There did not seem to be any hurry; but when we had all finished, and the engine had had a drink, and the engine-driver had lit his pipe, we started off again. And all that day we strolled across the Karroo, stopping (apparently) just when the driver felt inclined, and, when there was a hill, going so slowly one felt tempted to jump off and take a little exercise by running alongside. It was very grey and brown, this wonderful Karroo country, with occasional kopjes (hills with great boulders of stones up the sides), and now and then a river or a stream, and always by any water a green line of the mimosa trees covered with their yellow flower. As the sun grew stronger I began to forget the discomforts of the night, and some pleasant Dutch people came on board and told me many interesting things about the country we were passing through. Then I was introduced to my first swarm of locusts; a weird sight it was, too. They were pointed out to me first when they were some miles ahead of us, and looked like a small black cloud; then, as they came near, the sky seemed to become black with them, and we had to shut all the windows or the carriage would soon have been full of them. They tell me sometimes the young ones settle on the lines in such masses, and the lines become so slippery, the trains can't get on, and the men have to turn out and shovel them off. Fancy a Great Northern express being held up by a swarm of locusts! For most of the way the old waggon-road ran alongside the railway, and was marked out by the skeletons of horses and oxen, or the sadder sight of a mound of stones with a little wooden cross, where some poor fellow had "fallen by the way." We stopped at Victoria West for dinner; and as there was another train (from up country) in the station, we were halted well out on the veldt, and I had to stumble along to the station, and then, across what seemed in the darkness to be a rickyard, to the tin shanty where dinner was served. I was the only lady there; but I had only had a snack lunch on board the train, and we were more than an hour later than we had expected to dine, so I was too hungry to mind much, and had a very good dinner. There is only a single line for all this long track, so the delays to allow trains to pass at the stations are numerous, and it is well never to travel without a supply of chocolate, as the meals are very movable feasts. I managed to sleep through that night, as it was not so cold, and I had the carriage to myself. Early the next morning we steamed into Kimberley, and my brother met me at the station. VIII KIMBERLEY, SOUTH AFRICA, _December 1892_.