Recent events have familiarised to us many of the names along this line of rail--Glencoe, Dundee (the terminus of a short branch), Colenso, Estcourt, and Ladysmith itself; while the winding character of the track, as mapped, compared with the Free State road, sufficiently indicates the character of the country, in which obstacles have to be circumvented as well as overcome.

The grade is in places as high as one in thirty, though that is being reduced; but one in forty is common.

Pietermaritzburg, the capital, fifty miles from Durban in a straight line, is 2,200 feet above the sea.

Three hundred miles from its starting-point the road {p.019} reaches an elevation of over five thousand feet, at Laing's Nek, through which it passes by a tunnel.
[Footnote 2: "Impressions of South Africa." Third Edition, p.

291.] A topographical map of the country shows upon examination that the mountain range, which forms the western boundary of Natal toward Basutoland and the Orange Free State, and has a general north and south direction parallel to the railroad, throws off to the eastward spurs which, to repeat Mr.Bryce's expression, "break down in tremendous precipices," forming a succession of terraces.