At 6 p.m. we had passed Wellington, 45 miles, which went to prove the
rate of travel. This town also drew from us admiring expressions for
its picturesque situation in one of the folds of the Drakenstein, for
the early summer green of its groves, vineyards, and fields, and its
pretty white houses. I thought, as I marked the charming town and its
church spires, and the sweet groves around, what a contrast it was to
the time when the Hottentot reared his cattle in the valley, and the
predatory bushman infested the neighbourhood, and preyed on ground game
and goats.
On the platform, among those who welcomed our coming, were a dozen
Radical shoemakers lately arrived from Leicester. They charged Colonel
Saunderson, M.P., my fellow traveller, with an expressive message to Mr
Labouchere. It is too forcible and inelegant for print, but it
admirably illustrates the rapidity with which Radicals become perverted
by travel.
Darkness found the train labouring through the mountainous defile of the
Hex River. We could see but a loom of the rugged heights on either
side, but from all accounts this part of the line is one of the show
places which strangers are asked to note.
At daylight we were well on the Karroo, which at first sight was all but
a desert. However, we were not long on it before we all took to it
kindly. The air was strangely appetising, and we could not help
regarding it with benevolence. The engineers who designed the line must
have been skilful men, and by the track, as the train curves in and out
of narrowing valleys and broadening plains, we are led to suppose that
the Continent slopes gently from the interior down to Table Bay. The
railway is a surface line, without a single tunnel or any serious
cutting. The gradients in some places are stiff, but a single engine
finds no difficulty in surmounting them.
At 4 p.m. of November 1 we reached the 458th mile from Cape Town, so
that our rate of travel had been nineteen miles the hour. On tolerably
level parts our speed, as timed by watch, was thirty miles; stoppages
and steep gradients reduce this to nineteen miles.
We were fast asleep by the time we reached Kimberley. Night, and the
short pause we made, prevented any correct impressions of the chief city
of the Diamond Fields. At half-past six of November 2 we woke up at
Taungs, 731 miles. The small stream over which we entered the late
Crown Colony of Bechuanaland serves as a frontier line between it and
Griqualand.