At the beginning of the new year we prepared to go by coach the usual way to Grahamstown, the principal town in the eastern province of the Cape Colony, and the point of our destination. In a few days our furniture was disposed of, our housekeeper dismissed, and we took our places in the coach to leave, and bade good-by to Kimberley and many kind friends we had made. For seven months it had not rained, but rumours of heavy rains had reached us a few weeks before our departure, and we feared we should find impassable the river we should have to cross on our way to Fauresmith, near which "Jagersfontein" (the new diamond fields) is situated. The roads we found in no better condition than those in the colony, and the coach threw us about and jolted us against one another and the sides in the old familiar way. On arriving at the bank of the river, we found it was rushing down like a torrent, and almost level with the top of the precipitous banks, some sixty feet high. At another time we should have found the river at the foot of these banks, meandering along in an easily forded stream. The only contrivance for crossing, provided for such an emergency as the rising of the river, was a stout wire rope stretched from bank to bank, upon which was swung a common pine box of fair dimensions, but full of gaping holes, and looking, in itself, by no means capable of sustaining the weight of a healthy body. But it was the only possible mode of transit, so, screwing our courage to the sticking point, we prepared to cross. The box could only accommodate one individual at a time. So Eva stepped in to face the danger of the passage alone. One portmanteau was carried over with each passenger. How the heart beat as the Kafirs on the other side commenced to haul on the pulley lines attached to the frail machine. We watched Eva with breathless interest as she was slowly pulled along in jerks, now and then coming to a dead standstill and dangling over that swollen stream, whilst the haulers rested before taking a fresh grasp of the lines; pulling a few seconds, then resting a few seconds, leaving the subject to dangle over the torrent with the heart thumping wildly. The rest of us followed in due course. As the opposite bank was reached, and we were lifted on to _terra firma_, the hand of that black man was clutched with as much fervency as we had ever grasped the hand of our dearest friend.