; as it was, everyone was so harassed that he
was hardly pitied.

The Governor returned two days before our departure, and we had a gay
time, between entertainments for the cricketers and festivities given by
the 7th Hussars. Feeling in Durban, with regard to the Raiders, was then
running high, and for hours did a vast crowd wait at the station merely
in order to give the troopers of the Chartered Forces some hearty
cheers, albeit they passed at midnight in special trains without
stopping. Very loyal, too, were these colonists, and no German would
have had a pleasant time of it there just then, with the Kaiser's famous
telegram to Kruger fresh in everyone's memory.

From Pietermaritzburg to Johannesburg the railway journey was a very
interesting one. North of Newcastle we saw a station bearing the name of
Ingogo; later on the train wound round the base of Majuba Hill, and when
that was felt behind it plunged into a long rocky tunnel which pierces
the grassy slope on which the tragedy of Laing's Nek was enacted--all
names, alas! too well known in the annals of our disasters. After
leaving the Majuba district, we came to the Transvaal frontier, where we
had been told we might meet with scanty courtesy. However, we had no
disagreeable experiences, and then the train emerged on the endless
rolling green plains which extend right up to and beyond the mining
district of the Rand.

Now and then one perceived a trek waggon and oxen with a Boer and his
family, either preceded or followed by a herd of cattle, winding their
slow way along the dusty red track they call road. At the stations
wild-looking Kaffir women, half naked and anything but attractive in
appearance, came and stared at the train and its passengers. It is in
this desolate country that Johannesburg, the Golden City, sprang up, as
it were, like a fungus, almost in a night. Nine years previously the
Rand--since the theatre of so much excitement and disappointment--the
source of a great part of the wealth of London at the present day, was
as innocent of buildings and as peaceful in appearance as those lonely
plains over which we had travelled. As we approached Johannesburg,
little white landmarks like milestones made their appearance, and these,
we were told, were new claims pegged out. The thought suggested itself
that this part of South Africa is in some respects a wicked country,
with, it would almost seem, a blight resting on it: sickness, to both
man and beas