50 Mex\, Mines, and Ankmals in South Africa. 



fields prove as remunerative as well-informed 

 persons believe, the line will soon be extended 

 thither. From Tati to the Victoria Falls of the 

 Zambesi is a short step of about 500 miles, o^'er a 

 country offering few engineering difficulties, and I 

 doubt not that the next generation, before it groM-s 

 old, will travel to this great river and to its un- 

 paralleled cascades with the same ease and comfort 

 as the present generation is able to visit Niagara. 

 The road from Kimberley to Vryburg traverses a 

 succession of j)lains wide as the eye can range, 

 bounded here and there by Ioav and regular 

 chains of liills. Scarcely a single tree breaks the 

 endless flat of grass veldt. 



Pone me pigiis uLi nulla campis 

 Arbor a3stiva recreatur aura. 



The Roman poet must have had Bechuanaland or 

 the Transvaal in his mind "when he wrote the lines 

 quoted above, for the two countries perfectly 

 realize his conception. The veldt at the surface 

 in the winter has a somewhat sterile and 23arched 

 appearance, and is covered with patchy grass dried 

 by the sun to the colour of hay. Far and wide it 

 extends, and the traveller sees no reason why he 

 should ever emerge from its limits. Tayo causes, 

 however, combine to remove the tedium and 

 monotony of such a landscape. The vastness, the 

 apparent illimitability of the surroundings, elevate 

 rather than oppress the mind, and the genial 

 sunshine, the cloudless sky, the in\dgorating 

 highland air sustain the spirits at a hio-h level. 



