The Government provide a saloon carriage with a small kitchen on board, so that is used as the judge's headquarters when near the railway lines; but many of the places visited entail long drives in Cape carts.
The first place we went to was Colesberg, and we arrived there at 6 A.M. We were quite a large party with the barristers, the clerk and registrar, the interpreter, and the servants.
We were met by the magistrate and the sheriff, with a smart escort of Cape Mounted Police, and a party of convicts to take the baggage up.
We found a nice little house ready for us, the owner having turned out to make room; and, after a wash and breakfast, the men all went off to the court, and I stayed to unpack and get things straight.
There were three coloured girls left to do the housework, &c. None of them could speak English, and they had several babies scattered about. I knew we had to give a dinner party before we left, and felt rather hopeless about how it would go with the material to hand. However, everything went off very well in the end. Lots of people called on me, and I had some good tennis at the club, and also some nice rides on a horse that was lent to me, the first one I have tried since I came to this country that had a good mouth; most of them are ruined with the bits they use.
The surrounding country was rather pretty, and good for corn and cattle.
We stayed four days at Colesberg, and then moved on to Craddock, ten hours on the railway. There was a lot of court work there, and it had to be fitted into five days; so the men were in court nearly all the time—one night up to 11 P.M.—and I found it a little slow. But I had some nice drives, one day going out to see some curious sulphur baths, and another day to a farm about eight miles off, where every imaginable kind of fruit seemed to grow.
After this we parted company, my brother going on to Middleburg, and I for another run of ten hours in the train to Port Elizabeth, where I joined the Drummond Castle for Durban.
Various people seemed to have asked the captain to take care of me, so I sat next to him at table, and he was most kind. When he found that I meant to put up at a hotel in Durban, he told me that he wouldn't let me do that, as he had lots of friends there, and I should have a much better time if I went to stay with them.