s more undulating as the line approaches the
frontiers, first of the Orange Free State, and then of the Transvaal
Republic, which bounds that State on the north. Bushes are seen, and
presently trees, nearly all prickly mimosas, small and unattractive, but
a pleasant relief from the bare flats of Kimberley, whence all the wood
that formerly grew there has been taken for mine props and for fuel.
There is more grass, too, and presently patches of cultivated land
appear, where Kafirs grow maize, called in South Africa "mealies." Near
the village of Taungs[43] a large native reservation is passed, where
part of the Batlapin tribe is settled, and here a good deal of ground is
tilled, though in September, when no crop is visible, one scarcely
notices the fields, since they are entirely unenclosed, mere strips on
the veldt, a little browner than the rest, and with fewer shrublets on
them. But the landscape remains equally featureless and monotonous,
redeemed only, as evening falls, by the tints of purple and violet which
glow upon the low ridges or swells of ground that rise in the distance.
Vryburg is a cheerful little place of brick walls and corrugated-iron
roofs; Mafeking another such, still smaller and, being newer, with a
still larger proportion of shanties to houses. At Mafeking the railway
ended in 1895. It has since been opened all the way to Bulawayo. Here
ends also the territory of Cape Colony, the rest of Bechuanaland to the
north and west forming the so-called Bechuanaland Protectorate, which in
October, 1895, was handed over by the Colonial Office, subject to
certain restrictions and provisions for the benefit of the natives, to
the British South Africa Company, within the sphere of whose operations
it had, by the charter of 1890, been included. After the invasion of the
Transvaal Republic by the expedition led by Dr. Jameson, which started
from Pitsani, a few miles north of Mafeking, in December, 1895, this
transfer was recalled, and Bechuanaland is now again under the direct
control of the High Commissioner for South Africa as representing the
British Crown. It is administered by magistrates, who have a force of
police at their command, and by native chiefs, the most powerful and
famous of whom is Khama.

Close to Mafeking itself there was living a chieftain whose long career
is interwoven with many of the wars and raids that went on between the
Boers and the natives from 1840 to 1885--Montsioa (pronounced
"Mont