I found the Cobb’s coach,--which however was not a Cobb’s coach at all,--to be a very well horsed and well arranged Institution. We travelled when we were going at about ten miles an hour and were very well driven indeed by one of those coloured half-bred Cape boys, as they are called, whose parents came into the Cape Colony from St. Helena. Almost all the driving of coaches and mail carts of South Africa has fallen into their hands, and very good coachmen they are. I sometimes flatter myself that I know something about the driving of ill-sorted teams, having had much to do for many years with the transmission of mails at home, and I do not know that I ever saw a more skilful man with awkward horses than was this Cape driver. As well as I could learn he was called Apollo. I hope that if he has a son he will not neglect to instruct him in his father’s art as did the other charioteer of that name. At home, in the old coaching days, we entertained a most exaggerated idea of the skill of the red-faced, heavy, old fashioned jarveys who used to succeed in hammering their horses along a road as smooth as a bowling green, and who would generally be altogether at their wits’ end if there came any sudden lack of those appurtenances to which they were accustomed. It was not till I had visited the United States, and Australia, and now South Africa that I saw what really might be done in the way of driving four, six, or even eight horses. The animals confided to Apollo’s care were generally good; but, as is always the case in such establishments, one or two of them were new to the work,--and one or two were old stagers who had a will of their own. And the road was by no means a bowling-green all the way. I was much taken with the manner in which Apollo got the better of four jibbing brutes, who, taking the evil fashion one from another, refused for twenty minutes to make any progress with the vehicle to which they had just been harnessed. He suddenly twisted them round and they started full gallop as though they were going back to Durban. The animals knew that they were wanted to go the other way and were willing to do anything in opposition to the supposed will of their master. They were flying to Durban. But when he had got them warm to the harness he succeeded in turning them on the veld, keeping them still at a gallop, till they had passed the stage at which they had been harnessed to the coach.