MY FIRST START ACROSS THE DRAKENSBERG MOUNTAINS--VISIT HARRYSMITH, WAKKERSTROOM, UTRICH, NEWCASTLE, HOME. Early in the morning of the fourth found me ready for a start for a four months' trip before plunging into the unknown land. My little expedition consisted of a waggon and fourteen trek oxen, a young four-year-old Natal horse, my driver and two Zulu boys, myself and young Talbot, well provisioned for my journey. Leaving my kind friends, I took the road to Ladysmith, but turned off to the left before reaching that town, and took the Transport Road, leading to Harrysmith in the Free State, over the mountain, passing up by Van Reenen's Pass, a very steep and long hill, the altitude being 7250 feet above sea-level, and arrived at Harrysmith on the 18th of September, 1863, where I outspanned close to the town. The country along the whole distance up to the berg is very pretty and picturesque. From the base of the berg to the summit the distance is about five miles, with a rise of 2000 feet, that being the difference in the altitude between the upper or northern part of Natal and the Orange Free State, consequently being so much higher and open, makes the winter much colder. From this elevation, and looking back upon Natal, a more lovely or extensive landscape can scarcely be imagined. To the right and left huge rocks stand out on the rugged summits in those grotesque forms from which descend perpendicular cliffs and deep kloofs clothed in subtropical vegetation, between which long spurs of the mountain are thrown out, terminating in rolling plains and beyond lofty hills and deep valleys. Far away, on the right, continues the Drakensberg, with its lofty and noble peaks rearing their heads far into the clouds that hang on their summits in loving embrace, until they are lost to view in the pale tints of the evening sky, leaving the central view open to the sea, 120 miles to the coast, where the bluff at Port Durban can be distinguished overlooking the intervening country with its plains and hills. It was here, at the Bushman's Pass, 9000 feet high, that the sad affair with Langalibalele's tribe occurred. A number of them had been at the diamond-fields, where they had procured guns for wages. No Kaffirs in Natal are allowed to have guns, except a few hundred, by special licence, and the sale of gunpowder is all in the hands of the Government, white men even not being allowed more than ten pounds a year, and they cannot import guns without a special permission from the Government.