This
journey is a long one, of between 600 and 700 miles, and of some
forty-two hours by railway. I travelled all through that night, and the
whole of the next day, through the most remarkable kind of country I
ever saw. Flat, and apparently as level, as a bowling-green (although we
were continually rising from our starting-point at Cape Town to a
height at Kimberley of about 3,800 feet above the sea), a sandy and
dreary desert, with occasionally low, and barren hills in the far
distance--not a tree to be seen, and scarcely any vestige of vegetation,
excepting now and then, a few of the indigenous Mimosa shrubs, which,
for hundreds of miles, grow fitfully on this desolate soil. This is the
wonderful tract of country called the Great Karoo. Not a sign of animal
life is to be detected, at this period of the year. During the summer
months it affords pasturage for large flocks of sheep. It is a vast
interminable _sea of lone land_, over which the eye wanders unceasingly
during the whole of the daylight hours.
[Illustration: Decorative]
[Footnote A: The First Series was published in 1887.]
[Illustration: Decorative]
KIMBERLEY.
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