This first journey was prosperous, deceitfully prosperous, as though it would fain try to persuade us that after all there was a great deal to be said in favor of a mode of traveling which reminded one of the legends of the glories of the old coaching days. No dust--for there had been heavy rain a few days before--a perfect summer's day, hot enough in the sun, but not disagreeably hot as we bowled along, fast as four horses could go, in the face of a soft, balmy summer breeze. We were packed as tightly as we could fit--two of us on the coach-box, with the mail-bags under our feet and the driver's elbows in our ribs. The ordinary light dog-cart which daily runs between Maritzburg and D'Urban was exchanged for a sort of open break, strong indeed, but very heavy, one would fancy, for the poor horses, who had to scamper along up and down veldt and berg, over bog and spruit, with this lumbering conveyance at their heels. Not for long, though: every seven miles, or even less, we pulled up--sometimes at a tidy inn, where a long table would be set in the open verandah laden with eatables (for driving fast through the air sharpens even the sturdy colonial appetite), sometimes at a lonely shanty by the roadside, from whence a couple of Kafir lads emerged tugging at the bridles of the fresh horses. But I am bound to say that although each of these teams did a stage twice a day, although they were ill-favored and ill-groomed, their harness shabby beyond description, and their general appearance most forlorn, they were one and all in good condition and did their work in first-rate style. The wheelers were generally large, gaunt and most hideous animals, but the leaders often were ponies who, one could imagine, under happier circumstances might be handsome little horses enough, staunch and willing to the last degree. They knew their driver's cheery voice as well as possible, and answered to every cry and shout of encouragement he gave them as we scampered along. Of course, each horse had its name, and equally of course "Sir Garnet" was there in a team with "Lord Gifford" and "Lord Carnarvon" for leaders. Did we come to a steep hillside, up which any respectable English horse would certainly expect to walk in a leisurely, sober fashion, then our driver shook out his reins, blew a ringing blast on his bugle, and cried, "Walk along, Lord Gifford! think as you've another Victoriar Cross to get top o' this hill! Walk along, Lord Carnarvon! you ain't sitting in a cab'net council _here_, you know. Don't leave Sir Garnet do all the work, you know. Forward, my lucky lads! creep up it!" and by the time he had shrieked out this and a lot more patter, behold! we were at the top of the hill, and a fresh, lovely landscape was lying smiling in the sunshine below us. It was a beautiful country we passed through, but, except for a scattered homestead here and there by the roadside, not a sign of a human dwelling on all its green and fertile slopes. How the railway is to drag itself up and round all those thousand and one spurs running into each other, with no distinct valley or flat between, is best known to the engineers and surveyors, who have declared it practicable. To the non-professional eye it seems not only difficult, but impossible. But oh how it is wanted! All along the road shrill bugle-blasts warned the slow, trailing ox-wagons, with their naked "forelooper" at their head, to creep aside out of our way, I counted one hundred and twenty wagons that day on fifty miles of road. Now, if one considers that each of these wagons is drawn by a span of some thirty or forty oxen, one has some faint idea of how such a method of transport must waste and use up the material of the country. Something like ten thousand oxen toil over this one road summer and winter, and what wonder is it not only that merchandise costs more to fetch up from D'Urban to Maritzburg than it does to bring it out from England, but that beef is dear and bad! As transport pays better than farming, we hear on all sides of farms thrown out of cultivation, and as a necessary consequence milk, butter, and so forth are scarce and poor, and in the neighborhood of Maritzburg, at least, it is esteemed a favor to let you have either at exorbitant prices and of most inferior quality. When one looks round at these countless acres of splendid grazing-land, making a sort of natural park on either hand, it seems like a bad dream to know that we have constantly to use preserved milk and potted meat as being cheaper and easier to procure than fresh.