nts this part of the line is one of the show
places which strangers are asked to note.

At daylight we were well on the Karroo, which at first sight was all but
a desert. However, we were not long on it before we all took to it
kindly. The air was strangely appetising, and we could not help
regarding it with benevolence. The engineers who designed the line must
have been skilful men, and by the track, as the train curves in and out
of narrowing valleys and broadening plains, we are led to suppose that
the Continent slopes gently from the interior down to Table Bay. The
railway is a surface line, without a single tunnel or any serious
cutting. The gradients in some places are stiff, but a single engine
finds no difficulty in surmounting them.

At 4 p.m. of November 1 we reached the 458th mile from Cape Town, so
that our rate of travel had been nineteen miles the hour. On tolerably
level parts our speed, as timed by watch, was thirty miles; stoppages
and steep gradients reduce this to nineteen miles.

We were fast asleep by the time we reached Kimberley. Night, and the
short pause we made, prevented any correct impressions of the chief city
of the Diamond Fields. At half-past six of November 2 we woke up at
Taungs, 731 miles. The small stream over which we entered the late
Crown Colony of Bechuanaland serves as a frontier line between it and
Griqualand.

THE CAPABILITIES OF BECHUANALAND.

The first view of the country reminded me of East Central Africa, and I
looked keenly at it to gauge its capabilities. To a new-comer it would
not seem so full of promise as it was to me. It would appear as a
waterless region, and too dry for a man accustomed to green fields and
flowing rivers, but I have seen nothing between the immediate
neighbourhood of the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains to surpass
it, and each mile we travelled in Bechuanaland confirmed that
impression. Every few miles we crossed dry watercourses; but, though
there was no water in sight, it does not derogate from its value as farm
land. The plateau of Persia is a naked desert compared to it, and yet
Persia possesses eight millions of people, and at one time contained
double that number. The prairies of Nebraska, of Colorado, and Kansas
are inferior in appearance, and I have seen them in their uninhabited
state, but to-day they are remarkable for the growth of their many
cities and their magnificent farming estates. All that is wanted to
r