- ing about 5s. for the supper, a night's rest, and breakfast
if the traveller chooses to wait for it. Others, English and Germans, will take nothing for their hospitality. Both the one and the other expect to be paid for what the horses may consume; and we thought we observed that forage with the English and Germans was dearer than with the Boers,—so that the cost came to much the same with the one as with the other. At the English houses,—or German,—it was possible to go to bed. In a Boer's establishment we did not venture to do more than lie down.
Starting on the following day with our three horses we reached Potchefstroom, which, though not the capital, is the largest town in the Transvaal. The road all along had been of the same nature, and the country nearly of the same kind as that we had seen before reaching Pretoria. Here and there it was stony,—but for the most part capable of cultivation. None of it, however, was cultivated with the exception of small patches round the farm houses. These would be at any rate ten miles distant one from each other, and probably more. The roads are altogether unmade, and the "spruits" or streams are unbridged. But the traffic, though unfrequent, has been sufficient to mark the way and to keep it free from grass. Travelling in wet weather must often be impossible,—and in windy weather very disagreeable. We were most fortunate in avoiding both mud and dust, either of which, to the extent in which they sometimes prevail in the Transvaal, might have made our journey altogether impossible.
At Potchefstroom we found a decent hotel kept by an
