I soon made up my mind to proceed farther up country
in order to try and discover genuine natives, and perhaps
also to try and escape from the too kind and generous
hospitality of the “ Cape Towners.” So I started for
Kimberley. The journey from Cape Town to Kimberley
takes thirty-six hours, across practically a desert covered
with short yellowish grass, strewn with stones. Every
now and then the grass is replaced by patches of heather
—but the stones are everywhere. The whole stretch of
country is without a drop of water, and consequently
without a single tree. In the midst .of this desert,
there rise from time to time low ridges of hills as
naked and arid as the plain itself. Here and there are
stations, round which are grouped a few houses, all having
a more or less desolate appearance; and one hails one’s
arrival at Kimberley as a relief from the dreadful monotony
of travelling for a day and a half in a railway carriage
through a country so uninteresting and woebegone.
Kimberley is a striking example of a settlement sprung
out of speculation. It is partly a camp and partly a city,
consisting of a few hastily erected shanties side by side
with splendid and substantial stone buildings. You feel
that a wave of speculation has been sweeping over the
country just as a cyclone sweeps over a town; but, while
the latter leaves behind a mass of ruins and houseless
inhabitants, the former throws up a quantity of buildings
too numerous for the wants of dwellers in the place.
The entire life of the place has concentrated itself in
the gigantic undertaking known as the De Beers Mining
Company, one of the most powerful corporations in the
world—the gigantic conception of Mr. Rhodes, who, by
amalgamating all the diamond mines, stopped the fall in
the prices, regulating the supply by the demand.
Having decided to start for the interior, I immediately
set to work to get my equipment ready. Travelling in
South Africa is very different from a journey in other
parts of the Great Continent. No large caravan—in fact,
6
no caravan at all—has to be organized ; the whole of the
transport is done by huge waggons drawn by sixteen or
eighteen oxen, and on to which from 5000 to 6000 lbs.
weight of goods can be piled. First, the buck-waggon,
a huge and cumbrous machine generally about thirty
feet long and six or seven across, and divided into two
parts; the front open and uncovered, the back for a
length of about ten feet covered by an awning and
rising about fifteen feet from the ground. This is the
sleeping accommodation, and half-way up is a frame
covered with intertwined strips of raw hide used to support
a mattress. Covered waggons are smaller and narrower
than the others, with fixed awnings over their whole
length, and capable of holding about 4000 lbs. weight of
goods. To carry loads as transport for business purposes
buck-waggons are, no doubt, superior; but for the traveller
or explorer intending to carry out a long trip in the
interior of South Africa I should strongly advise the use
of covered waggons—they can be drawn by fewer oxen,
arid can pass under trees that will catch the buck-waggon,
while they are more comfortable in every way. A slower,
more uncomfortable, dirtier, and generally more detestable
kind of transport it is difficult to imagine. How
much better to travel by caravan—impossible until one
is north of the Zambezi. Unfortunately I was induced to
invest. in buck-waggons. The selection of waggons and
oxen is by no-means as simple as would at first appear.
A list of the small extras that are necessary would cover
pages; and, however careful you may be, you will find
when you are well started that one half of what you
require has. been forgotten.
The choice of servants is also a very difficult matter.
Each waggon requires a driver, a leader, a herd boy, a
cook, a boy to get wood, water, etc.; and a servant to look
after your own things. All the natives in Cape Colony
being “ gentlemen,” not only ask monstrous wages (£3 to
£6 per month for drivers, cooks, and servants, and £ 2