“The platform at the station was crowded.  A passage was made for me; but I readily reached the compartment, and having five minutes or so made a little speech, which was received with volley after volley, and cheer after cheer.  There was a good deal of handshaking, any number of ‘God bless you’s,’ and the train bore me away from a people with whom I have certainly had a really hearty and happy fellowship.

“I should have said that, by request of my host, I went through a kind of board school, in a very commodious and suitable building.  I saw room after room so far as I could judge of the happiest, healthiest, and I might say, most beautiful lot of children it was ever my privilege to see.  They ought to make a splendid body of men and women for the future.

“Friday.—­I did not get on very well last night with the ’plank bed’ or shelf which was dignified with the name of a sleeping berth.  There was very little spring and no cushion.  Moreover, I had heartburn.  It was a cold night, and altogether I was glad when daylight came.  The sun came out, and it was just as hot by noon as it had been cold at night.

“We stopped at Cradock a little time, where a gentleman interviewed me with regard to 80,000 acres of land possessed by some syndicate of the town at Prieska, up beyond Kimberley.  This kind of thing happens almost every day.

“At a station a little further on quite a crowd of Salvationists and others had gathered.  I could not see any sign of a town beyond two or three shanties.  I used to think some of the places that had been dignified by the name of ‘cities’ in Canada were rather grotesque; but here it is carried to a greater extreme.  However, they must have some method of distinguishing the place of ingress and egress from the train, and perhaps they are named in the hope of becoming what they are said to be—­things that are spoken of as if they were.

“Well, on the platform was as picturesque and motley a crowd as well could be imagined.  I only wished at the moment the pencil of some artist had been there to have painted the Kafirs in their showy turbans and half-naked bodies, the women with babies on their backs, and the whites of various ranks and conditions, all mixed up with Salvationists.  Among others was a Salvationist old woman, half-caste, who had trudged over the mountain fourteen miles from Somerset East, with a big drum over her shoulders, travelling during the night in order to get a glimpse of The General.  All at once, whilst the people stared, she struck up a lively chorus, leading the singing, and beating the drum most vigorously.  Then followed the choruses:  ‘No, we never, never, never will give in,’ ‘Never say die,’ and ‘Steadily keep advancing,’ etc.  I beckoned to her, shook hands with her, wrote her name in a copy of Aggressive Christianity in the presence of the crowd, and gave it to her, all of