But to understand the country it is best to climb into the mountains of the long Drakensberg, which forms the Free State frontier in a series of strangely jagged and precipitous peaks, and at one place, by the junction with Basutoland, runs up to 11,000 feet.

Last Sunday I went into the Free State through Van Reenen's Pass, over which a little railway has been carried by zigzag "reverses." The summit is 5,500 feet above the sea, or nearly 2,000 feet above Ladysmith.

From the steep slopes, in places almost as green as the Lowlands or Yorkshire fells, I looked south-east far over Natal--a parched, brown land like the desert beyond the Dead Sea, dusty bits of plain broken up by line upon line of bare red mountain.

It seemed a poor country to make a fuss about, yet as South Africa goes, it is rich and even fertile in its way.

Indeed, on the reddest granite mountain one never fails to find multitudes of flowering plants and pasturage for thinnish sheep.