“The Dutch Boers have farms at intervals. They seem miserably poor; no milk, eggs, meat. I don’t know how they live. It is much warmer here, and after to-morrow we get into what is called the bush veldt, where there are lots of trees, and then it begins to get hot. The country we have passed over is from 4000 to 6000 feet above the level of the sea, and on the high veldt there is scarcely any water; the road in many places very bad and strewn with the bones and skeletons of oxen, wildebeest, and other animals, which have been picked clean by the vultures. How people can pass their lives in such dreary solitudes it is difficult to conceive.... We, however, are very comfortable and well. We have large supplies with us, more than necessary, I think; but we can sell at Bamangwato what we do not want for nearly double what we gave for it at Maritzburg. This is the last place where there is a regular mail, though traders go from Bamangwato, and will take letters. The waggons make snug dwelling-houses. The mattress goes at the top of the things, and you have the canvas all round. You get in at the front, and let a canvas curtain down. There are canvas pockets at the sides, where you put what you want handy. “We have been exceedingly lucky with our oxen, as many people have lost nearly all they had from the epidemic which is raging in Natal. One man lost his whole span of eighteen. We have only lost three; partly, I think, because we haven’t hurried them. They have got poor, owing to the wretched grass on the high flats. They say, however, they fatten immediately they get into the bush veldt. “Pretoria is a miserable little place, though the capital of the Transvaal. The store-keepers are English, or Africanders (as the native whites are called).... The niggers are idle and insolent. It is said the only way to treat them is to thrash them well, and though we have never resorted to this, I have often felt inclined to do so. We have five with us--three Hottentots and two Kafirs. The Kafirs who are total savages are much better to get on with.... It seems odd that I have such a little to tell you about after so long an absence, but one day here is almost exactly like another, and the country hitherto the same day by day.”