rain rust; so that a farmer's chance of success
with this important crop is very precarious.
Sheep, I think, will succeed in Natal, but I
do not think that the experiment has been
fairly tried as yet. The soil is, I think,
generally good, except where (as in some of Byrne's
lots) it consists of ironstone boulders; but
it wants some cooling element mixed with it;
the sun and rain throughout the summer
making it a perfect-steam bath. As to
climate, I have not been able to give it a fair
trial; but I am inclined to think that of
Natal far superior to that of the Overberg
country. You will scarcely believe it when I
tell you, that up here I have suffered more
from cold than heat, and that in one day
I have known an excellent thermometer in
the heat vary from sixty-three to ninety-one.
Living in a tent, you certainly feel the slightest
change of temperature, especially when you
are ill. I have not yet tried the sport of
Natal, but there is plenty to be had. Buffaloes,
hippopotami, and elephants are to be found in
Natal: here quaggas, zebras, gnus, and all
the game that run in large herds. I separated
a young zebra filly from the herd the other
day, and succeeded in driving it home to the
tent, but, unluckily, one of the Hottentots
gave it boiled milk instead of fresh, and killed
it. I was much vexed, but hope to get
another. I have a screw of a horse, for which I
gave ten pounds, which I mean to sell in
Maritzburgh, and a splendid dog, which cost
me three pounds. Remember, every saddle
ought to have a false or double pad to ensure
against a sore back; a nuisance to which horses
are subject here. My saddles are worth seven
pounds here: cost in England, cash, three
pounds ten shillings.

"You cannot depend upon any of your
maps at home for the geography of this
country; the breadth of the land between the
mountains and the sea is not great enough; the
direction and termination of the Drakenberg
range are laid down quite wrong, and the
Northern Sovereignty is all dur malkander
as the Dutch say—all confusion. But an
accurate map of South Africa is now in
preparation by Captain Hall, of the Ordnance,
and Moffatt (son of the missionary) who
received in England the education of a civil
engineer, and has held the appointment of
Surveyor to the Northern Sovereignty, is
furnishing him with the materials for a
correct map of the Sovereignty and of the
country beyond the Vaal River (where the
emigrant Boers are) as far as it is known. He has
collected the materials with great personal
labour, partly by actual observations, and
partly by questioning Boers and traders, and
testing their accounts by comparison. The
great problems still to be solved are the
courses eastward of the Limpopo and
Elephants' Rivers, and their embouchures. The
country there is so unhealthy that few have
ventured on the quest, and those have never
returned!

"The Sovereignty is bounded on the S. by
the Orange River, on the N. by the Vaal
River, on the W. by the junction of the
Orange and Vaal, and on the E. by the
Drakenberg and Quathlamba mountains (for
they are not, as stated on the maps, the same).
It has an area of about fifty thousand square
miles, and contains some good pasture country,
and some fit for agricultural purposes; but
for the most part consists of endless plains
and undulations, with little water and less
wood.

"The Vaal River District is the most
northerly, and of course the last settled; it
is very cold, so much so, that the emigrant
Boers will not stay in it, but it is the moistest
and most fertile. Government has
determined to colonise it; and Major Warden, the
British resident or Lieutenant-Governor of
the Sovereignty, appointed some time ago a
land commissioner, with power to inspect and
allot farms, to confirm or reject, under certain
conditions, the claims of certain Dutch
occupiers, and to found a 'dorf ' or town, to be called
after his Excellency, 'Harrismith.' This
town, which is about two hours on horseback
(or twelve miles from where I now am), and
which contains one house and a half is situated
in long. E. 28, 42; lat. S. 28, 12. It is on
the Wilger River, a fine stream, which, after
a S.W. course of fifty miles, right along the
summit of the Drakenberg, turns N.W., and
runs right across the district into the Vaal.
There are very fine farms in this district; but
nothing would induce me to live here, which
is a hundred times worse than a hundred
Salisbury Plains. I would rather have a
fifty acre farm in Canada, than twelve
thousand acres in any part of Africa I have yet
seen. I am told there is some beautiful
country down south in Caffre Land; but I
have as yet seen nothing to be mentioned in
the same day with the wildest part of New
Brunswick. Maritzburgh is rather a pretty
place, or will be when trees are planted
round it. Living is from twenty-five to
thirty-five shillings a week. No decent
person can stay at the inn, which is filthy,
noisy, and low.

"African travelling is the most execrable,
slow, tedious, cruel, body-and-mind-destroying
occupation that can possibly be devised. It
may be all very well in the interior; abounding
in game on all sides, and where something
occurs every minute to excite and amuse;
but to travel for hundred of miles, over the
veld, especially in winter and spring, when
there is not a blade of grass upon it, at the
rate of three miles an hour, scorched by the
sun all day, and shivering with cold at night;
the scenery eternally the same dreary waste,
and the only relief the mid-day outspan, the
dinner, and the pipe—solace of many woes;
the monotony only varied by the oxen sticking
on some steep hill, drift, or sprient, when a
scene occurs that I have no time to describe
now—even were it possible to describe;