A Winter Tour in South Africa by Frederick Young
page 24 of 103 (23%)
page 24 of 103 (23%)
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success by the Judge President. One noticeable fact connected with this
Library is that the number of works of fiction annually taken out by the subscribers, exceeds, per head of the population, that of any Public Library in the United Kingdom. The Kimberley Waterworks, which I also visited, have proved a great boon to this part, of the Colony. They were erected at a cost of £400,000, the water supply being obtained from the Vaal River, seventeen miles away. After spending a most pleasant and agreeable week there, I left Kimberley at six o'clock on the morning of June 7, in a wagon drawn by eight horses, and accompanied by five friends, for Warrenton, _en route_ for Bechuanaland and the Transvaal. This mode of travelling was quite a novelty to me. Although in this journey of altogether three weeks' duration, we occasionally put up at one or two hotels, at some of the towns, and sometimes at the farmhouses on our way, we frequently "camped out" on the open veldt, and, after finishing our evening meal of the rough-and-ready provisions we carried with us, supplemented by the game we shot, we wrapped ourselves in our karosses, and slept for the night under the canopy of the starlit sky. I occupied the wagon, my more juvenile companions lying on the ground beneath it. This was my first experience of sleeping in the open air in a wagon, and this, too, in the depth of a South African winter. The town of Warrenton is situated on the banks of the Vaal River, and is forty-three miles north of Kimberley. It is at present an unimportant town, but diamond diggings have been recently opened, and it is a good cattle district. It took its name from Sir Charles Warren. Soon after |
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