but once a week, and it might often be the case that I might not be able to secure a place. But the post conveyances always did go, and I should at any rate be able to make my way on ;-if I could live and endure the fatigue.

The other school recommended a special conveyance. The post carts would certainly kill me. They generally did kill any passengers, even in the prime of life, who stuck to them so long as I would have to do. If I really intended to encounter the horrors of the journey in question I must buy a cart and four horses, and must engage a coloured driver, and start off round the world of South Africa under his protection. But among and within this school of advisers there was a division which complicated the matter still further. Should they be horses or should they be mules;—or, indeed, should they be a train of oxen as one friend proposed to me ? Mules would be slow but more hardy than horses. Oxen would be the most hardy, but would be very slow indeed. Horses would be more pleasant but very subject in this country to diseases and death upon the roads. And then where should I buy the equipage, and at what price,-and how should I manage to sell it again,-say at half price? For my friends on the mail cart side of the question had not failed to point out to me that the carriage-and-horses business would be expensive, entailing an outlay of certainly not less than £250, with the probable necessity of buying many subsidiary horses along the road, and the too probable impossibility of getting anything for my remaining property when need for its use was at an end.

my

One friend, very experienced in such matters, assured me

that my only plan was to buy the cart in Capetown and carry it with me by ship round the coast to Durban, and to remain there till I could fit myself with horses. And I think that I should have done thus under his instructions, had I not given way to the temptations of procrastination. By going on without a cart I could always leave the ultimate decision between the private and the public conveyance a little longer in abeyance. Thus when I reached Durban I had no idea what I should do in the matter. But finding an excellent public conveyance from Durban to Pieter Maritzburg, I took advantage of that, and arrived in the capital of Natal, embarrassed as yet with no purchased animals and impeded by no property, but still with my heart very low as to the doubts and perils and fatigue before me.

At East London I had made the acquaintance of a gentleman of about a third of my own age, who had been sent out by a great agricultural-implement-making firm with the object of spreading the use of ploughs and reaping machines through South Africa, and thus of carrying civilization into the country in the surest and most direct manner. He too was going to Pretoria, and to the Diamond Fields,-and to the Orange Free State. He was to carry ploughs with him, -that is to say ploughs in the imagination, ploughs in catalogues, ploughs upon paper, and ploughs on his eloquent and facile tongue; whereas it was my object to find out what ploughs had done, and perhaps might do, in the new country. He, too, thought that the public conveyance would be a nuisance, that his luggage would not get itself

carried, and that from the mail conveyances he would not be able to shoot any of the game with which the country abounds. When we had travelled together as far as Pieter Maritzburg we put our heads together, and our purses, and determined upon a venture among the dealers in carts, horses, and harness.

I left the matter very much to him, merely requiring that I should see the horses before they were absolutely purchased. A dealer had turned up with all the articles wanted, -just as though Providence had sent him, with a Cape cart running on two wheels and capable of holding three persons beside the driver, the four horses needed, and the harness. The proposed vendor had indeed just come off a long journey himself, and was therefore able to say that everything was fit for the road. £200 was to be the price. But when we looked at the horses, their merits, which undoubtedly were great, seemed to consist in the work which they had done rather than in that which they could immediately do again. In this emergency I went to a friendly British major in the town engaged in the commissariat department, and consulted him. Would he look at the horses? He not only did so, but brought a military veterinary surgeon with him, who confined his advice to three words, which, however, he repeated thrice, "Physical energy deficient!" The words were oracular, and the horses were of course rejected.

I was then about to start from Pieter Maritzburg on a visit of inspection with the Governor and was obliged to leave my young friend to look out for four other horses on

his own responsibility,-without the advice of the laconic vet whom he could hardly ask to concern himself a second time in our business. And I must own that while I was away I was again down at heart. For he was to start during my absence, leaving me to follow in the post cart as far as Newcastle, the frontier town of Natal. This was arranged in order that three or four days might be saved, and that the horses might not be hurried over their early journey. When I got back to Pieter Maritzburg I found that he had gone, as arranged, with four other horses; -but of the nature of the horses no one could tell me anything.

The mail cart from the capital to Newcastle took two and a half days on the journey, and was on the whole comfortable enough. One moment of discord there was between myself and the sable driver, which did not, however, lead to serious results. On leaving Pieter Maritzburg I found that the vehicle was full. There were seven passengers, two on the box and five behind,-the sixth seat being crowded with luggage. There was luggage indeed everywhere, above below and around us,-but still we had all of us our seats, with fair room for our legs. Then came the question of the mails. The cart to Newcastle goes but once a week; and though subsidiary mails are carried by Zulu runners twice a week over the whole distance,-175 miles, and carried as quickly as by the cart, the heavier bulk, such as newspapers, books, &c., are kept for the mail conveyance. The bags therefore are, in such a vehicle, somewhat heavy.

When I

saw a large box covered with canvas brought out I was

alarmed, and I made some enquiry. It was, said the com1 plaisant postmaster's assistant who had come out into the street, a book-post parcel; somewhat large as he acknow. ledged, and not strictly open at the ends as required by law. It was, he confessed, a tin box and he believed that it contained- -bonnets. But it was going up to Pretoria, nearly 400 miles, at book-parcel rate of postage, the total cost of it being, I think he said, 8s. 6d. Now passengers' luggage to Pretoria is charged 4s. a pound, and the injustice of the tin box full of bonnets struck my official mind with horror. There was a rumour for a moment that it was to be put in among us, and I prepared myself for battle. But the day was fine, and the tin box was fastened on behind with all the mails, merely preventing any one from getting in or out of the cart without climbing over them. That was nothing, and we went away very happily, and during the first day I became indifferent to the wrong which was being done.

But when we arrived for breakfast on the second morning the clouds began to threaten, and it is known to all in those parts that when it rains in Natal it does rain. The driver at once declared that the bags must be put inside and that we must all sit with our legs and feet in each other's lap. Then we looked at each other, and I remembered the tin box. I asked the conscientious mail-man what he would do with the bag which contained the box, and he immediately replied that it must come behind himself, inside the cart, exactly in the place where my legs were then placed. I had felt the tin box and had found that the corners of it were almost as