I have spoken of the "tracks" used by waggons and coaches; the reader must not suppose that these tracks are roads. There are few made roads in South Africa, except in the neighbourhood of Cape Town, Durban, Maritzburg, Graham's Town, and one or two other towns. Those in Natal are among the best. Neither are there (except as aforesaid) any bridges, save here and there rude ones of logs thrown across a stream bed. Elsewhere the track is merely a line across the veldt (prairie), marked and sometimes cut deep by the wheels of many waggons, where all that man has done has been to remove the trees or bushes. Here and there the edges of the steep stream banks have been cut down so as to allow a vehicle to descend more easily to the bottom, where during the rains the stream flows, and where during the rest of the year the ground is sandy or muddy. After heavy rain a stream is sometimes impassable for days together, and the waggons have to wait on the bank till the torrent subsides. At all times these water channels are troublesome, for the oxen or mules are apt to jib or get out of hand in descending the steep slope, and it is no easy matter to get them urged up the steep slope on the other side. Accidents often occur, and altogether it may be said that the dongas—this is the name given to these hollow stream channels—form the most exciting feature of South African travel (in places where wild beasts and natives are no longer dangerous) and afford the greatest scope for the skill of the South African driver.
Skilful he must be, for he never drives less than six span of oxen, and seldom less than three pairs of horses or mules (the Bulawayo coach had, in 1895, five pairs). It takes two men to drive. One wields an immensely long whip, while the other holds the reins. Both incessantly apostrophise the animals. It is chiefly with the whip that the team is driven; but if the team is one of mules, one of the two drivers is for a large part of the time on his feet, running alongside the beasts, beating them with a short whip and shouting to them by their names, with such adjectives, expletives, and other objurgations as he can command. Many Dutchmen do drive wonderfully well.
I have said nothing of internal water travel by river or lake, because none exists. There are no lakes, and there is not a river with water enough to float the smallest steamboat, except some reaches of the Limpopo River in the wet season. The only steamer that plies anywhere on a river is that which ascends the Pungwe River from Beira to Fontesvilla; it goes only as far as the tide goes, and on most of its trips spends fully half its time sticking on the sand-banks with which the Pungwe abounds. So far as I know, no one has ever proposed to make a canal in any part of the country.
From what has been said it will be gathered that there is no country where railways are and will be more needed than South Africa. They are the chief need of the newly settled districts, and the best means, next to a wise and conciliatory administration, of preventing fresh native outbreaks. Unfortunately, they will for a great while have no local traffic, because most of the country they pass through has not one white inhabitant to the square mile. Their function is to connect the coast with the distant mining centres, in which population has begun to grow. To lay them is, however, comparatively cheap work. Except in the immediate neighbourhood of a town, nothing has to be paid for the land. The gradients all through the interior plateau are comparatively easy, and the engineers have in Africa cared less for making their ascents gentle than we do in older countries. Even in the hilly parts of the Transvaal and Matabililand the ranges are not high or steep, and one can turn a kopje instead of cutting or tunnelling through it. Few bridges are needed, because there are few rivers.
A word as to another point on which any one planning a tour to South Africa may be curious—the accommodation obtainable. Most travellers have given the inns a bad name. My own experience is scanty, for we were so often the recipient of private hospitality as to have occasion to sleep in an inn (apart from the "stores" of Bechuanaland and Mashonaland, of which more hereafter) in four places only, Mafeking, Ladybrand, Durban, and Bloemfontein. But it seemed to us that, considering the newness of the country and the difficulty in many places of furnishing a house well and of securing provisions, the entertainment was quite tolerable, sometimes much better than one had expected. In the two Colonies, and the chief places of the two Republics, clean beds and enough to eat can always be had; in the largest places there is nothing to complain of, though the prices are sometimes high. Luxuries are unprocurable, but no sensible man will go to a new country expecting luxuries.
CHAPTER XIV
FROM CAPE TOWN TO BULAWAYO
In this and the four following chapters I propose to give some account of the country through which the traveller passes on his way from the coast to the points which are the natural goals of a South African journey, Kimberley and Johannesburg, Bulawayo and Fort Salisbury, hoping thereby to convey a more lively impression of the aspects of the land and its inhabitants than general descriptions can give, and incidentally to find opportunities for touching upon some of the questions on which the future of the country will turn.