Climbing sleepily into the coach and yawning in chorus with our fellow-passengers, the driver shouted “right,” the boys let go the heads of the leaders, and off we went to the shrill notes of the driver’s horn in the still, cold, morning air. We slumbered uneasily for an hour after our start, waking up with a painful start as some one’s elbow would insinuate itself into his neighbour’s side, at any extra jolt of the coach. We really did not care if we never reached Kimberley, provided the coach would only stop for two or three hours to let us finish our sleep. The sun came out and warmed up the flies that had left us in the first half hours of our journey. These completed what the jolting had commenced and everybody was soon wide awake. Late in the day we stopped to change horses at a farmhouse, the owner of which was a typical Dutch woman weighing three hundred pounds. She sat in her chair from morning until night, everything she needed being brought to her; her daughter assisted her from her chair to her bed, which was the only exercise she had all day. She was not the sole representative of her kind that we saw in the country.
The second night we were climbing into the upland region, where the nights grew colder, requiring heavy, warm wraps, the stars shone like fiery gems, and threw a white, weird light over the country, in which not a sound could be heard but the rumble of our wheels and the cries of our Jehus. Frank bore the journey as well as any of the rest of us, and her condition of health spoke volumes for the climate.
The third night the coach rumbled quickly over a pine bridge spanning the Orange River, the river being about half a mile wide at this point; when once across we were in Griqua Land West, the land of diamonds!—but still one hundred miles away from Kimberley.
One more day and night on the road through very heavy sand, and we reached the Medder or Mud River, a considerable stream with very deep and precipitous bank’s, down and through which we rumbled with much difficulty, giving the wielder of the “whip” plenty of work to get us over. Toward the afternoon we began to see unmistakable signs of our nearing a large settlement.
We passed some two hundred wagons with their long teams of labouring oxen, while wayside stores became more plentiful and closer together.
At four o’clock we drove up to the Queen’s Hotel, where we alighted, tired and travel-stained, heartily glad to get to the end of our journey.
