be the case elsewhere in South Africa. What was paid for the peas and beans and cauliflowers I don't know; but I did know that the earth around was dry and parched and barren everywhere,—so that I was almost ashamed to eat them. These details may be of interest to some readers of my pages, as the place of which I am speaking is becoming at present the sanitorium to which many an English consumptive patient is sent. Such persons, at any rate when first reaching Bloemfontein, are obliged to find a home in an hotel, and will certainly find one well provided at the Free State. It commended itself to me especially because I found no difficulty in that very serious and often troublesome matter of a morning tub.
Bloemfontein is becoming another Madeira, another Algiers, another Egypt in regard to English sufferers with weak chests and imperfect lungs. It seems to the ignorant as though the doctors were ever seeking in increased distance that relief for their patients which they cannot find in increased skill. But a dry climate is now supposed to be necessary and one that shall be temperate without great heat. This certainly will be found at Bloemfontein, and perhaps more equably so through the entire year than at any other known place. The objection to it is the expense arising from the distance and the great fatigue to patients from the long overland journey. Taking the easiest mode of reaching the capital of the Free State the traveller must be kept going six weary days in a Cobb's coach, being an average of about thirteen hours a day upon the road. This is gradually and very slowly becoming lightened by the
