*5° 



POPULAR SCIENCE MOXTHLY 



Mafeking has little of interest for the ordinary sightseer and noth- 

 ing remains of its spectacular siege except a few banks on the flat 

 plain showing where the trenches had been placed. The native 

 ' staadt ' contains some five thousand blacks living in huts and houses 

 of sun-baked bricks and plaster, with occasional corrugated iron roofs. 

 The special train only stopped here long enough to gather up those who 

 had come by road from the Transvaal. All the following day was 

 spent in running along over the brown veld, sometimes flat and bare, 

 sometimes covered with thick bush, but generally rolling country 

 dotted with trees and intersected here and there with the dry beds of 



An Incident of our 'Trfk.' 



streams. At this season of the year the ground has become parched 

 under the hot sun and long coarse dry grass covers the whole face of 

 the country. A tree with a straight trunk is rarely visible and the 

 twisted branches were devoid of foliage except where parasitic growths, 

 frequently species of misletoe, showed their bright green stems. All 

 the way from Durban to the end of our ride, grass fires, started by the 

 farmers to clear off the ground before the rains, were visible and often 

 made the nights picturesque as they slowly burned their way in long 

 lines over the plains and hills. 



The standard South African railway gauge is forty-two inches, 

 fourteen and a half inches less than the ordinary one. This is prob- 

 ably an economical width for the present needs of the country, but it 

 introduces difficulties in the construction of comfortable sleeping ac- 



