“We have now been ‘trekking’ (_i.e._ travelling in waggons) for six weeks from yesterday. We have, however, gone slowly, and have been delayed once or twice. We stayed a few days at Ladysmith and Newcastle, two towns, as they are called here (we should call them small villages); we then got into the Transvaal Republic, and had a very bad tract of country to cross, the high veldt. This country is very high, about 5000 feet above the sea, and as it was dead of winter when we crossed it the cold at night was rather severe. One of the coldest nights I think we had, was that of the 8th of June, when the thermometer showed 8 degrees of frost Fahrenheit. This may not seem very much, but the days being hot you feel the cold a good deal, and are glad of a good lot of blankets. In this respect I had taken care that we should be all right. The morning after the night I speak of my hand was numb with the cold, and I dropped and smashed my only thermometer.[7] My aneroid barometer, which tells me the height above the sea really very accurately as far as I can judge, is still all right, but my sextant suffered so much on board the ‘Zulu’ that I have some difficulty, being a novice, in making use of it. “In crossing the high veldt the cattle suffer not only from the cold nights but the poverty of the grass, which will get worse and worse till the rainy season, which will be about September.[8] The disease called ‘red water,’ which is so bad on the coast, and which has caused so many oxen to die and the price to rise so much, does not seem to extend beyond Natal. Out of twenty-eight oxen we lost only three, which is considered a very small percentage. A few of our oxen got into low condition, and we have got seven new ones coming along the road. We shall try to leave the poor ones at some farm, or exchange them for fat ones. [Illustration: HIGH VELDT, TRANSVAAL.] [Illustration: BOER’S FARM, HIGH VELDT, TRANSVAAL.]