Capital was being invested in water-works which would bring the water in pipes from the Vaal River, some seventeen miles away. Government was putting up stone buildings for post-office and telegraph offices. Churches were towering up above the surrounding dwelling-houses and stores. A club-house, the finest in the country, was built at a cost of 90,000 dollars, and they still keep on improving the streets, which extend over twenty miles. There are some very fine jewellery stores and dry goods houses, as attractive as any in American cities of double its population. An air of activity pervades the place. Thirty-two electric Brush lights, of two thousand candle power, light up the city.
Wishing to see how far civilisation had crept into the interior and also to breathe the wonderful air of the Transvaal for a little while, we left our house in charge of our worthy housekeeper and drove away from the coach office early one bright summer’s morning.
Chapter Thirteen.
We were told that the Transvaal Republic was an entirely inland territory; nowhere does it touch the sea, from which its nearest point is quite one hundred miles. It extends from the Vaal River to the Limpopo, and from the same river and the colony of Griqua Land West (the diamond fields) on the west to the Zulu country and Portuguese settlements on the east. It is exceedingly healthy, lying from 6,000 to 7,000 feet above the sea level. Our road for some distance after leaving Kimberley was through thick sand; indeed, Kimberley seems to lie in the centre of a veritable sea of sand, sometimes so loose and deep that to go through it is like wading through deep snow. The coach required constant changing of its six horses at stables en route to make any progress.
On the second day from the Fields we passed through the village of Bloemhof, the first place after leaving Kimberley. It is quite a pretty little spot, the only street being wide and clean, with tolerably well-kept grass-plots on either side of the road. It formed an agreeable contrast to Clerksdorp, a wretched hamlet we reached the following day, where the hotel (save the mark!) boasted one room and parlour, with an individual in charge who was collectively clerk, proprietor, waiter, bartender, and chambermaid.
As we neared Potchefstrom there was an agreeable change in the appearance of the country, the characteristics of the lower veldt, which were alternately a plain and a mountain pass in unvarying succession, giving place to a park-like landscape, forming the most delightful of prospects.
The country was everywhere beautifully fresh and green, the monotony of grassland being varied with clumps of thorn bushes and stunted trees. The variety of thorn is almost endless, from the beautiful, fragrant, flowered “mimosa” to the prickly pear, and the suggestively named “wacht een beetje” or “wait a bit” bramble. Three days’ and three nights’ almost constant travelling brought us to Potchefstrom, and there, a thousand miles from Cape Town, we were obliged to confess that we had reached the prettiest village in the country.