Twelve years ago Bulawayo was the head kraal of a bloodthirsty savage, and was approached only by a few adventurous spirits who recked little of danger and less of time. The journey from the coast to the inland centre took at least three months, and now it can be visited with comfort and despatch. Without alighting from the train the traveller can enjoy his morning bath; he can breakfast, lunch, and dine; he can press a button and call for cool, liquid refreshments at any hour of the day; and he can complete his journey of 1360 miles from Cape Town to the Rhodesian industrial capital in 3-1/2 days. The Cape Town-Johannesburg journey of 1000 miles is done just within 44 hours. These results may not be considered of much account by the English or American traveller accustomed to a speed of 50 miles an hour for long distances, but South African railways have been built to suit the special necessities of the country. The gauge is only 3 feet 6 inches, and on all the lines heavy gradients have to be negotiated. The interior of South Africa is a great plateau elevated from 4000 to 6000 feet above sea-level. The edge of the plateau runs round the sub-continent at no great distance from the sea, its bold escarpments looking over the 50 to 100 miles of broken, low-lying coast lands which skirt the continent. In consequence, all the railways to the interior, within the first 100 miles from the coast, begin climbing up steep inclines cut along the sides of one or other of the few passes which admit of ascent by railway trains. Whether the journey is made from Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London, Durban, or Delagoa Bay, the ascent has to be negotiated. The tedium of the uphill journey is compensated to some extent by the grandeur of the scenery in these initial stages of the routes to the interior. On the Cape line there is the magnificent view of the Hex River which, like Fair Melrose, can best be seen in pale moonlight as towards morning the night train from Cape Town winds along, gradually climbing up and up above the valley lying 1000 feet below. On either side grand brown mountains rise like sentinels to guard the pass. It has often been conjectured what would have been the upshot if the Boers had marched right south and seized this pass at the beginning of the war. It would have been Colenso over again, only worse. On the Port Elizabeth line, from Coerney to Cradock, the line passes up through rugged valleys in places bright with the sub-tropical evergreen bush of South Africa, and hemmed in with massive mountains forming the broken edges of the continent. The line through Graaf Reinet negotiates similar country, as does also the line from East London through King William's Town. The ascent from Durban is the most difficult of all. Natal is formed almost wholly of great fragments of the South African plateau which seem to have broken off, and now lie in long lines of broken mountain chains running north and south. These mountain ranges lie