then a matter of thirty-six hours. The whole of one day we dawdled over
the Great Karroo in pelting rain and mist, which reminded one of
Scotland. This sandy desert was at that season covered with brown scrub,
for it was yet too early for the rains to have made it green, and the
only signs of life were a few ostriches, wild white goats, and, very
rarely, a waggon piled with wood, drawn along the sandy road by ten or
twelve donkeys. As to vegetation, there were huge clumps of
mimosa-bushes, just shedding their yellow blossoms, through which the
branches showed up with their long white thorns, giving them a weird and
withered appearance. It must indeed have required great courage on
behalf of the old Voor-trekker Boers, when they and their families left
Cape Colony, at the time of the Great Trek, in long lines of
white-tented waggons, to have penetrated through that dreary-waste in
search of the promised land, of green veldt and running streams, which
they had heard of, as lying away to the north, and eventually found in
the Transvaal. I have been told that President Kruger was on this
historical trek, a Voor-looper, or little boy who guides the leading
oxen.

Round Kimberley the country presented a very different appearance, and
here we saw the real veldt covered with short grass, just beginning to
get burnt up by the summer's heat. Our host, Mr. J. B. Currey, a name
well known in Diamond-Field circles, met us at the station. This is a
good old South African custom, and always seems to me to be the acme of
welcoming hospitality, and the climax to the kindness of inviting people
to stay, merely on the recommendation of friends--quite a common
occurrence in the colonies, and one which, I think, is never
sufficiently appreciated, the entertainers themselves thinking it so
natural a proceeding.