In about an hour “Capting Florence” (as G——­ styles our new commander) calls for us and takes us out sight-seeing.  First and foremost, across the river to the rapidly-growing railway lines, where a brand-new locomotive was hissing away with full steam up.  Here we were met and welcomed by the energetic superintendent of this iron road, and, to my intense delight, after explaining to me what a long distance into the interior the line had to go and how fast it was getting on, considering the difficulties in the way of doing anything in South Africa, from washing a pocket-handkerchief up to laying down a railway, he proposed that we should get on the engine and go as far as the line was open for anything like safe traveling.  Never were such delightful five minutes as those spent in whizzing along through the park-like country and cutting fast through the heavenly air.  In vain did I smell that my serge skirts were getting dreadfully singed, in vain did I see most uncertain bits of rail before me:  it was all too perfectly enchanting to care for danger or disgrace, and I could have found it in my heart to echo G——­’s plaintive cry for “More!” when we came to the end and had to get off.  But it consoled us a little to watch the stone-breaking machine crunching up small rocks as though they had been lumps of sugar, and after looking at that we set off for the unfinished station, and could take in, even in its present skeleton state, how commodious and handsome it will all be some day.  You are all so accustomed to be whisked about the civilized world when and where you choose that it is difficult to make you understand the enormous boon the first line of railway is to a new country—­not only for the convenience of travelers, but for the transport of goods, the setting free of hundreds of cattle and horses and drivers—­all sorely needed for other purposes—­and the fast-following effects of opening up the resources of the back districts.  In these regions labor is the great difficulty, and one needs to hold both patience and temper fast with both one’s hands when watching either Kafir or Coolie at work.  The white man cannot or will not do much with his hands out here, so the navvies are slim-looking blacks, who jabber and grunt and sigh a good deal more than they work.

It is a fortunate circumstance that the delicious air keeps us all in a chronic state of hunger, for it appears in South Africa that one is expected to eat every half hour or so.  And, shamed am I to confess, we do eat—­and eat with a good appetite too—­a delicious luncheon at the superintendent’s, albeit it followed closely on the heels of our enormous breakfast at the dirty hotel.  Such a pretty little bachelor’s box as it was!—­so cool and quiet and neat!—­built somewhat after the fashion of the Pompeian houses, with a small square garden full of orange trees in the centre, and the house running round this opening in four corridors.  After lunch a couple of nice,