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wn I received the first proofs of the kind and lavish attentions which everywhere in South Africa were subsequently bestowed upon me. From everyone, without exception--from His Excellency the Administrator and Mrs. Smyth, and the members of his staff--from all the public men and high officials--from members of the Cape Government, and 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] [Footnote A: The First Series was published in 1887.] [Illustration: Decorative] KIMBERLEY. After another long night in the railway train, at noon on the second day, after leaving Cape Town, I reached the celebrated diamond to
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