PRETORIA TO NATAL.
After reaching Pretoria, I stayed only two days there, engaged in bidding farewell to my numerous friends, and making preparations for my next long journey into Natal. I left Pretoria for Johannesburg by coach, on the 1st of August, and started from the latter town at five o'clock in the morning of the 3rd, in very cold weather and pitch dark, by the post cart. This most uncomfortable vehicle is a kind of wagonette, with somewhat dilapidated canvas curtains, through which the wind whistled most unpleasantly, being utterly insufficient to keep out the cold. It is drawn by eight horses, and has cramped seats for eight or ten passengers. On this occasion there were seven others besides myself. In addition the mail bags were crammed inconveniently under the seats. In this post cart I travelled for three days and two nights by way of Richmond, Heidelburg, Standerton,—where cattle rearing and horse breeding is successfully carried on,—and Newcastle, which will be remembered as having been the base of operations during the Boer war, and also as the place where the final treaty of Peace was drawn up and signed by the joint Commission, to Eland's Laagte, the present terminus of the Natal railway, thirteen miles beyond Ladysmith. At Eland's Laagte a very promising coal field is being worked, from which great and important results are expected in the future. Soon after crossing the Transvaal border we passed the battle fields of Laing's Nek, Majuba Hill, and Ingogo, names indelibly associated with one of the saddest, as well as most humiliating, episodes of English modern military history, in connection with the Transvaal War of 1881. I gazed mournfully on Majuba Hill, that black spot of bitter memories to every Briton, and of natural exultation and pride to the Boers; and on Colley's grave, the unfortunate commander, whose unhappy and most unaccountable military blunder led to the lamentable and fatal defeat, which cost him his life, and resulted in the miserable fiasco—the retrocession of the Transvaal to the Boers. It is impossible to estimate the damage done to British influence, prestige, and power by the political consequences resulting from that disastrous day.
The south-eastern part of the Transvaal is as bare, and treeless, and altogether as uninteresting and unattractive as the south western region, between Bechuanaland and Klerksdorp, through which I had travelled a few weeks previously. The instant, however, the border is crossed, and Natal is entered, the scene is at once changed, and the beauty of the surrounding country becomes apparent. Instead of the flat, wearisome desert of the Transvaal, undulating hills, clothed with verdure, and an extensive panorama of broad and fertile plains meets the eye.
