"These mountains are much higher than the others, and are quite impassable, presenting a rugged outline and bold and precipitous escarpments. From a distant view, from the nature of the outline (not having been near them) I infer that they are granitic. "The area of this district, from the ascertained and assumed boundaries will be much greater than has hitherto been supposed. It cannot, I imagine, be less than 13,500 instead of 10,000 square miles. At the same time it must be remembered, that if I find by my future observations, (which I think will very probably be the case) the same amount of error, and in the same direction in the southern portion of the district, of which at present I know nothing, as I have found in the northern, the area will be increased by a great quantity, and may not fall far short of 16,000 square miles, as a small deviation in the assigned direction of the Great Draakberg will easily make that quantity. "The district is everywhere covered with vegetation, either in the form of luxuriant grass, which grows to a great height, or thorns and low bushes. Timber trees only grow in kloofs on sides of hills, excepting a belt which runs along the sea-coast. "Water abounds in every part, and flowing streams cross the path at intervals of only a few miles. In the winter some of these become dry, but then water may always be obtained at moderate distances. "The soil is in all cases well adapted for cultivation, and on the alluvial lands near rivers particularly so, producing much larger crops than are ever grown in the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope. "The rocks which occur in the district, as far as I have yet seen, are granite, basalt, and members of the trap family, slate, sandstone, and shale. "Coal containing but little bituminous matter occurs in in beds in the sandstone. In a kloof near the drift of the Bushman's River, there is a bed nine inches thick. This is the nearest locality I am aware of to Pietermaritzburg; it is distant about sixty-three miles. It is more abundant to the north-west, and I observed it in a small river near Biggar's Berg, in about latitude 28 degrees 7 minutes South, and longitude 29 degrees 25 minutes East, in a bed six feet thick, and of good quality; it is here cut through by a vein of trap." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. In the Blue Book for 1847, the latest published account, the numbers stand, 71,113 white, and 75,977 coloured; but this leaves more than 21,000 of the total unaccounted for. PART ONE, CHAPTER TWO. INFORMATION FOR EMIGRANTS. As it is my wish to put nothing but trustworthy information into the hands of those who may be meditating so very important a step as removing themselves and all that they value far from their native land, I have carefully abstracted the following statements from the last _Colonisation Circular_, issued (March, 1850) by Her Majesty's Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners.