Other names that occur to me are Mr. Abe Bailey, well known in racing circles to-day, and then reputed a millionaire, the foundation of whose fortune consisted in a ten-pound note borrowed from a friend.  Mr. Wools Sampson,[2] who subsequently so greatly distinguished himself at Ladysmith, where he was dangerously wounded, had an individuality all his own; he had seen every side of life as a soldier of fortune, attached to different regiments, during all the fighting in South Africa of the preceding years.  He was then a mining expert, associated with Mr. Bailey in Lydenburg, but his heart evidently lay in fighting and in pursuing the different kinds of wild animals that make their home on the African veldt.  Dr. Rutherford Harris, then the Secretary of the Chartered Company; Mr. Henry Milner, an old friend; Mr. Geoffrey Glyn and Mr. F. Guest, are others whom I specially remember; besides many more, some of whom have joined the vast majority, and others whom I have altogether lost sight of, but who helped to make the voyage a very pleasant one.

We landed at Cape Town shortly before Christmas Day.  As I have since learnt by the experience of many voyages, it is nearly always at dawn that a liner is brought alongside the quay at the conclusion of a long voyage; in consequence, sleep is almost out of the question the last night at sea, owing to the noisy manipulations of the mail-bags and luggage.  However, one is always so glad to get on shore that it is of very little import, and on this occasion we were all anxious to glean the latest news after being cut off from the world for so many days.  The papers contained gloomy accounts of the markets.  “King Slump” still held his sway, and things abroad looked very unsettled; so most of our friends appeared, when we met later, with very long faces.  After breakfast, leaving our luggage to the tender mercies of some officious agent, who professed to see it “through the Customs,” we took a hansom and drove to the Grand Hotel, en route to the hotel, in the suburb of Newlands, where we had taken rooms.  My first impressions of Cape Town certainly were not prepossessing, and well I remember them, even after all these years.  The dust was blowing in clouds, stirred up by the “south-easter” one hears so much about—­an icy blast which appears to come straight from the South Pole, and which often makes its appearance in the height of summer, which season it then was.  The hansom, of the oldest-fashioned type, shook and jolted beyond belief, and threatened every moment to fall to pieces.  The streets from the docks to the town were unfinished, untidy, and vilely paved, and I remember comparing them very unfavourably with Melbourne or Sydney.  However, I soon modified my somewhat hasty judgment.  We had seen the town’s worst aspects, and later I noticed some attractive-looking shops; the imposing Houses of Parliament, in their enclosed grounds, standing out sharply defined against the hazy background of Table Mountain; and the Standard