I had come to the place on the mail cart, and on my arrival was very anxious to know what my travelling companion had done in the way of horse-buying. All my comfort for the next six weeks, and perhaps more than my comfort, depended on the manner in which he had executed his commission. It seemed now as though the rainy season had begun in very truth, for the waters for which everybody had been praying since I had landed in South Africa came down as though they would never cease to pour. On the day after our arrival I had got up to see the departure of the mail cart for Pretoria, and a more melancholy attempt at a public vehicle I had never beheld. Prophecies were rife that the horses would not be able to travel and that the miseries to be surmounted by the passengers before they reached their destination would be almost unendurable. When I saw the equipage I felt that the school of friends who had warned me against a journey to Pretoria in the mail carts had been right. I was extremely happy, therefore, when all the quidnuncs about the place, the butcher who had been travelling about the Colony in search of cattle for the last dozen years, the hotel-keeper who was himself in want of horses to take him over the same road, the commissariat employés, and all the loafers about the place, congratulated me on the team of which I was now the joint proprietor. There was a cart and four horses,--one of which however was a wicked kicker,--and complete harness, with a locker full of provisions to eke out the slender food to be found on the road,--all of which had cost £220. And there was a coloured driver, one George, whom everybody seemed to know, and who was able, as everybody said, to drive us anywhere over Africa. George was to have £5 a month, his passage paid back home, his keep on the road, and a douceur on parting, if we parted as friends. Remembering what I might have had to suffer,--what I might have been suffering at that very moment,--I expressed my opinion that the affair was very cheap. But my young friend indulged in grander financial views than my own. “It will be cheap,” said he, “if, we can sell it at the end of the journey for £150.” That was a contingency which I altogether refused to entertain. It had become cheap to me without any idea of a resale, as soon as I found what was the nature of the mail cart from Newcastle to Pretoria,--and what was the nature of the mail cart horses. Before leaving the Colony of Natal I must say that at this Newcastle,--as at other Newcastles,--coal is to be found in abundance. I was taken down to the river side where I could see it myself. There can be no doubt but that when the country is opened up coal will be one of its most valuable products. At present it is all but useless. It cannot be carried because the distances are so great and the roads so bad; and it cannot be worked because labour has not been organised. THE END OF VOL. I. PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO., LIMITED, CITY ROAD, LONDON.