e civilized world when
and where you choose that it is difficult to make you understand the
enormous boon the first line of railway is to a new country--not only
for the convenience of travelers, but for the transport of goods, the
setting free of hundreds of cattle and horses and drivers--all sorely
needed for other purposes--and the fast-following effects of opening
up the resources of the back districts. In these regions labor is the
great difficulty, and one needs to hold both patience and temper fast
with both one's hands when watching either Kafir or Coolie at work.
The white man cannot or will not do much with his hands out here, so
the navvies are slim-looking blacks, who jabber and grunt and sigh a
good deal more than they work.

It is a fortunate circumstance that the delicious air keeps us all in
a chronic state of hunger, for it appears in South Africa that one is
expected to eat every half hour or so. And, shamed am I to confess,
we _do_ eat--and eat with a good appetite too--a delicious luncheon at
the superintendent's, albeit it followed closely on the heels of our
enormous breakfast at the dirty hotel. Such a pretty little bachelor's
box as it was!--so cool and quiet and neat!--built somewhat after the
fashion of the Pompeian houses, with a small square garden full of
orange trees in the centre, and the house running round this opening
in four corridors. After lunch a couple of nice, light Cape carts came
to the door, and we set off to see a beautiful garden whose owner had
all a true Dutchman's passion for flowers. Here was fruit as well as
flowers. Pine-apples and jasmine, strawberries and honeysuckle,
grew side by side with bordering orange trees, feathery bamboos and
sheltering gum trees. In the midst of the garden stood a sort of
double platform, up whose steep border we all climbed: from this we
got a good idea of the slightly undulating land all about, waving down
like solidified billows to where the deep blue waters sparkled and
rolled restlessly beyond the white line of waves ever breaking on the
bar. I miss animal life sadly in these parts: the dogs I see about the
streets are few in number, and miserably currish specimens of their
kind. "Good dogs don't answer out here," I am told: that is to say,
they get a peculiar sort of distemper, or ticks bite them, or they got
weak from loss of blood, or become degenerate in some way. The horses
and cattle are small and poor-looking, and hard-worked, ve