but once a week, and it might often be the case that I might not be able to secure a place. But the post conveyances always did go, and I should at any rate be able to make my way on;—if I could live and endure the fatigue.
The other school recommended a special conveyance. The post carts would certainly kill me. They generally did kill any passengers, even in the prime of life, who stuck to them so long as I would have to do. If I really intended to encounter the horrors of the journey in question I must buy a cart and four horses, and must engage a coloured driver, and start off round the world of South Africa under his protection. But among and within this school of advisers there was a division which complicated the matter still further. Should they be horses or should they be mules;—or, indeed, should they be a train of oxen as one friend proposed to me? Mules would be slow but more hardy than horses. Oxen would be the most hardy, but would be very slow indeed. Horses would be more pleasant but very subject in this country to diseases and death upon the roads. And then where should I buy the equipage,—and at what price,—and how should I manage to sell it again,—say at half price? For my friends on the mail cart side of the question had not failed to point out to me that the carriage-and-horses business would be expensive,—entailing an outlay of certainly not less than £250, with the probable necessity of buying many subsidiary horses along the road, and the too probable impossibility of getting anything for my remaining property when my need for its use was at an end.
One friend, very experienced in such matters, assured me
