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adherence to a legal sentence. Such is the story of Langalibalele as I heard it.

On my return to Capetown I visited the captured Chieftain at his farm house on the flats five or six miles from the city, having obtained an order to that effect from the office of the Secretary for Native Affairs. I found a stalwart man, represented to be 65 years of age, but looking much younger, in whose appearance one was able to recognise something of the Chieftain. He had with him three wives, a grown-up son, and a nephew; besides a child who has been born to him since he has been in the Cape Colony. The nephew could talk a little English, and acted as interpreter between us.

The prisoner himself was very silent, hardly saying a word in answer to the questions put to him,-except that he should like to see his children in Natal. The two young men were talkative enough, and did not scruple to ask for sixpence each when we departed. I and a friend who was with me extended our liberality to half a crown a piece,-with which they expressed themselves much delighted.

CHAPTER XIX.

Pieter Maritzburg to Newcastle.

WHEN starting from Pieter Maritzburg to Pretoria I have to own that I was not quite at ease as to the work before me. From the moment in which I had first determined to visit the Transvaal, I had been warned as to the hard work of the task. Friends who had been there, one or two in number,-friends who had been in South Africa but not quite as far as the capital of the late Republic, perhaps half a dozen,-and friends very much more numerous who had only heard of the difficulties, combined either in telling me or in letting me understand that they thought that I was,-well-much too old for the journey. And I thought so myself. But then I knew that I could never do it younger. And having once suggested to myself that it would be desirable, I did not like to be frightened out of the undertaking. As far as Pieter Maritzburg all had been easy enough. Journeys by sea are to me very easy,—so easy that a fortnight on the ocean is a fortnight at any rate free from care. And my inland journeys had not as yet been long enough to occasion any inconvenience. But the journey now before me, from the capital of Natal to the capital of the Transvaal and thence round by Kimberley, the capital of the Diamond Fields, to Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange Free State, and back thence across the Cape Colony to Capetown, exceeding 1,500 miles in length, all of which had to be made over

land under very rough circumstances, was awful to me. Mail conveyances ran the whole way, but they ran very roughly, some of them very slowly, generally travelling as I was told, day and night, and not unfrequently ceasing to travel altogether in consequence of rivers which would become unpassable, of mud which would be nearly so, of dying horses, and sometimes of dying passengers! terrible picture had been painted. As I got nearer to the scene the features of the picture became more and more visible to me.

One gentleman on board the ship which took me out seemed to think it very doubtful whether I should get on at all, but hospitably recommended me to pass by his house, that I might be sure at least of one quiet night. At Capetown where I first landed a shower of advice fell upon me. And it was here that the awful nature of the enterprise before me first struck my very soul with dismay. There were two schools of advisers, each of which was sternly strenuous in the lessons which it inculcated. The first bade me stick obdurately to the public conveyances. There was no doubt very much against them. The fatigue would be awful, and quite unfitted for a man of my age. I should get no sleep on the journey, and be so jolted that not a bone would be left to me. And I could carry almost no luggage. It must be reduced to a minimum,-by which a toothbrush and a clean shirt were meant. And these conveyances went 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 of 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 my need for its use was at an end.

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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

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