On Wednesday, May 29, I left Cape Town at 6.30 p.m. for Kimberley, passing Beaufort West, the centre of an extensive pastoral district, and De Aar, the railway junction from Cape Town and Port Elizabeth. This journey is a long one, of between 600 and 700 miles, and of some forty-two hours by railway. I travelled all through that night, and the whole of the next day, through the most remarkable kind of country I ever saw. Flat, and apparently as level, as a bowling-green (although we were continually rising from our starting-point at Cape Town to a height at Kimberley of about 3,800 feet above the sea), a sandy and dreary desert, with occasionally low, and barren hills in the far distance--not a tree to be seen, and scarcely any vestige of vegetation, excepting now and then, a few of the indigenous Mimosa shrubs, which, for hundreds of miles, grow fitfully on this desolate soil. This is the wonderful tract of country called the Great Karoo. Not a sign of animal life is to be detected, at this period of the year. During the summer months it affords pasturage for large flocks of sheep. It is a vast interminable _sea of lone land_, over which the eye wanders unceasingly during the whole of the daylight hours. [Illustration: Decorative] [Footnote A: The First Series was published in 1887.] [Illustration: Decorative] KIMBERLEY. After another long night in the railway train, at noon on the second day, after leaving Cape Town, I reached the celebrated diamond town of Kimberley, the population of which consists of about 6,000 Europeans, with a native population estimated at about 10,000, chiefly concentrated in the mining area. On my arrival at the railway station, I was met by the Mayor, and a deputation of the residents of the town. At a conversazione held later, and which was attended by over four hundred ladies and gentlemen, the following address was presented to me by the Fellows of the Royal Colonial Institute resident at Kimberley and Beaconsfield:-- "Kimberley, _June 1st_, 1889. "To SIR FREDERICK YOUNG, K.C.M.G. "A Vice-President of the Royal Colonial Institute. "DEAR SIR,--We, the Fellows of the Royal Colonial Institute, resident in the towns and mining centres of Kimberley, and Beaconsfield, South Africa, cordially welcome your arrival amongst us. "We are persuaded that your visit to this distant part of Her Majesty's Dominions has been undertaken, not merely for personal pleasure, but also on behalf of the great and growing need for the consolidation and expansion of colonial interests throughout the Empire.