geni at Howick, where a
stream, large after the rains, leaps over a sheet of basalt into a noble
_cirque_ surrounded by precipices. Passing not far from these falls, the
railway takes its course northward to the Transvaal border. The line
climbs higher and higher, and the country, as one recedes from the sea,
grows always drier and more bare. The larger streams flow in channels
cut so deep that their water is seldom available for irrigation; but
where a rivulet has been led out over level or gently sloping ground,
the abundance of the crop bears witness to the richness of the soil and
the power of the sun. The country is everywhere hilly, and the scenery,
which is sometimes striking, especially along the banks of the Tugela
and the Buffalo rivers, would be always picturesque were it not for the
bareness of the foregrounds, which seldom present anything except
scattered patches of thorny wood to vary the severity of the landscape.
Toward the base of the great Quathlamba or Drakensberg Range, far to the
west of the main line of railway, there is some very grand scenery, for
the mountains which on the edge of Basutoland rise to a height of 10,000
feet break down toward Natal in tremendous precipices. At the little
town of Ladysmith a railway diverges to the Orange Free State, whose
frontier here coincides with a high watershed, crossed by only a few
passes. A considerable coal-field lies near the village appropriately
named Newcastle, and there are valuable deposits near the village of
Dundee also, whither a branch line which serves the collieries turns off
to the east at a spot called Glencoe, south of Newcastle. Travelling
steadily to the north, the country seems more and more a wilderness, in
which the tiny hamlets come at longer and longer intervals. The
ranching-farms are very large,--usually six thousand acres,--so there
are few settlers; and the Kafirs are also few, for this high region is
cold in winter, and the dry soil does not favour cultivation. At last,
as one rounds a corner after a steep ascent, a bold mountain comes into
sight, and to the east of it, connecting it with a lower hill, a ridge
or neck, pierced by a tunnel. The ridge is Laing's Nek, and the mountain
is Majuba Hill, spots famous in South African history as the scenes of
the battles of 1881 in the Transvaal War of Independence. Few conflicts
in which so small a number of combatants were engaged have so much
affected the course of history as these b