lowers. The road was only a track, rough and full of
ruts, and the coach, drawn by eight horses, was an old one, whose
springs had lost whatever elasticity they might once have possessed, so
that it was only by holding tight on to the little rail at the back of
the seat that we could keep our places. The incessant pitching and
jolting would have been intolerable on an ordinary drive; but here the
beauty of the vast landscape, the keen freshness of the air, and the
brilliance of the light made one forget every physical discomfort. About
noon, after crossing the muddy flood of the Modder River, whose channel,
almost dry a month before, had now been filled by the rains, we entered
a more hilly region, and came soon after noon to the village of Thaba
'Ntshu, called from the bold rocky peak of that name, which is a
landmark for all the country round, and is famous in history as the
rallying-point of the various parties of emigrant Boers who quitted Cape
Colony in the Great Trek of 1836-37. Near it is a large native
reservation, where thousands of Barolong Kafirs live, tilling the better
bits of soil and grazing their cattle all over the rolling pastures.
Some ten or fifteen miles farther the track reaches the top of a long
ascent, and a magnificent prospect is revealed to the south-east of the
noble range of the Maluti Mountains, standing out in the dazzling
clearness of this dry African air, yet mellowed by distance to tints of
delicate beauty. We were reminded of the view of the Pyrenees from Pau,
where, however, the mountains are both nearer and higher than here, and
of the view of the Rocky Mountains from Calgary, on the Canadian Pacific
Railway. From this point onward the road mounts successive ridges,
between which lie rich hollows of agricultural land, and from the tops
of which nearer and nearer views of the Maluti range are gained. There
was hardly a tree visible, save those which Europeans have planted round
the farmhouses that one finds every seven or eight miles; and I dare say
the country would be dreary in the dry season or in dull grey weather.
But as we saw it, the wealth of sunlight, the blue of the sky above, the
boundless stretches of verdure beneath, made the drive a dream of
delight. When the sun sank the constellations came out in this pure, dry
African air with a brilliance unknown to Europe; and we tired our eyes
in gazing on the Centaur and the Argo and those two Magellanic clouds by
which one finds th