perintended with such excellent results and most gratifying
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 L400,000,
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
leaving Warrenton we crossed the Vaal River on a pontoon. Here a trooper
of the Mounted Police joined us, who was said to be a very crack shot.
He rode a charming and well-bred grey horse, and had two admirably
trained pointers with him. He offered me his horse to ride, he taking
my place in the wagon. I had a most enjoyable morning's ride on one of
the best little hacks I ever mounted, cantering over the veldt in the
track of the wagon for about eight or ten miles--through a charming
country with a superb view towards Bechuanaland, the veldt being more
wooded and picturesque, than I had hitherto seen.

We slept that night at Drake's Farm. Before starting the next morning, I
had a long convers