Elizabeth a gentleman was very kind in planning my journey for me thence up to Grahamstown, King Williamstown &c.,—but, on coming into my bed room, he strongly recommended me to leave my portmanteau and dispatch box behind me, to be taken on, somewhither, by water, and to trust myself to two bags. So I tied on addresses to the tabooed receptacles of my remaining comforts, and started on my way with a very limited supply of wearing apparel. In the selection which one is driven to make with an agonized mind,—when the bag has been stamped full to repletion with shirts, boots, and the blue books which are sure to be accumulated for the sake of statistics, the first thing to be rejected is one's dress suit. A man can live without a black coat, waistcoat, and trousers. But so great is colonial hospitality wherever the traveller goes, and so similar are colonial habits to those at home, that there will always come a time,—there will come many times,—in which the traveller will feel that he has left behind him the very articles which he most needed, and that the blue books should have been made to give way to decent raiment. These are difficulties which at periods become almost heartbreaking. Nevertheless I made the decision and rejected the dress suit. And I trusted myself to two pair of boots. And I allowed my treasures to be taken from me, with a hope that I might see them again some day in the further Colony of Natal.
From Port Elizabeth there is a railway open on the road to Grahamstown as far as a wretched place called Sand Flat. From thence we started in a mail cart,—or Cobb's
