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hitherto untrodden districts : until at last, such extra demands of 
the upper colonial officials culminated in this, — that whereas they 
had quarrelled with and dismissed their recently imported English 
engineer-in-chief for a proposed line of Metropolitan Railway, 
extending from Cape Town to the Berg River Yalley, and some 
one must he found to take his place, they unanimously agreed that 
C. D. Bell was that man ; because he was the only one amongst 
them who could lay out railway curves, build bridges, raise em- 
bankments, bore tunnels, inspect locomotives, and, in a word, save 
them, the great officials of the new “ responsible Government,” so 
called, in the eyes of the people, and before public opinion. 
And he did help them through that great difficulty by extra- 
ordinary exertions of his own, and which he could hardly have 
accomplished at his then advanced age, but that he had never spared 
himself. He had lived a triple life all along ; first, his official life, 
whose duties were always paramount with him ; second, his private 
social life, where he was always a favourite; and lastly, his artistic 
life, which occupied almost every Other moment of his existence. 
In 1846, while still in Cape Town, by shere dint of his know* 
ledge of the eastern country and people, he produced a long series 
of drawings in black and white, representing events in the Kaffir 
war then raging under Sir Peregrine Maitland, — drawings which 
astonished and delighted the soldiers who had been engaged in the 
operations, — and, being' sent home, were taken on one occasion by 
the Duke of Wellington into his private study, to con over alone, 
before giving his opinion on the conduct of that war to the House 
of Lords. 
In 1847, having come home on a short leave of absence, Mr. 
Bell procured from Messrs. Schenck & Co. of this city, a litho- 
graphic press and stones, learned to work it himself, threw off at 
once a number of South African subjects, varying from the Rev. 
Mr. Moffat preaching to Bechuanas, down to Amakosa Kaffirs 
torturing a wounded prisoner ; and took the whole plant out with 
him to Cape Town, a novel and important accession at that time to 
its means of graphic multiplication. 
There he further worked at oil painting ; and when the com- 
munity at last began to awake to the importance of art culture, and 
opened an exhibition of pictures, he carried off their gold medal for 
