This little volume consists of the letters I wrote from Bulawayo, Johannesburg and Pretoria for the journal South Africa , which is exclusively devoted to matters relating to the region whence it derives its title. Each letter contains the researches of a week. As the public had already a sufficiency of books dealing with the history, geography, politics, raids and revolts, I confined myself to such impressions as one, who since 1867 had been closely connected with equatorial, northern and weste

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

While being instructed in the hopes and ambitions of several of the local people, my knowledge of how other young countries, such as the States, Canada, Australia, had been affected by the extension of the railway into parts as thinly inhabited as Rhodesia, induced me to cast my glance far beyond Rhodesia, that I might see what was likely to be its destiny, whether it was to be a Free State like Orange, self-sufficient and complacent within its own limits, or broadly ambitious like Illinois Stat

It must have struck even the most unobservant of our guests how the land improved as we travelled northward. How the ungrateful looking Karroo of Cape Colony was presently followed by expansive plains covered with dwarf shrubs; how the plains became more promising after we passed the Hart River: how the rolling grassy prairie-like country of Southern Bechuana was followed by the acacias and mimosas of Northern Bechuana; and how as we neared Rhodesia these trees in a few hours of travel rose from

My hotel-keeper, a bright sociable man, was induced to give me his own opinions on the depression. He acknowledged that his own hotel was doing fairly well, but the other hotels were mostly empty. Tradesmen he knew were bitterly lamenting the want of custom, buildings in course of erection were stopped because the owners did not think themselves justified in proceeding with the structures, rents were hard to collect from tenants, the upper storeys were already empty, reductions had been made on

Had I been asked to describe Mr Kruger’s character as conceived by me from what I had read of him, I should have summed him up after the style of an old author, thus: “What can be more extraordinary than that a man of no education, no fortune, no eminent qualities of body, should have had the courage to attempt, and the happiness to succeed, in wresting back this splendid country from the tenacious grasp of one of the greatest powers of the earth? That he should have the pluck and skill to defea

“Then, in your opinion, that mass of blacks wants leavening by the introduction of white men. The immigration would have to be worked from this end, would it not?” “Yes, they would have to be liberally treated for the first few years to induce them to go. Natal, as I have said, is a very lovely country. There are enormous estates railed off for sheep and cattle raising, and it seemed to me that I saw more places there fit for small estates of white men than in any other part of the country, exce