s--The Country--The
Weather--Tamed Blacks--Familiar Figures in King William's Town--Boer
Dress--Boer Country Life--Sleeping Accommodations--The Reformers in Boer
Prison--Torturing a Black Prisoner

CHAPTER LXIX.
An Absorbing Novelty--The Kimberley Diamond Mines--Discovery of Diamonds
--The Wronged Stranger--Where the Gems Are--A Judicious Change of
Boundary--Modern Machinery and Appliances--Thrilling Excitement in
Finding a Diamond--Testing a Diamond--Fences--Deep Mining by Natives in
the Compound--Stealing--Reward for the Biggest Diamond--A Fortune in
Wine--The Great Diamond--Office of the De Beer Co.--Sorting the Gems
--Cape Town--The Most Imposing Man in British Provinces--Various Reasons
for his Supremacy--How He Makes Friends

CONCLUSION.
Table Rock--Table Bay--The Castle--Government and Parliament--The Club
--Dutch Mansions and their Hospitality--Dr. John Barry and his Doings--On
the Ship Norman--Madeira--Arrived in Southampton

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR

CHAPTER I.

A man may have no bad habits and have worse.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

The starting point of this lecturing-trip around the world was Paris,
where we had been living a year or two.

We sailed for America, and there made certain preparations. This took
but little time. Two members of my family elected to go with me. Also a
carbuncle. The dictionary says a carbuncle is a kind of jewel. Humor is
out of place in a dictionary.

We started westward from New York in midsummer, with Major Pond to manage
the platform-business as far as the Pacific. It was warm work, all the
way, and the last fortnight of it was suffocatingly smoky, for in Oregon
and British Columbia the forest fires were raging. We had an added week
of smoke at the seaboard, where we were obliged to wait awhile for our
ship.
She had been getting herself ashore in the smoke, and she had to be
docked
And repaired. We sailed at last; and so ended a snail-paced march across
the continent, which had lasted forty days.

We moved westward about mid-afternoon over a rippled and sparkling summer
sea; an enticing sea, a clean and cool sea, and apparently a welcome sea
to all on board; it certainly was to me, after the distressful dustings
and smokings and swelterings of the past weeks. The voyage would furnish
a three-weeks holiday, with hardly a break in it. We had the whole
Pacific Ocean in
front of us,