from the leaders of the Opposition, besides from innumerable private
friends, Dutch and English alike, I received such cordial tokens of
goodwill, that I can only express my deep sense of appreciation of their
most genial and friendly hospitality. I bid adieu to Cape Town (which I
was visiting for the first time in my life) with the conviction that I
was truly in a land, not of strangers, but of real friends, who desired
to do everything in their power to make my visit to South Africa
pleasant and agreeable to me; and this impression I carried with me ever
afterwards at every place I visited during the whole of my tour.

On Wednesday, May 29, I left Cape Town at 6.30 p.m. for Kimberley,
passing Beaufort West, the centre of an extensive pastoral district, and
De Aar, the railway junction from Cape Town and Port Elizabeth. This
journey is a long one, of between 600 and 700 miles, and of some
forty-two hours by railway. I travelled all through that night, and the
whole of the next day, through the most remarkable kind of country I
ever saw. Flat, and apparently as level, as a bowling-green (although we
were continually rising from our starting-point at Cape Town to a
height at Kimberley of about 3,800 feet above the sea), a sandy and
dreary desert, with occasionally low, and barren hills in the far
distance--not a tree to be seen, and scarcely any vestige of vegetation,
excepting now and then, a few of the indigenous Mimosa shrubs, which,
for hundreds of miles, grow fitfully on this desolate soil. This is the
wonderful tract of country called the Great Karoo. Not a sign of animal
life is to be detected, at this period of the year. During the summer
months it affords pasturage for large flocks of sheep. It is a vast
interminable _sea of lone land_, over which the eye wanders unceasingly
during the whole of the daylight hours.

[Illustration: Decorative]