A curious thing occurred in connection with my sudden departure for South Africa. In the latter part of September, 1897, I was debating with my family, at a seaside hotel near Dieppe, as to the place we should visit after the adjournment of Parliament in 1898. After discussing the merits of many suggestions, it was finally determined that we should all try South Africa, because it was said to have such a divine climate; the country was, moreover, so interesting politically, and as it loomed so much in public interest it would be worth while to obtain some personal knowledge of South Africans at home. We had scarcely arrived at this conclusion, when the postman brought to us a telegram, which, to our intense surprise, was a request from the Bulawayo Festivities Committee that I would go to Bulawayo to attend the celebration of the arrival of the Great Peninsular Railway at the Capital of Matabele Land. We regarded it as a strange coincidence. This opportunity to visit Bulawayo I considered rather premature, as towards the end of autumn many engagements crowd upon one, but after another animated family council it was resolved that I should accept the invitation were it only to qualify myself as a pioneer for the ladies. We left Southampton on the _Norman_ on the 9th October. I found then that there were five other members of the House of Commons on board-- Messrs. Saunderson, Llewellyn, Hayes Fisher, Peace, and Paullton, and the Duke of Roxburghe representing the House of Lords. Among the passengers there were Boers from Pretoria and Cape Colony, British Uitlanders from Johannesburg, English residents from the Cape and the two Dutch Republics, Afrikander farmers and vine-growers, and townspeople, some from the Cape District, others from the Eastern and Western Provinces, and not a few from Kimberley and Natal, besides a few ex-Raiders and Reformers. As may be imagined, there was no lack of instructive material, and naturally much divergence of political opinion. The smoking-room soon become like a debating club, but, notwithstanding the frankness and partisan character of the debates, the good temper with which each person delivered himself of his opinions was most astonishing.