Their mode of woolwashing was quite new to me. The wool, which seemed to have been shorn in a very rough manner,--cut off in locks after a fashion which would have broken the heart of an Australian Squatter, wool chopped as you would chop a salad,--was first put into a square caldron of boiling, or nearly boiling water. Then it was drawn out in buckets, and brought to troughs made in a running stream, in which the dirt was trodden out of it by coloured men. These were Hottentots, and Negroes,--the children of the old slaves,--and one or two Kafirs from the East. The wool is then squeezed and laid out on drying grounds to dry. The most interesting part of the affair was the fact that these coloured men were earning 4s. 6d. a day wages each. Some distance further on the next day we came on two white men,--navvies,--who were making a dam and were earning only 1s. 7d. a day, and their diet. That might together be worth 2s. 6d. They explained to us that they had found it very hard to get any job, and had taken this almost in despair. But they wouldn’t have trod the wool along with the black men, even for 4s. 6d. Just as the night was set in we started at a gallop with our tired horses. I know so well the way in which a poor weary brute may be spirited up for five minutes; not, alas, without the lash. A spur to a tired horse is like brandy to a worn-out man. It will add no strength, but it will enable the sufferer to collect together and to use quickly what little remains. We had fifteen miles to do, and wearily, with sad efforts, we did twelve of them. Then we reached a little town, Blanco, and were alive with hopes of a relay. But everybody in Blanco was in bed, and there was nothing for us but to walk, the driver promising that if we would allow the poor animals twenty minutes to look about them, they would be able to crawl on with the cart and our portmanteaus. And so we walked on to George, and found our dinner of mutton chops ready for us at eleven o’clock. A telegram had been sent on so that a vehicle might be prepared for us before daybreak on the morrow.