We had experienced so many discomforts in our previous journeys by coach that we resolved here to have no more of it. So we provided ourselves with a comfortable and roomy Cape cart and four strong horses to make the journey up country, and we were prepared for once to take things easy. When travelling by coach one has no alternative between pressing right on, or waiting over in a dreary village for a week, until the next coach passes through. But with your own cart you can do as you like, going or staying, as pleases the fancy. Passing some of the villages we had been through by coach, in a few days we had reached the Orange Free State, more frequently called simply "Free State." Our introduction to this thinly populated upland region was not calculated to put us in the best of humours, either with the country or our tired selves. We remained long enough to find out there were many things of interest about it. The Free State is embraced within the boundaries of the Vaal and Orange Rivers, and was first settled by the Dutch farmers, who had emigrated from the Cape Colony; the farms are very large, and by no means all occupied. About nine o'clock one night we stopped to give our horses a rest at a miserable house built of mud bricks. On either side of the door was a small window, in one of which was a sputtering candle. The house was occupied by Dutch people, but as it did not look sufficiently inviting to tempt me out of my seat even for a change, some coffee was brought out by a daughter of the family; a girl of sixteen. In the moonlight her face was very pleasing, and on asking her a question she answered in such pure English that we asked where she learned to speak so correctly. She replied that she had learned at the English school in Bloemfontein, called the "Home," belonging to the Church of England. She was so bright and chatty, yet modest withal, and her surroundings so wretched and uninviting, that I thought the educational institutions of B--must be something superior to those usually found in the colony, which, on further knowledge, proved to be true. When we reached the brow of the hill overlooking the town of Bloemfontein, we saw with pleasure, under the bright moonlight, the town filled with fine trees and gardens. As we drove through we passed large buildings of both church and state which would not be excelled in any town of the United States of double the size. CHAPTER TWENTY. We at last reached a cool, inviting-looking hotel, and we thoroughly enjoyed that well-served dinner laid before us on clean linen and bright silver, the delicious viands seeming all the better for our temporary deprivation. If any one troubled with dyspepsia should travel for three months through Africa, and live as the people do, never hurrying, and occasionally getting a jolting in a long coach ride, his would soon be a forgotten malady.