good gracious!” we cried, “we can never eat all that;” but he assured us we should, and added that he expected to keep us provided with fresh meat with his gun and an occasional sheep bought from some Boer farmer. He had, however, to provide against failure in both expectations. Game might be scarce, and there are some Boers who will not sell anything to an Englishman.

Our wagon was twenty-three feet from end to end, and four feet and a half wide. With some willow wands and heavy wagon sail an excellent tent was made, thoroughly waterproof, and divided with a canvas partition into two compartments. Our trunks were packed on the floor, over which the beds were suspended on a cartel formed from laced strips of raw ox-hide.

Our stores were packed in boxes, which were securely fastened around and under the wagon, together with kettles, pans, and dishes of enamelled iron. A folding-table, several camp-stools and chairs completed our equipments, and on a muddy but sunshiny day we left our hotel, bidding good-by to our friends, and climbed on to our perches on the cartel. Four black boys, a maid, and two dogs formed our establishment. One of the large boys took the trek tow, a loose rein on the horns of the two leading oxen, and another the long-handled, long-thonged whip. There was a wild yell and a screech from them all, and the oxen started forward with a lurch that threatened to dislodge every article we had taken such pains to secure. The wagon slowly rose out of the muddy bed into which it had sunk during the past week’s rain, and getting into the road, moved at a brisk pace along.

Still brisk as it was the pace was only a walk. We thought we should never make the two or three hundred miles to Queenstown, at that pace, by the route we should take. We learned, however, that though slow it was sure. A team of oxen intelligently driven, and rested at proper intervals, will make thirty miles a day, week after week, over any sort of country, a rate of travelling that horses cannot exceed when the distance is long. At the end of three hours the oxen were outspanned to graze and the boys prepared our midday meal. The tablecloth was laid, and that tablecloth was the chief source of our solicitude throughout the trip. Oh the delight of that first meal! everything tasted so sweet. Were we not free, free as air, the sky and limitless veldt the ceiling, walls, and floor of our dining-room, with not a creature in sight? Our caterer had forgotten nothing that was necessary to make our meals model entertainments.

After an hour and a half the oxen were slowly driven up to the wagon and each one took his own proper place, seeming to know his own yoke. We trekked on over the same level plain, but as evening drew near the sky assumed a threatening aspect, and it was thought prudent to outspan and tie up in order to prepare for the reception of the impending storm. Before the yokes were removed the rain came pouring down in torrents. The boys dug a trench around the wagon under which they got for shelter, while we, safe under our waterproof tent, peered out from time to time at the storm raging around us.

Presently lightning began to flash and the thunder to roar, while the rain came down in sheets, seeming to transform the open country into a vast lake. Oh, those dreadful African thunderstorms! We thought We should never see worse storms than those of our Western prairies, but they were infants in strength compared to those in Africa.

The storm grew fiercer and fiercer, and the lightning seemed to come from the heavens in all directions in molten streams of fire. The road was full of ironstone, a peculiarity of the uplands of Africa; this seemed to attract the lightning, and the air appeared to be full of fire, accompanied by an ear-piercing crackling and booming that shook the earth. The atmosphere was black, and the darkness was intensified by the continual flashes, when suddenly there was a crash and a deafening roar that made us think the heavens had fallen. Stunned for a moment we each looked at the other, expecting that the wagon had been struck, and a great stir and lowing among the trembling oxen increased our fears.

We sat for half an hour listening to the thunder muttering fainter and fainter as it rolled away in the distance. The voice of A— summoned us from the tent. To our surprise we found the sky clear and no trace of the storm in the heavens, but an inky cloud disappearing far away on the horizon. About fifty yards ahead of the wagon was a large hole in the road that had been torn up by the fury of that thunderbolt which had so terrified us.

Chapter Twenty Four.

These African thunderstorms occur at different seasons in different localities, and everywhere they are terrible. They do more harm by their violence than the rain which accompanies them does good. During their continuance (fortunately they never last long) the water comes down in veritable sheets, rushing down slopes and mountain-sides in a resistless flood, swelling rivers in a few moments from ditches into torrents.

A storm in the mountains at times fills the streams leading out from them to such an extent that with scarcely any warning the waters come tumbling down in cataracts, the rivers rising to a height of forty feet in as many minutes. A friend of ours with his partner had been trading for years in the Zambesi country, and was bringing down a large quantity of furs, feathers, and ivory to the colonial market. On reaching the banks of a little river, remarking that it was running somewhat swifter than usual, they entered it with their wagon, without any thought of danger.

Suddenly, as they reached the middle, the waters came rolling down with a roar like Niagara, sweeping away the results of two years’ labour in a moment; they barely escaped with their lives. We asked our friend what he did at the time. “Why,” said he, “we tried to express the situation in words, but we could not do it justice, so we just sat down on two ant-hills, laughing at one another and our luck.” Several similar cases occurred during our stay in the upland country. A coach with four passengers was swept away in a moment while fording a swelling river at night, the driver only escaping.

The boys were soon at work coaxing up a fire, with the help of some dry wood we had in the wagon, and coffee was made. The meal was rather dismal, for night had fallen, and the boys were looking anxiously at the condition of the road, and the hopeless state of the wagon wheels, which had sunk into the sloppy turf almost up to the hubs. There was no use trying to go on that night, so putting out our swinging lantern, we lay down to sleep.

At daylight we were awakened by the jolting of the wagon, and found that our bodyguard had inspanned, and, having dug us out of the muddy prison, had succeeded in getting us under way. Hastily making our toilets with difficulty, we were thrown from side to side of the wagon at every lurch; we jumped out and walked, finding the exercise preferable to the jarring of the vehicle. Indeed, we walked most of the journey, and were better for it. Enjoying an excellent breakfast, which again put us in good spirits, we were beginning to think we should have a clear day, but another spell of rain at ten o’clock came on. It continued raining all day, with short intervals of sunshine. These were taken advantage of to make short treks.

At four o’clock, as we were sitting in the fore part of our chariot looking out at the drizzling rain, the front wheels slowly sank and nearly disappeared in a deep mud hole, bringing the steaming oxen to a full stop. In vain the driver cracked his long whip and yelled; we were hopelessly stuck. I was sitting in front when the accident occurred, and jumped out, landing in a deep mud hole. We slept that night at an angle of nearly forty-five degrees, and when morning broke it was welcome, as it brought with it some bright sunshine and prospect of clearing weather.

It took five hours and the effort of the combined lungs of the party upon the oxen, together with the inventive genius and experience of all the members of our staff, to get us out of that mud hole. They outspanned and inspanned three times before the wagon stirred, and a hole had been dug big enough to bury us all in before the wheels were released. At last, with a whoop and a yell and a groan, it was hoisted out of its oozy prison and drawn onto the veldt, when the oxen were outspanned and breakfast was eaten.

During several successive days, while travelling in the Orange Free State, we passed hundreds of huge ant-hills. One might say there are villages of these; they are formed together in thousands, they disappear for a space, and are again met with. Some of them measure ten feet and more in circumference, and are between three and four feet high, and are filled with black and yellow ants. The clay becomes hard from the sun’s rays. An ox-wagon driver hews out an ant-hill forming an oven, in which he cooks his bread, the clay burning like a slow fire, and with an intense heat.

From this time on the weather was delightful; with the exception of one thunderstorm it continued so during the six weeks we remained in the wagon. We soon forgot the unpleasant experiences of the first few days. In forty-eight hours the sun had dried the road, so that travelling was comparatively easy, and we passed over the level plain, arriving in Smithfield on the fifth morning after leaving Bloemfontein, where we outspanned on a plateau adjoining the village. We here met with a lady friend from the diamond fields, who invited us to visit her for a few days; but we had now become attached to our gypsy life, and preferred our own fireside.

Smithfield is a fair-sized village of the usual Free State kind, possessing a few fine churches, a few streets of one-storey roomy houses, and several stores. When our tented home began to move along the road away from the village we trudged alongside of it as happy and healthy as school-girls, and feeling as free from restraint as the birds.

Chapter Twenty Five.

Three miles from Smithfield we came to the banks of the Caledon River, which we found greatly swollen by the rains, and did not consider prudent to cross until two of the boys had waded through. The water came up above their waists, and we climbed into our places, and descended the steep bank leading to the drift (or ford). It requires management and considerable shouting and activity on the part of the wagon drivers to cross a river. The bank is always precipitous, and the break has to be screwed up hard to make the descent, and released immediately the water is reached. At times the oxen stick in the middle of the drift, which is often rocky and full of great boulders, and it is difficult to get them on.

When we reached the bottom of the slope, the leading oxen were already in the middle of the stream, with the water nearly over their backs. With a plunge the wagon took the water, and we were glad to find that the drift had a tolerably firm, sandy foundation, so that we were not tumbled about much. The leaders were now half-way up the opposite bank, and the driver, mounting the footboard in front of the wagon, gave one of his banshee howls and a simultaneous crack of his whip over the heads of the team. This started them into a trot, and the impetus was not lost until we were all high and dry on the farther bank.

The water had come up to the floor of the wagon, but for only a moment, so that nothing was injured. The only casualty sustained was the loss of a bright tin pail which had been floated off its hook, and went sailing down with a jaunty air to the tune, “Won’t have to work any more.”

After crossing the river we branched off considerably to the right. Our way lay for some distance along the banks of the river, and the country was thickly studded with stunted thorn and furze bushes. Some doves, which always abound in these thorn bushes, were shot, and they formed a most welcome addition to our dinner that day. Outspanning nearly all the hot afternoon, we made a long trek in the lovely moonlight until nearly twelve o’clock before “tying up.” This is a plan always adopted by transport riders, the wagon drivers who make it their business to carry goods from town to town. They lie to nearly all day, and travel late in the afternoon and night, finding, by following this plan, that their oxen can get through more work and keep in better condition.

The Hottentot and Kafir boys who lead them seem to be able to see in the dark. They will lead the oxen, without stopping, over dangerous roads where it is pitch dark. The wagon was often in motion before we awoke, but so accustomed had we become to the jolting of our bed that it did not wake us from our deep sleep. When we awoke we would find breakfast prepared in a pleasant, grassy country, and the fire blazing merrily.

It is not to be wondered at that the Kafirs are such happy, contented mortals, for the sun, of which they get so much, gives more life and vitality than any medicine. One afternoon the boys sighted a herd of spring-bok some distance away in the veldt. They were feeding in a depression in the plain about seven hundred yards away, and our hunter, sighting his rifle, carefully rested it on an ant-hill. At the sound of the rifle the whole troop started away with a bound, breaking into a gallop and disappearing in a cloud of dust far off in the veldt, leaving one of them lying on the ground with his feet in the air. But he was only wounded, and before the boys reached him he struggled to his feet and tried to limp off. Down went the rifleman on his knee, there was a moment of suspense and another report, and the buck was bowled over with a bullet in his neck. He was brought to the wagon in triumph, and slung by his feet underneath, we girls being as much excited as if a tiger had been slain.

Moving on one morning before daylight, and crossing a fine bridge over the Orange River, our oxen were unyoked hard by a number of transport wagons. When we arrived the transport riders and their boys were all asleep, but as day wore on they began to get about, and came over to our wagon, mightily curious to know who we were, where we were going, where we lived, and highly amused at the idea of any one travelling in an ox-wagon for pleasure.

Chapter Twenty Six.

We soon settled down to the routine of our ox-wagon life, and very pleasant we found it. When the boys would outspan and get things in readiness for meals, our hunger from the open-air life would be so great that we could scarcely wait while they made the fire for coffee. Like all South African travellers, we consumed a prodigious quantity of coffee. Besides drinking it at every meal, it would be prepared several times during the day, as we wanted it.

The Dutch people drink it morning, noon, and night, keeping it always on the fire for their Dutch friends who pass near them. The manner in which coffee is made in the veldt is: first to boil the water in the kettle, then pour it on the coffee ready in another kettle; it is then passed back and forth a few times and the coffee is made; a few drops of cold water poured into the kettle will soon settle the grounds. We found the Dutch coffee very good.

Our meals consisted of buck meat, cooked in all sorts of ways, and sometimes a pair of doves or partridges; we had our canned goods to fall back upon, and we had also the vegetables of the country, which were carried in the wagon. We lived most contentedly. One day we suffered greatly from want of water. We travelled many hours, hoping to find a stream and fill the water-cans.

A Kafir will find a spring of water in places where a white man would never think of looking for it, but that day there was no water to be found, and we positively suffered from thirst. The sun beat down on us all fiercer than ever, it seemed, and it was not till late in the afternoon that we came to a small muddy stream. The mud did not frighten us, and we hurried the boys into making the coffee.

One of our boys had been in the jail at Smithfield, for some petty misdemeanour, and was discharged in order that he might come with our staff. He was a raw Kafir about fourteen years of age, with a comical, laughing face, which peered up at us oddly as he sat on the footboard of the wagon. He had a funny little squeaking voice which at times would play him tricks; when apparently about to come forth in a manly roar, it would suddenly result in a shrill, piping sound, which would throw all the servants into fits of laughter. He used to perch himself surreptitiously on the disselboem, against the orders of “the baas,” in the cool of the evening, as we jolted along in the moonlight, and croon out in Kafir, awfully out of tune, “Sweet bye and bye,” a favourite song of the Sunday-school Kafirs. The missionaries’ service with the Kafir, it may be said, is mostly a service of song. We soon became tired of his one tune, and sang it for him correctly; but he evidently considered that our musical education had been neglected, for directly we had finished he started again, singing it in his own way.

On very hot days we used to contrive an awning on the shady side of the wagon, under which we would sit and read or make lazy attempts at sewing. But the silence of the stilly veldt, broken only by the hum of some buzzing insect, would more often put us to sleep. If our existence was not one of contentment, then there is no such thing. We became enamoured of the life and had no desire to hasten on our journey. Some of the happiest days of our lives were spent during this trip, free from society, anxiety, and propriety. There was no one to dress for, nor to come suddenly upon us and disturb our calm existence. When three girls make up their minds to be contented under all difficulties, difficulties disappear. They can make their surroundings pretty and can make the rough fare attractive. If they have been blessed with a good mother, who has trained them for domestic life, they know how to contrive little accessories which will give a relish to the plainest fare.

Little trouble was experienced with our servants. They were always laughing and looking at our mode of life with the interest of a big dog; they were ludicrously stupid, but they were never sulky or impudent. Our wagon owner and servants slept on the ground wrapped in blankets or “karosses,” infinitely preferring that to sleeping on a cartel under the wagon. When we suggested snakes, they only laughed. These fur robes or “karosses” are light, and when thrown on the ground prevent the ants from reaching those asleep on them. They are brought from the interior, beyond the Zambesi River, by the traders. They are beautifully sewed together by the natives, with thread made from the sinews of wild animals. These furs are beautiful, being the skins of leopard, silver fox, jackal, and wolf, and many other animals. They are very comfortable for travelling on cool nights.

This peaceful region is filled with reptiles and wild animals, but we saw very few of them.

Our boys would often hold wayside receptions for natives in twos and threes, coming from goodness knows where, and others, appearing from the shadows beyond, would surround them, talking rapidly in vowels and strange sounds, and looking on hungrily at the meals being prepared.

As we outspanned near by a farm during the journey, a farm Kafir, with a look and bearing of a prince of the soil, dressed to the knees in a coffee sack, with holes made for arms and head, approached. He stood talking to the boys in an attitude of utter grace. His calm scrutiny of us all was very amusing; just as observing and curious as any city-bred man. He went over to the cactus hedge and cut a pailful of cactus apples. We could not handle one without having our hands pierced with hundreds of the little briers found on them. This Kafir sharpened the end of a long stick, and then stuck it into an apple, and after dexterously peeling it with a sharp knife, he offered it to us, as if it had been a bonbon. We were very thirsty, and we found these cactus apples delicious.

The boys had two dogs with them. One, “Satan,” a forbidding-looking brute, was the remains of what had been a fine Russian water dog, but life in Africa had not agreed with either his appearance or temper. He was a disagreeable brute, but after a time got amiable enough to approach the wagon. Poor little “Stumpy,” the other dog, was the queerest, quaintest little mongrel that ever lived. He would wriggle his little body most absurdly in vain attempts to wag the apology for a tail which had given him his name. If we took any notice of him, he would go mad with delight. He did not know whether to bark, or jump, or gallop, or dance, or stand on his head, and he would try to do them all at once.

One lazy, hot afternoon Eva and I made a wager as to which of us could coax Stumpy to come to her; we went in opposite directions and called him. The poor little dog’s pitiable embarrassment as to which he should follow, his evident dread of losing either or both his friends by favouring one or neither, was very funny. He would go a little way to Eva, then back to me, then stop, then to Eva, then to me, until finally, after attempting to split himself into halves and go to both, he gave it up in despair, and just lay down midway between us and howled, refusing at last to attempt, what so many men have failed to do, to please two women at the same time.

Chapter Twenty Seven.

Leaving the Orange River at Bethulie Bridge, we continued on the main road till the morning, when we struck off in a northeasterly direction for Ahival North, which was reached in a few days. The town is built close to the Orange River, and promises to be a place of much importance, being on the high road between all eastern ports of the Free State, the diamond fields, and the interior. It is a pretty town, a great number of the houses having gardens around them filled with trees.

We stayed here for a few days, and recommenced our journey down the country, soon exchanging the plains of the Free State and northern districts for the alternate mountain passes and stretches of open karoo of the middle veldt. Passing through the hamlet of Jamestown, with its one store and few straggling houses, we entered the mountain passes which cross the Stromberg range. Soon after entering the first rocky defile we encountered another violent thunderstorm, which, though unattended by the disagreeable features of our first one, delayed us over a day. We travelled on through the hills, passing through Dordrecht, a place which bears the reputation of being the coldest place in the country.

It is a straggling village of about eight hundred inhabitants, with a few stores and two or three churches. A resident remarked to us, as he pointed with pride to the village, “I have lived here for seventeen years, and seen this place grow up around me,” in a similar tone of voice to that in which we had heard old Chicagoans say the same thing. But there was a difference in the size of the villages!

The town lies on the northern slope of the Stromberg, and we had several days’ mountain travelling after we left it.

An impression the traveller receives in South Africa, more especially in the mountain regions, is one of ghostly stillness. The wild, rocky hills rear themselves up all around, and often there is not a breath of wind stirring to break the awful quiet. Sometimes this silence is oppressive, and it is a relief to hear even the hideous chattering of a monkey or the unmusical cackle of a Kafir’s laugh. The giant mountains in the background seem to look down reproachfully at the traveller for invading their solitudes, while the dark ravines and deep clefts, in their rocky sides, suggest all sorts of nameless horrors.

Tigers, or rather leopards, abound in these mountains, but are seldom seen except by the solitary farmers living in the hills, who are in perpetual warfare with these savage destroyers of their flocks. One morning we found a romantic glen on the side of the mountain, full of rare ferns, and with a beautiful stream of water dripping and echoing as it gushed out from the rocks. It was a lovely day, and we took our karosses and rugs to the spot, and picnicked there. We carried along “Nicholas Nickleby” to read aloud. Since that day I always associate the Cheeryble Brothers with ferns, and think of Do-the-boys Hall as built on top of a precipitous mountain, with a smiling, sunshiny valley lying at its feet.

The nights were very cold in the Stromberg, and we required all the rugs and karosses we had to keep us warm at night, sunrise nearly always showing everything around us, from the tent of the wagon to the blankets of the slumbering boys, covered with a white hoar frost.

Our wagoner told us an experience of a cold night in the Free State. He said: “In the middle of June, two years ago, my partner Jim and myself started from Bloemfontein for Pretoria. As the shooting was good on that road and walking cheap, we decided to go on foot, taking with us a couple of boys to carry our traps, which were not very extensive, consisting, in fact, of a change of linen, or rather flannels, a pair of blankets each, the cooking utensils, and a spare gun. We had for our companion a young man whom we had met in Bloemfontein a few days previous to our departure, a young Scotchman but lately arrived in the country. As he wanted to go to Pretoria he proposed to join us. The nights during the winter are very cold on the elevated plateaus of the Free State and the Transvaal.

“Though the midday sun is almost as warm as in summer, one needs to be well provided with covering if they propose passing the night on the veldt. To give some idea of the cold of the plains at night, I may tell you that a few winters ago several natives, members of a tribe called the Knob Noses, who were on their way to the fields, were frozen stiff and stark on the road from Pretoria to Potchefstrom. The road we followed was a fair sample of most of the Free State roads, a tolerably straight path across an uninteresting, unwooded, undulating plain. Starting about two o’clock in the afternoon, we walked briskly with occasional halts for coffee until about ten o’clock at night, when the moon shone at its full, and we decided to turn in for the night. The wind was already blowing pretty fresh, and we looked about for the place in the veldt where the ant-hills were thickest so we might set fire to two of them to heat our kettles, and to keep us warm during the night. After having had a cup of coffee, and sat round the fire until we were all thoroughly warmed, Jim and I slipped off our boots, and putting them under our heads for pillows, pulled our blankets over our heads and feet, and were soon fast asleep, of course imagining that Mac would do the same. About two o’clock, when the night was at its coldest, we were awakened by a dreadful groaning, and emerging from our coverings were astonished to see Mac huddled upon the ground with nothing over him but a rubber overcoat, shivering, chattering, and moaning piteously. The fire was out, an icy wind was sweeping around the veldt. ‘Good gracious, Mac, what is the matter; where are your blankets?’ ‘I d-d-didn’t bring any,’ chattered the unfortunate youth. ‘Didn’t bring any; then what on earth was that big bundle the Kafir was carrying?’ ‘That is my b-best clothes,’ moaned the sufferer.

“We were soon up and bundled the poor fellow into our blankets, and waking the boys we made up a roaring fire, and thawed him back to life. The next day, on arriving at Wynberg, you should have seen Mac rushing into the first store, and regardless of ‘siller,’ buy two of the thickest blankets to be had. This man had never before slept outside four walls in his life, and had imagined that any place in Africa must needs be suffocatingly hot at all times.

“I don’t think he made the same mistake again.”

Chapter Twenty Eight.

While making some purchases at a wayside store, we had an insight into the life of a wayside storekeeper. We found it, instead of monotonous, full of interest. The business requires technical knowledge enough to run a block of stores in a city.

He must be prepared to supply his customers with anything and everything they may ask for; he must be at home in extolling the best points of a plough, a gun, or a piece of calico; must know the market price of every sort of produce the farmer is likely to bring in for sale or barter, and be well informed in the current news of the day. He must possess an unlimited knowledge, as well as stock of liquors; for the Boer, who is abstemious, as a rule, always expects the man who supplies him with his “voerchitz” and his coffee to provide him also with plenty of stimulants. He must know where to place his hands on any article wanted, and be as ready to buy your cart and horses, or span of oxen, as to sell you a can of sardines or a yard of tape.

When a Boer comes into town, or visits the wayside “Negotic Winkel” (store), he usually makes a day of it, sometimes accompanied by his wife and daughters, who assume, in honour of the occasion, their purple and fine linen in the shape of a “kappie” (sunbonnet), and the newest print gown. They will come in at six in the morning and remain till dusk, pricing articles whose value they always depreciate, now and then buying, but more often not, eating the while a prodigious quantity of candy “Lakkers,” and assuming for the time an air of proprietorship in the establishment. This is intensely annoying to the shopkeeper, who, however, always seems to be possessed of an inexhaustible fund of good humour, and to be ready at any time to exchange elephantine witticisms with his Boer customers. In their wordy conflicts they are politic enough to allow their opponent to get the best of it.

At dusk Dom Piet and Taute Meitje (every one is uncle or aunt) prepare to leave.

There is much hand-shaking with everybody, acquaintance or stranger, who are standing about at the time. The worthy couple then climb into their Cape cart, or spring wagon, and drive off home, where they vegetate until the low condition of the domestic stores compels them again to visit the store, or until a Nachtmaal is announced at the nearest church. The profits of such a store are very large, and, as a rule, amply sufficient to compensate the proprietor, often a man who has received his business training in a large wholesale house in England or Germany, for his eight or nine years of exile. He has the opportunity, living as he does in the midst of the farmers, of taking advantage of the many speculations which the fluctuations in the market prices of wool, skins, feathers, etc, offer.

The most successful of these shopkeepers are Jews; they seem to have a happy knack of acquiring the jaw-breaking patois of the country, an indispensable accomplishment to any one wishing to have successful dealing with the Boers.

We were now nearing the end of our ox-wagon journey, but were not at all glad it was so.

We had got fond of this careless, lazy life we had been leading so many weeks; the very oxen we had come to know by their names of “Blesbok,” “Witful,” “Kafir,” etc. As we neared Queenstown we found ourselves getting anxious about their welfare, trekking slowly, and making frequent and long outspans. When at last we found ourselves on a common, close to Queenstown, it was with regret we said good-by to our six weeks’ life in an ox-wagon.

Chapter Twenty Nine.

We went to the Central Hotel. On the second day after our arrival, the wife of a physician of the town called and invited us to dine with them on the following day, Sunday. We did so and made the acquaintance of the excellent Doctor and his little family of interesting children. She then invited us to make her house our home during our stay, and overwhelmed us with kindness.

Unless you have been in a strange land, away from kindred and all who know your people, you can never know the deep happiness it gives to meet with kindness from an utter stranger, as this charming woman was, and to be invited to a home as lovely as hers. After the annoyances and inconveniences of the wretched inns, or hotels, as they were called, to find such open-hearted hospitality was like meeting with kindred in a desert land.

Most of the inhabitants of Queenstown are English or Scotch, there being fewer Dutch or Germans there than in any of the other towns we had visited. There are a number of fine churches and schools, with several newspapers and banks. The ladies of the place are especially social, and dress handsomely. The railway, which had been finished to the port of East London two years previous to our arrival, seemed to have given an impetus to trade, and it was confidently hoped by the burghers would increase rapidly the prosperity of the district.

After enjoying a refreshing season of home life, we said good-by to our new found friends and then left Queenstown by rail. Travelling by rail seemed to us almost a novelty after our late ox-wagon trip, and we could not help contrasting the new style with the old, not all to the disadvantage of the latter, for we could not forget the delightful sleepiness of our inland voyage. We had a twelve hours’ ride before we arrived at King Williamstown, the road passing through a very pretty country, pleasantly wooded, and varied by many deep and romantic kloofs. We were thoroughly tired of the stuffy “compartment” before we reached our destination.

We went to an hotel, where our wants were well cared for by a pretty little landlady whose husband was of a most jealous disposition. The town is in a region of country where there have been many Kafir wars. The military stationed there keep the place awake. It is the fifth town in point of importance in the colony.

During our stay in Africa we had taken many opportunities to practice horseback riding, and had learned the supreme delight there is in a firm seat in the saddle on the back of a well-trained, swift-footed horse. This exercise is especially enjoyable in Africa, where walking is unpleasant in the hot sun. One day we were invited to join in a paper chase, to a spot distant ten or twelve miles from town.

We were assured of being furnished with suitable “mounts,” so we accepted without hesitation. There was a sprinkling of uniforms and a few civilians, and there were several ladies besides ourselves. There were also parties in Cape carts who followed the hunt by road. A cart driven by a rifleman in uniform was to convey refreshments for our party to the place of rendezvous. Presently the fox rode off well mounted.

The “scent” was slung over his shoulder in a capacious canvas bag. Time was taken and he was soon clattering down the road, the music of the horse’s hoofs being accompanied by a ringing bugle blast sounded by one of our enthusiastic huntsmen. He was to have ten minutes start, and the interval was taken advantage of by most of our party to see that girths were tight and bridle reins in order. Our escort had placed us in good position to get away with the first rush, and when “time” was called, we were well down the road in front of the ruck. It had been arranged beforehand that the fox should keep to the road for a mile before making across the country; so at first the whole field were well together clattering and rattling down the hill at a pace so swift that good care was demanded on the part of the riders to keep the horses from coming into collision.

Down the slope, through the shallow stream running across the road in the hollow, up the rise on the further side, and away along a level flat on the crest of the hill, till many of the young fellows in uniform were shouting from sheer exuberance of spirits. We found ourselves borne along at a gait that sent the blood flying through our veins. The day was fine, a fresh breeze, which swept across the veldt, agreeably tempering the rays of the sun, which at that hour is decidedly hot. Small particles of the paper lying along the road and the bushes that fringed it served to stimulate our exertions, and the whole cavalcade kept merrily on till we came to the point where a large patch of paper, lying in the centre of the road, warned us that the chase had turned off.

Here the larger part of the field deserted us, preferring to keep along the road, which led in a tolerably direct line to the rendezvous, and take their chances of sighting the hunt from occasional vantage grounds. But all the more ardent sportsmen scorned to take advantage of the highway when the scent led them away from it, and twenty or more elected to follow the fox.

The paper led us for a mile or more along the upper edge of a deep kloof, which looked dark and forbidding as we gazed down into its depths, seeing only the tops of the trees, with which it was literally crammed. The scent had been cast with a generous hand, and we rushed along, feeling intoxicated with the exhilarating exercise and the glorious air. All at once our leader reined in his horse, and we saw the trail had suddenly taken a sharp turn to the right, crossing a small stream, and disappearing over the brow of a hill on the opposite side.

Chapter Thirty.

With a slight feeling of nervousness we turned our horses’ heads to the water, and hearing our friend’s voice calling “Let him have his head,” we shut our eyes, and one after another went at it—oh! Our horses were over and galloping up the opposite slope, we hardly believing that we had actually “jumped a river.” So soon as we were over we looked back to see how it fared with the rest, and were almost disappointed to see that every one cleared the stream. We had half hoped to see something like the familiar pictures, in which half the men are in the water, some of the horses balking, others just dragging themselves out on the bank, while in the distance we, the triumphant leaders, were skimming along with the strength of the wind. Our friend laughed, and said that if we “lasted” long enough we should see plenty of them spilled before the end of the hunt.

The pace had told on the horses, and before we had reached the top of the hill most of us were willing to comply with the silent advice of our grey-headed cavalier, and pull up our panting horses for a breather. What a delicious gallop it had been, but it was not over yet. After resting for a few minutes at the top of the rise we started off again with fresh enthusiasm, a little steadier, perhaps, than when we left home. One of our party had a fall over his horse’s head, the animal putting his foot into an ant-bear hole, one of the little treacherous caves which we seemed to find everywhere.

Our little party, however, remained intact, and we soon reached the timber, in which considerable caution was necessary in following the scent through the straggling bushes. Our escort dismounted to find the likeliest and clearest path through, our quarry, with the true foxy cunning, having laid the trail in just those places best calculated to bother a horseman. Fortunately the obstruction was not very wide, and we emerged on the other side, where we were cheered by a sight of the fox, nearly two miles off.

A yell from our party, intended to be a view halloo, greeted him, and brought the stragglers crashing through the bushes at a great rate of speed. Off we started again, now leaping a ditch or scrambling through a sluit, now crashing through bushes and stumbling over ant-hills. At last, however, we were forced to give up all hope of again sighting the fox, and philosophically jogged along the trail until we found our quarry lying in the shade of two gigantic gum trees, which, being a well-known landmark, had been fixed upon as the goal.

Feeling very tired after the excitement of the long race, we were glad to jump off our horses and find comfortable seats on the grass. Soon the roadsters began to arrive singly, and in twos and threes, and after a while our picnic basket was unpacked. We were glad to be able to prove the truth of the saying, “as hungry as a hunter.” We spent the remainder of the day under the trees, listening to the stories our military friends had to tell us of their experience in the neighbourhood during the late Kafir war. We were in the Perie bush, which had been a stronghold of Sandillis’ men for months in 1878, and many a colonist was killed before the savages were dislodged. We rode home quietly in the cool of the evening, very stiff from our morning scamper, but feeling that we had laid in a stock of ozone which would last a long while.

There are some very fine botanical gardens in King Williamstown, always kept in order and most delightfully placed along the banks of the Buffalo River, beside which the town is built. On returning at sunset one afternoon from these gardens, we were walking in front of four well-dressed Kafirs, evidently living in domestic service in the town. They were two men and two women. Suddenly they struck up a wild melody which thrilled us as we listened; one voice took up the melody, then the second voice joined in, then the third and fourth, until the song swelled into a triumphant hymn; the soprano seemed to be singing an octave higher than an ordinary soprano voice, but it was merely the peculiar timbre of the voice which made it sound so. The bass rolled out like an organ peal, and when the singers turned away from us to go up the hill, keeping on in their wild “hallelujahs,” we could scarcely keep from following them.

The only music that can give an idea of it is to be heard in some of the strains “Aida” has to sing. Verdi seems to have thoroughly caught the spirit of these dusky-coloured people, which is a closed book to most of the white race.

Perhaps one of the reasons of the failure of many of the missionaries in their work among this peculiar people is, that it takes a many-sided man to comprehend a race whose traits are entirely different from his own. As a rule, the men sent out to Africa as missionaries are not many-sided, nor do they possess that to them most necessary of all gifts, a practical knowledge of human nature.

Chapter Thirty One.

After remaining a few weeks in King Williamstown we had a longing to see the ocean, and accordingly, one evening, took the train for East London, two hours distant by rail, and fell asleep that night to the sound of the waves rolling up on the shore. The next day we went down the steep hill-side to the beach, and played with the pebbles and pretty sea-shells, as happily as children with their wooden spades and pails. When the tide is out the rocks are strewn with wrecks, one of which we climbed upon, and let the spray of the waves dash upon us.

East London is rather a misnomer, for by that term people mean Panmure, which is built on the opposite bank of the Buffalo to the old town of East London; but Panmure, having grown up and eclipsed its elder brother, the old name seems to cling to it, and East London, the larger and more important town of the two, is indicated. It is very picturesquely situated. The Buffalo River finds its way to the sea at this point, between excessively high and bountifully wooded banks. East London proper is erected on the western point of the junction of the river with the ocean, while Panmure looks down upon it from the higher elevation of the eastern bank.

The town is rather scattered, but rejoices in some of the most energetic and pushing colonists in the country. They are trying hard to bring their town into the front rank of colonial towns, and are spending vast sums of money in the attempt to make a harbour of the mouth of the river, at present barred with sand. A breakwater was in course of erection by convict labour, which is confidently expected to do great things for the port, but so far there is no communication between the shipping and the shore but by means of lighters and steam launches.

There are three or four highly prosperous rowing clubs in Panmure, and our hotel proprietor, being a member of one, we were enabled to spend several delightful days in exploring the romantic banks and creeks of the Buffalo, which here resembles our own Hudson in picturesque loveliness. We remained three very pleasant weeks in East London enjoying the sea, and, after debating the question, we decided to go to Natal.

Our thoughts had been turned toward that colony for some time, as we had heard much of the beauty of the country. It is necessary to make the voyage by sea, for, although Natal touches the Cape Colony along the boundary line of one hundred and fifty miles or more, there is little or no regular land communication, the Cape districts adjacent to Natal being still peopled by natives as yet but little removed from barbarism. There is no highway from one colony to the other, and communication is almost entirely by sea.

The port of East London bears the unenviable distinction of being for more than half the days in the year almost unapproachable. The roadstead is quite open, there being no bay of any kind, and the coast facing southeast, it is exposed to the full fury of the worst gales known in these latitudes, the South-easters. On a hot summer’s day we boarded the tender which was to take us only to the steamer. We were warned by the residents that it was rough outside the “bar,” but we could scarcely believe them as we looked out on the placid waters of the estuary. We were soon convinced, however, for as soon as the little steamboat began to feel the swell which at all times surges over the sandy bar, she tossed and danced about in a manner which made us wish we had not started for Natal.

But we were in for it now, so covering ourselves completely with our rubber coats we did not fear the spray and surf that dashed completely over our little vessel as she blustered and fought her way, inch by inch, against the mighty rollers that seemed to rear up to drive us back. After several minutes of this we cleared the bubbling surf that boiled over the bar, and found ourselves in the long rolling swell of a heavy sea, which, if as dangerous, was not quite so unpleasant. We arrived alongside the steamer, which appeared to us, on our erratic little craft, to be as steady as a rock, so large and stately did she seem. We were told we should have to be hoisted on board in a basket, as there was no possibility of our approaching near enough to the vessel’s side to get up by the usual companion ladder.

A huge basket was slung down, suspended from the immense derrick on the ship’s deck, and into this we were unceremoniously packed, two at a time. Then we were quickly hauled up, our dignity suffering in the way we were “dumped” down on the deck like jugs of molasses, or Falstaff going to the wash. We smoothed our ruffled plumage with the consolation that we were “doing” South Africa, though it seemed to us at the time that the reverse was the case.

It was too dark when we left East London to see anything of the coast, but on coming on deck the next morning we found the scenery before our eyes. The coast from west to north-east is very little broken, and presents a uniform rocky shore, but the scenery is really beautiful. Hundreds of small streams, and one or two larger ones, empty themselves into the sea on the Kafrarian coast, and the kloofs through which they find their way to the ocean are veritable fairy glens in loveliness. The steamer here kept close to the shore, so everything was seen with distinctness.

The wonderful clearness of the atmosphere made every bold wrinkle on the face of the cliffs, the direction of the water courses, every curve of the kloof to be clearly discovered. One feature of the country with which we had become familiar was here conspicuous by its absence. No mountains of great altitude could be seen, the great ranges which run right round the coast line with one unbroken wall here receding so far from the sea as to be beyond the reach of our vision even in that rich and brilliant light. We passed Mazeppa Bay, the scene of so many wrecks that it has become famous, the great Kei River and many points of historical interest.

The captain told us that this entire coast was for a long time laid down on the charts nearly a degree too far west, which was, no doubt, the cause of the numerous marine disasters that have occurred among its breakers. Next day we sighted the mouth of the Saint John’s River, of which place hopes are entertained that it will one day be made a practicable harbour. There is a small settlement here, and a station for the mounted police. From here we began to see many charming houses dotted along the shores.

The beauty of the country has tempted a great number of Europeans to pitch their tents here. Major-General Bissett, who has written several interesting histories of the Kafir wars, has built himself a house not far from Saint John’s, which, with the surrounding estate, has every appearance of being a delightful spot to retire to from the busy world.

It was a Christmas day, 1497, that the great Portuguese voyager, Vasco da Gama, first sighted the headlands and bluffs of Natal, and it was on Christmas day nearly four hundred years after (it is strange how history repeats itself) that we Yankee girls landed in Durban!

Chapter Thirty Two.

Durban lies in a landlocked harbour about three and one-half miles long, and about six hundred yards wide. At the entrance it is—O South African Nemesis!—obstructed by a sand-bar which modern engineering science, fighting against nature, has failed to remove. The sand, however, is shifting, and at times vessels drawing twelve to fourteen feet of water can enter the harbour and come up to the wharf of the city. We were soon transported to the steam launch that awaited us, and, passing under the shadow of the great giant bluff which terminates the southern arm of the entrance to the harbour, crossed the bar, and landed on the quay.

The day was intensely hot, by far the hottest we had experienced since our arrival in the country. The landing wharves and custom-house are situated at the extremity of the northern arm of the harbour, and we had a drive of nearly a mile to reach the town. It was soon evident to us that we were in a different country from that we had just left. Natal is essentially an English colony, and bears a much closer resemblance to Australia than the Cape Colony, with its mixed European and African population.

The town of Durban consists of a long, straggling main street, which is about two miles in length, containing many very handsome stores, with a few cross streets to keep the longer ones in countenance. Few of the business men live in the town, most of them having residences on the Berea, a beautiful hill which overlooks the town two miles distant, on which the handsome houses of the citizens are seen rising in well laid out terraces facing the town and the sea. The entire hill-side is thickly interspersed with lovely foliage trees. The public park on the Berea is full of the most beautiful flowering trees and creepers, while so prodigal is nature in this favoured climate that the very paths are bordered by pine plants and orange trees; bananas, shaddocks, and other luscious fruits hanging in rich profusion everywhere.

The weather was so inviting that we spent most of the time out of doors. One of the first things that attracts the visitor’s attention on arrival in the country is the black man, from the Hindoo Coolie to the powerful Zulu. The chief native tribe of Natal is the Zulu, whose records form an important part of colonial history. They are physically magnificent, tall, broad-chested, with coal black skin that shines like satin, and a walk that shows strength and power.

They are decidedly intelligent, but have a strong objection to giving their services readily and continuously for any sort of work, and are to be found in domestic service in the towns, on the beach and wharves; but one seldom sees any of them in the field.

The heart of Zulu Land lies within a few hours’ ride from Durban. Though the country is crowded with native Africans, field labour is difficult, nearly impossible to obtain on any permanent arrangement, a trouble which forms another complication in the already sufficiently intricate problem of native labour. As a consequence, the colonists have been forced to import Coolies, so far with a most satisfactory result. All, or nearly all the labour on the estates is performed by imported Hindoo Coolies.

The sugarcane is largely cultivated on the coast line, the climate being almost, if not quite, tropical, and the vegetation to be seen by the roadside and on the distant hills is more like what we expect to find in Africa than the more temperate products of the old colony. The climate of Natal is one of the boasts of the inhabitants. It is nearer the tropics than the Cape, but the mean temperature is little above that in the more southerly colony; the winter is bright, with deliciously mild, cool evenings and nights, while the summer heat is softened by a clouded sky and frequent rains.

Almost anything seems to grow in this genial land, and many of the colonists, apparently more enterprising than their brethren in the older colony, have extensively laid out and cultivated farms. We spent a week at Malvern, twelve miles from Durban, where a Yorkshire gentleman, who had considerable practical experience in scientific gardening in England, and had travelled extensively in America, had turned his little farm into a perfect paradise. There is hardly anything edible in the way of fruit or vegetable, or beautiful in flower, that is not growing in profusion and to perfection in his grounds or glass-houses. In addition to acres of strawberries, pines, oranges, etc, there were several hundred vines of the Catawba grape, with which he intended to experiment in wine-making. He was confident of success, and certain that the manufacture of wine would be one of the future great industries of the country.

A number of very prosperous companies, with their own estates, mills, and machinery, are engaged in the manufacture of sugar, molasses and rum, while many private speculators raise, in addition to the sugarcane and coffee, tea and rice, and some experiments have been made with cotton. Some Parsee merchants have been attracted there from Calcutta, and in the quarter of the town where they chiefly reside the surroundings are such as would make a stranger think he was in the back streets of an Indian town. The Coolies make excellent cooks and capital nurses.

The processions of the idolatrous Coolies are a most interesting sight. We witnessed one of these parades which they seem so fond of making.

They were dressed and made up in all sorts of fantastic ways, carrying extraordinary models, all made of paper, of palaces, wild animals, etc, which they burn amid great shoutings and beatings of tom-toms at the end of the day’s rejoicings. Their chief idol was carried in the centre of an escort of gorgeously attired priests, while round it were carried smaller ones. Fifty to one hundred grotesquely attired Coolies were yelling, dancing, and throwing somersaults, during the beating of the tom-toms and the general uproar.

The intelligent-looking Zulu, who, despite his philosophical appearance, I fear is not one whit more enlightened, stood still and looked gravely on. Such novel scenes as these, and the beauty of the surrounding country made our stay very interesting.

The northwestern boundary of the colony is the great Drakensbergen, which mountains are more properly the edge of the great stretch to the table-land situated in the centre of the continent. The aspects of this great precipice along its whole length are grand and romantic, and as the land at its foot does not subside to the sea by easy levels, Natal is picturesque everywhere. The midland districts have in many parts the look of the English downs; they are rolling sweeps of grass. The coast lines are singularly beautiful, with their round bosses, rich in bush and glade, while the shore presents a bold outline, with projecting bluffs thickly covered with jungle, and long stretches of lands broken by rocky floors and reef, on which the surf of the Indian Ocean majestically breaks.

A favourite trip for the town’s people is to take a boat and cross the lagoon to the bluff, where the scenery is highly romantic both at the base of the great headland and inland. A forest of fine trees lies a little beyond the bluff, and here the sportsman may find bush buck, a large description of antelope, in plenty, besides smaller varieties in any number, and may also make the acquaintance of boa constrictors, python and puff adders, or disturb the slumbers of a leopard or black mamba before he returns home. Of all the snake stories that were told us in Africa, those of Mr Cato, our American Consul, were the best. He was one of the first settlers in Durban. Of course when the country was as wild as it once was, snakes had a chance they don’t get nowadays, and made the best of their opportunities. A colonel in the English regiment stationed there, a very popular and handsome fellow, went hunting during our stay, and in alighting from his horse in the tall Zulu grass, stepped on a deadly puff adder, which raised its ugly hooded head and stung him. In an hour he was a corpse.

The personal experiences of nearly every resident were not so interesting as they were thrilling. One gentleman, who occupied a position of trust, and whose word could be depended upon, told us a snake story which I do not believe was exaggerated. He was alone in his house one night, and was awakened from a deep sleep by a peculiar sound. He listened, and soon had a feeling that a snake was crawling through a knot-hole in the bare floor. He lay nearly paralysed, the perspiration oozing out all over his body until, with an effort, he sprang up and over the foot of his bed, and rushed into the next room. He struck a light, and returned to see if there was any ground for his fright, and found a long, deadly puff adder lying on his bed which he had so lately vacated. We heard other stories just as horrid; it was a fascinating subject.

After remaining in Durban several weeks we prepared to visit the capital, Pieter Maritzberg, a town forty miles distant. It is connected with Durban by a railroad, which is being extended to the Transvaal border, and thence into the interior. The region on the right of the road from Durban to Maritzberg, after Pinetown, a town midway between them, has been passed, is remarkable for its fantastic assemblage of sugar-loaf hills.

Chapter Thirty Three.

The first glimpse we had of Pieter Maritzberg was very pleasing. A spirit of freedom and sociability pervaded the very air.

Several banks, newspaper and Government offices had fine, imposing buildings. The town is surrounded by beautiful hills and lovely drives. Here the camellia trees grew to the height of twenty feet, bearing their crimson and white, scentless flowers. Flowers grew in profusion without any coaxing, and the winter days were like those of our early spring.

Owners of the handsome houses had some satisfaction in beautifying the grounds surrounding them, as everything planted tried to bloom at its best. The cactus plant, with its brilliant flower and rugged leaves, formed hedges, whilst vines clambered over lovely little villas that smilingly looked out at the passer-by.

The hotel was pleasanter than any we had been in. Soon after our arrival we were fortunate in finding several large rooms comfortably furnished, where we lived in health and happiness. The restaurant near by supplied our table in our own dining-room, and Coolie boys waited on us. The service of the boys in a warm climate like Natal was a great relief. Our young Coolie, David, who attended to the household duties, was the prettiest boy in Maritzberg, but this was not to be wondered at after seeing his mother. Unlike the usual small, childlike Coolie woman, she was tall, with beautiful dark eyes, waving raven black hair, and dimpled cheeks; over her head and shoulders hung carelessly and in graceful folds the yellow handkerchief. How I wished I had the talent to sketch her as she stood, for “our special artist” was not there at that moment.

Another characteristic thing we had to accustom ourselves to was our washerman. A black man would come and get the bundle of soiled clothes, and take it down to the river; he and his wife would stand in the water by a big flat rock, and with a stone proceed to pound the dirt out of our linen. We had a few dozen or so of garments returned, with laces bedraggled and holes knocked through the delicate fabrics. It was necessary to call in a sewing woman to make up a bolt of linen for new garments; but our experience was gained and paid for.

As we intended to make this visit to Natal our farewell to South Africa, we spent much of our time in extensive rides to various parts of the country. We owned six horses and a light running two-seated Cape cart that served to make our excursions into the surrounding country delightful. Our leaders were famous hurdle racers. Our wheelers were famous for having been used by the Empress Eugenie during her sad visit to Zulu Land.

She came in her loneliness to visit the spot where her noble son, the Prince Imperial, had fallen, pierced through by the cruel assegais of the Zulus, who had surprised him in the tall Zulu grass when hunting. He fought single handed, and returned backwards to his horse. When found dead it was proved on examination that he had met death bravely, having received every wound with his face to his black foe.

We started one fine morning for a drive to some famous falls several miles distant from Maritzberg. It took half an hour to climb the long town hill, and we were on the downward grade when the brake of our cart broke. The horses were soon on a run down the steep, rocky road, and it seemed as if nothing could save us from being mixed up with the horses’ heels. No one uttered a word, but we soon saw that our only hope lay in keeping the horses in hand. The long whip whistled over their heads and struck the leaders a sharp cut, for upon those two horses depended everything; if they would only leap and jump away from their flying companions in the rear we were safe. The dear creatures seemed to know what had occurred, and they just lifted their beautiful heads and fairly skimmed the earth, going as far to one side of the road as they could, and then across to the other side, thus keeping the cart from rolling down upon them. Not more than ten minutes elapsed from the time we started on that downward grade until we reached the level road. Here a wheel came off, and down we all went, and the horses came to a standstill. We were only too glad to come to a halt, no matter how sudden.

On our return journey we met two native witch doctors, with their peculiar musical instruments in the shape of a mandolin, and made by their own hands. Mr Watson, editor of the Natal Witness, was of our party, and requested them, in their own language, to dance for us, which they did, playing on their instruments and keeping perfect time with head and feet, and certain undulations of the body. The faces of the dancers grew more and more serious as the dance proceeded.

Walking along the street one day I observed a tall Zulu approaching, dressed to his knees in a sleeveless shirt. He stood about six feet high, and carried a knob cane. As he approached the very earth seemed to shake under his powerful tread, and as he passed and breathed out an “umph,” “umph,” at each step, a cold chill went all through me, and I felt for the first time that the strongest pale-face was a mere child compared to this mighty black man. His physical force was so great that, as he passed, I felt as if my spirit had been overthrown by a wave of power.

The very social people we met in Maritzberg aided us in making excursions full of interest. We were afforded opportunities for visiting some Zulu kraals, and in that way gained much knowledge of this remarkable people.

Near one kraal lay three women on the ground, basking in the sun. Their dress consisted of the skins of a few small wild animals hanging from their waists, whilst strings of beads, glass and metal adorned neck, waist, and ankle. During the time we stood watching them they spoke a few words, consisting of vocal sounds and clicking the tongue against the roof of the mouth; but they never moved hand or foot, and rarely winked as they gazed at us. A stay in Africa would give to a sculptor ample opportunity for study from superb models. We might easily have imagined, as we stood looking at them, with their rounded necks and limbs glancing in the sunlight, that we were gazing on statuary in bronze. Cunning little naked children, with rounded little limbs and big swelled stomachs, peculiar to these children, were playing round them, but they are such timid creatures that as we approached they crept into the hole of their hut on all-fours.

The known records of the race date back to 1810 and a famous warlike chief Chaka, who led his men to victory against both black and white, enslaving the former and driving Dutch and English back of the Drakensberg and to the sea. There are many students of native history who assert that the Zulus were originally from Northern Africa, and had fought their way through opposing tribes, down to the country they now hold, which teems with game, and is rich in gold and minerals. There are even those who say that they are the offshoot of an outlying tribe of the ancient Egyptians. This, however, must be merely conjecture, and, if the report contains a grain of truth, the early Egyptians have considerably altered in their physical and mental peculiarities during their three or four thousand years of travel through the equatorial regions.

These Zulus, however, are exceptionally brave, and fight, as the colonists will testify, like fanatics or fiends.

Their old military chief, “Chaka,” who fifty years ago was the warrior chief of Zulu Land, was justly named the Napoleon of South Africa. From a common soldier in the ranks of Dingenayo, he rose to be chief, and was the first to organise the Zulus into regiments, breaking up the old tribal system, and training them to the severest discipline. With but few exceptions his warriors were not allowed to marry, and were trained only for military conquest. The result was, that when they did burst over the land, and attacked the peaceful tribes in Natal, which at that time numbered about a million, these Zulu warriors reduced them to a mere flock of twenty thousand souls hiding in the mountain clefts.

Chapter Thirty Four.

It is not to be wondered at that Chaka’s grandson, Cetawayo, led his people to victory through so many wars, until the Zulu is called now by other tribes the “Invincible.” When a regiment returns from the field without bringing a certain number of trophies, or having achieved a great victory, it is publicly disgraced in the presence of the whole army, its leader put to death, and the regiment disbanded, to be distributed among other and more proved companies. In their kraals their laws are equally stringent, and the colonists declare that until the white man went among the Zulus, lying and thieving and immorality were unknown. They are polygamists. A man may not marry a wife till he has proved his valour on the field, can pay her parents for her, and can show to the satisfaction of his chief that he is able to support her. Any infidelity on the part of a wife is punished immediately with death.

The Zulu war, although three years had elapsed since that event, was still the chief topic of conversation at the time of our visit. It was a subject the good people of Natal seemed never tired of dilating upon, nor were we unwilling listeners. Many of the narrators recount their own personal adventures whilst serving at the front as volunteers, and there was hardly one but had lost some dear friend or near relative during the fierce and bloody struggle with the savage tribe. We had many a chat with eye-witnesses of the terrible field of Isandhlwana, where 800 soldiers were slaughtered by the Zulus, and fearful were the tales they told of the ghastly scene. Lord Chelmsford’s forces returned to camp on the evening of the day of the massacre, and the troops had to bivouac among the mutilated corpses of their comrades, fearing at any moment that the now dreaded enemy might return. Imagine the sickening situation of having to seek repose in the very midst of the fast decomposing bodies of their comrades. Some went raving mad.

The Zulus are mighty hunters, and sportsmen are glad to get the assistance of any of their number when they make up a hunting expedition. One day we had quite a hunting adventure. Some friends had organised a day’s bush hunting, and invited us to join them. We accepted their invitation so far as to join them at luncheon.

The spot fixed on was over twenty miles distant from Maritzberg. We started at five o’clock, provided with a span of four horses and a fine Cape cart, in which there was plenty of room for ourselves and our contribution to the luncheon. Our team bowled us along in fine style, after a pull over the town hill, which is four miles to the top, to the village of Hornick, where we stayed at the hotel for breakfast.

There is a remarkably fine fall of water at this place. The Umgeni River falls over a high precipice, and although for the greater part of the year it is only an insignificant stream, the immense leap the waters take over the rocky boulders makes a very imposing sight. Having plenty of time before us, we spent nearly an hour beside the cataract, watching the clouds of spray and mist which issued from the lower basin. After the horses had been seen to, we started off, very soon diverging from the main road, and traversed a country covered with tall grass, which suggested “snakes.” At last, at half past ten o’clock, we reached our destination, on the outskirts of what appeared to us an extensive forest.

We soon had the good things we had brought with us transferred from the cart to a grassy knoll, and our charioteer outspanning and knee-haltering the horses, let them wander away and graze. After having made all our preparations, we sat down on a fallen log, and looked around us. It was a beautiful spot; in the deep green forest convolvuli and other flowering creepers had formed themselves into fantastic arches, more lovely than art could fabricate. The silence of the secluded spot was broken by the notes of many birds, some of them almost meriting the name of songsters, while the air was full of the buzzing hum of insects. The cry of the partridge issued from the underbrush, and the voice of the lowrie and hornbill could be heard, while the rocks and branches overhead resounded with the bark of baboons and the chatterings of monkeys.

Whilst we were dreamily listening to the forest chorus, we thought we could distinguish above it distant shouts of men, and we stood up wondering if our hunters had mistaken the hour, or had driven up by hunger nearly two hours before their time, when bang! bang! went a gun, less than fifty yards away from us. Almost simultaneously a magnificent bush buck burst through the thicket, breaking down everything before him. For an instant he stopped short, gazing at us, while we, spellbound, could only mutely return his stare; suddenly turning off at right angles, he bounded through our luncheon already spread on the grass, scattering the comestibles, crockery, and glassware in every direction.

Just as he disappeared in the opposite bush, ten or twelve Zulus, brandishing assegais and knob-kerries, with a pack of howling and yelping dogs at their heels, sprang out from the underwood in hot pursuit. In the rear came our sporting friends, looking almost as savage as their Kafir allies, crashing through the thorn bushes, seemingly as oblivious of the scratches they were receiving as they evidently were of our presence. As they came opposite us, one of them dropped on his knee, and, taking rapid aim at some object we could not see, fired.

The shouts of the savages immediately announced that the antelope was down. We all rushed in the direction of the spot where the barking and the yelping of the dogs told us the noble animal was fighting with his tormentors, and, scampering helter-skelter through the bushes, arrived on the field of battle. The buck was down, and almost hidden by the dogs which hung around him, growling and worrying, while over him in a superb attitude stood one of the savages, whose gory knife bore evidence of its having inflicted the coup de grace.

The other Kafirs soon drove the dogs away, and we retired to our al fresco dining hall, before they should proceed with any unromantic skinning and dismembering. We had our revenge on the buck for upsetting our banquet, for he appeared on the table again later on, but on a dish, and very nicely he tasted.

Chapter Thirty Five.

The late Bishop Colenso, famous for his disputations on the Old Testament and also as an arithmetician, was greatly beloved among the Zulus. They went to the bishop as to a friend for counsel in political matters, when they would not listen to the governor or any British official. His body when carried to the grave was followed by thousands of his savage friends. Many of them had never been in a town before, but came to attend the funeral of the teacher they loved so well. The sight of the half-naked and wild-looking mourners was a very striking one. We started early one pleasant Sabbath morning for Edendale, a missionary station about ten miles from Maritzberg. As we were sitting under the trees enjoying the lovely day, there arose from the chapel near by a sound of voices singing one of Sankey’s sacred songs in the Kafir language.

It seemed as if we were now hearing it sung with all its true pathos for the first time. The voices of the women, pitched in a very high key, wailed it out on the air, whilst the men’s voices rolled out like the swell of a rich but subdued organ, in pedal tones, and all breathed now soft, now low, in singularly perfect time. We then strolled up to the church, and listened to a sermon by a missionary, which was translated by a black man at his side.

The houses, with farms attached, of these people, which we passed in walking through the settlement, were similar to the homes of the industrious civilised American negro. Very little encouragement on mission work could be gained from our colonial friends. Many cases were cited by them to prove that the religious beliefs of the white man do not throw any whiter rays of new light upon the barbaric mind than it already has. A chief of one of the tribes in the vicinity of Queenstown went to England, where he received a good education, and it was expected that he would return to his people with advanced, thoughts. But he returned to his blanket.

Then again we knew of a very exceptional case, where the son of a great chief went to England, and educated himself for missionary work, including the study of medicine, and returning to his own people did great good. This man, Thyo Soga, as he was called, married in Scotland a Scotch lady, whose sister we met on the fields. She said that there never was a finer gentleman, or a kinder husband, either black or white, ever born than Thyo Soga.

He built a church and mission school, and worked among his people until stricken down with consumption.

The Kafir is a perfectly healthy being until he puts on clothing and lives like the white man; then the dread disease consumption, clutches him and he succumbs. The well-laid-out reservation of the Presbyterian Mission at Grahamstown, with its neat houses kept by the natives, would seem to prove that they can be industrious and civilised, if reached after in the right spirit. Many of the Kafir churches that are met with through the country are self-supporting, and attended by neatly dressed and seemingly very devout congregations. There was much more social life in Maritzberg than in any other South African town. The ladies rode horseback a great deal, many of them being fine riders. The fashionable landau, dog cart, and basket carriage were constantly met with.

We occasionally visited the theatre, where a company of fine artists from across the seas were giving a season of English operas, as well mounted and sung as we had seen the same works in London. On command night, when the governor and his staff of officers would be present in the boxes, and the audience in full dress, the house presented a brilliant appearance. The theatre is not as fine a building as the one in Durban; the latter was built at a great expense, and was the finest in the country.

Many English, Scotch and Dutch residents in Maritzberg, combined with the military stationed there, made the town lively. It was a place in which we should have liked to have pitched our tent for a longer period of time. But after several months of life as intimate as we could expect to have in a foreign land, we turned our thoughts to our home in America, that could never be replaced in our hearts, and left Maritzberg for Durban. It was a bright spring day in September when, having packed our belongings and souvenirs, we stepped on board the steam tug at Durban which was to take us and several friends over the bar to the steamer. The sea and the weather seemed to have entered into a conspiracy to put on their most alluring dress to do honour to the departing strangers, and we steamed across the bar, the little steam launch puffing and smoking as who should say, “Aha! you’re going to America, aren’t you?—you’ve got some fine steamers there, haven’t you?—but look, see how busy I am, what a noise I make, and how recklessly I brave the dangers of the sand-bar, which those big fellows outside dare not tackle.”

All animate and inanimate nature seemed to smile on us and bid us God speed, and as we climbed up the ladder that led up the side of the good ship Asiatic, and emerged on her deck, we registered a vow to return some day to the land of sand and sunshine.

Soon after our arrival on board the bell sounded for strangers to leave the ship, and the time came to say good-by to the good friends who had accompanied us on board. Leave-taking had become a familiar occupation with us, but yet we never seemed to overcome the misty feeling in the eyes when the time came to say the one word “Good-bye.”

The steamer left her moorings at four o’clock, and soon the bluff, and the many points around it which we had explored, faded away far astern, the stars came out, and the old well-known thump of the steamer’s engine began to make us realise that we were going Home.

The voyage around the coast has been already described. At Fort Elizabeth we were transhipped into the palatial mail steamer Moor, in which we were to make the journey to England. From the steamship we had a splendid view of the town of Port Elizabeth, built as it is on the hill, which rises quite from the beach. Almost every house could be seen distinctly, and every walk and spot that had become so pleasantly familiar to us, during our stay, we could trace without the aid of a glass.

We learned that the railroad to Kimberley had been finished. There is now no limit to the ambition of the inhabitants of Port Elizabeth. On the way to Cape Town we called at Mossel Bay, a picturesque little seaport lying midway between Algoa and Table Bays. Georgetown, thirty-six miles away, is the prettiest place in the Cape Colony. The Kinyena Forest, which stretches away to the bay, is one of the few really large forests in South Africa. In it elephants and rhinoceri still roam, and buffaloes, leopards, and every variety of antelope are found, while from its thickets come most of the hard-wood lumber used for the wagon-making districts of the colony.

After six days’ steaming from Durban we put into Cape Town docks, and the mighty Table Mountain once more frowned down on us. We wandered for the last time through the town. We called on many of the acquaintances we had made on our first arrival in the country. We had been followed with much interest on our travels.

How our journeys came back to us, and the many happy months passed in South Africa as we saw the purple cloud we knew was the last glimpse we should have of Table Mountain or South Africa slowly fading away. The voyage to England resembled all other similar voyages in its pleasurable monotony.

At last, after five years’ almost incessant travel, we arrived in Southampton with the satisfactory feeling that we had accomplished the object of our voyage. Our expedition to the Antipodes in search of health was a success. Our invalid was returning home a healthy, happy, contented wife. What was there for us to ask for more?

We left the ship at Southampton and went on by rail, and soon the familiar smoky fog which overhangs the monster London received us.

Here our journey ends, for London and New York nowadays are only “across the way.”

| Chapter 1 | | Chapter 2 | | Chapter 3 | | Chapter 4 | | Chapter 5 | | Chapter 6 | | Chapter 7 | | Chapter 8 | | Chapter 9 | | Chapter 10 | | Chapter 11 | | Chapter 12 | | Chapter 13 | | Chapter 14 | | Chapter 15 | | Chapter 16 | | Chapter 17 | | Chapter 18 | | Chapter 19 | | Chapter 20 | | Chapter 21 | | Chapter 22 | | Chapter 23 | | Chapter 24 | | Chapter 25 | | Chapter 26 | | Chapter 27 | | Chapter 28 | | Chapter 29 | | Chapter 30 | | Chapter 31 | | Chapter 32 | | Chapter 33 | | Chapter 34 | | Chapter 35 |

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Table of Contents

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Yankee Girls in Zulu Land, by Louise Vescelius Sheldon

Louise Vescelius-Sheldon "Yankee Girls in Zulu Land"

Chapter One.

Chapter Two.

Chapter Three.

Chapter Four.

Chapter Five.

Chapter Six.

Chapter Seven.

Chapter Eight.

Chapter Nine.

Chapter Ten.

Chapter Eleven.

Chapter Twelve.

Chapter Thirteen.

Chapter Fourteen.

Chapter Fifteen.

Chapter Sixteen.

Chapter Seventeen.

Chapter Eighteen.

Chapter Nineteen.

Chapter Twenty.

Chapter Twenty One.

Chapter Twenty Two.

Chapter Twenty Three.

Chapter Twenty Four.

Chapter Twenty Five.

Chapter Twenty Six.

Chapter Twenty Seven.

Chapter Twenty Eight.

Chapter Twenty Nine.

Chapter Thirty.

Chapter Thirty One.

Chapter Thirty Two.

Chapter Thirty Three.

Chapter Thirty Four.

Chapter Thirty Five.

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