10 A NATURALIST IN THE TRANSVAAL. 



roads there are none, what we drove over are better 

 described as good wide paths, like footways but 

 broader across rugged common lands at home, with 

 dips and hollows, large half-buried stones in some 

 places, and small streams and rivulets spruits to cross 

 occasionally, with jolting and bumping, which is the 

 more noticeable on a first journey. But these rolling 

 grassy plains and bare hills, stretching for hundreds of 

 miles around, are not only invigorating, but positively 

 exhilarating. It is winter, though the days are hot. 

 No rain now falls, and the veld is covered with a close 

 dried-up growth of herbage, giving a light brown tinge 

 to the landscape till it meets the clear blue sky-line. 

 It is at sunrise when these hues become intensified and 

 tinged with the reflected solar light, and pale carmine and 

 deep umber tints are then exhibited. We change horses 

 about every hour at small wayside posting-houses, gene- 

 rally covered with the universal roof of corrugated iron, 

 for here there are neither tiles nor slates, and wood has 

 to be imported or transported to these treeless wastes. 



CHANGING MULES ON THE VELD. 



One man drives " Cape Boys " excel at this work, 

 the conductor sits by his side, and it is he who wields 

 the long whip and helps to pilot the driver. The road 

 is up-hill, amidst mountains and glorious views ; Natal 

 here bids her farewell to the Dutch Republic, and a 

 wilderness again reigns beyond. We pass through the 

 scene of the late Boer War, past Majuba Hill, and 

 through Laings Nek : but it is a sorry subject ; all 

 these fights took place on Natal territory which the 



