The prisoner himself was very silent, hardly saying a word in answer to the questions put to him,--except that he should like to see his children in Natal. The two young men were talkative enough, and did not scruple to ask for sixpence each when we departed. I and a friend who was with me extended our liberality to half a crown a piece,--with which they expressed themselves much delighted. CHAPTER XIX. PIETER MARITZBURG TO NEWCASTLE. When starting from Pieter Maritzburg to Pretoria I have to own that I was not quite at ease as to the work before me. From the moment in which I had first determined to visit the Transvaal, I had been warned as to the hard work of the task. Friends who had been there, one or two in number,--friends who had been in South Africa but not quite as far as the capital of the late Republic, perhaps half a dozen,--and friends very much more numerous who had only heard of the difficulties, combined either in telling me or in letting me understand that they thought that I was,--well--much too old for the journey. And I thought so myself. But then I knew that I could never do it younger. And having once suggested to myself that it would be desirable, I did not like to be frightened out of the undertaking. As far as Pieter Maritzburg all had been easy enough. Journeys by sea are to me very easy,--so easy that a fortnight on the ocean is a fortnight at any rate free from care. And my inland journeys had not as yet been long enough to occasion any inconvenience. But the journey now before me, from the capital of Natal to the capital of the Transvaal and thence round by Kimberley, the capital of the Diamond Fields, to Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange Free State, and back thence across the Cape Colony to Capetown, exceeding 1,500 miles in length, all of which had to be made overland under very rough circumstances, was awful to me. Mail conveyances ran the whole way, but they ran very roughly, some of them very slowly, generally travelling as I was told, day and night, and not unfrequently ceasing to travel altogether in consequence of rivers which would become unpassable, of mud which would be nearly so, of dying horses,--and sometimes of dying passengers! A terrible picture had been painted. As I got nearer to the scene the features of the picture became more and more visible to me.