Our special train left Cape Town on Sunday at 4 p.m. A corridor train
of six coaches, marked Bulawayo, at an ordinary provincial-looking
station, seemed somewhat strange. Had it been marked Ujiji, or Yambuya,
it could not have been more so. Three of us were put in a compartment
for four. The fourth berth was available for hand luggage. Soon after
starting we were served with tea and biscuits, and were it not for the
flat wilderness scenery we might have imagined ourselves in an
International sleeping car. Time tables were also furnished us, from
which we learned that we were due at Kimberley, 647 miles, at 10:15 p.m.
on the next day, November 1; at Mafeking, 870 miles, at 3:12 p.m. on
November 2; Palachwe, in Khama's country, 1132 miles, at 12:47 p.m.,
November 3; and at Bulawayo, 1360 miles, at 9:30 a.m. on November 4,
which would be ninety hours at fifteen miles per hour.
It took us an hour to cross the Lowry Strait, which at no very distant
period must have been covered by sea and separated the Cape Peninsula
from the Continent.
At 5:30 we arrived at the Paarl, 35 miles, a beautiful place suggestive
of Italy with its vineyards, gardens and shrubbery, and lovingly
enfolded by the Drakenstein Range. With its groves of fir and
eucalyptus, bright sunshine, and pleasant-faced people, with picturesque
mountains round about, it seemed a most desirable place.
The Paarl Station and others we passed bear witness to the excellence of
Cape railway administration. The names of the stations were boldly
printed on japanned iron plates, and though the passage of so many
trains crowded with distinguished strangers had drawn large assemblages
of the Colonists, male and female, whites, mulattoes, and negroes, the
cleanliness and orderliness that prevailed were very conspicuous.