Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/362

found the last two days hanging heavily on my hands. The hotel at the falls is excellent, considering that it is a long way from its source of supplies, but trains are slow, and the cars dusty and crowded. The average train is composed of compartment cars, with a corridor running along one side. These corridors are so narrow that two persons cannot pass in them, and it is quite a task to go through a train in reaching the dining-car. I have never in my life seen such dirty cars as they have in South Africa, but this is partly owing to the terrible dust which prevails everywhere; another explanation is that, as a rule, one porter is expected to clean all the cars, and in some cases there is no porter. But the trainmen are always polite, and the tracks good. The dining-cars would be satisfactory were they not overcrowded. Traveling in South Africa has been easier than I expected, and the hotels better, but some of the dust in the railway cars might be easily removed; the addition of one Kaffir and one broom to each train would prove a great help. . . . Near the railway station live two men who deal in curios. Both are hunters, and both are interesting, and I spend a good deal of time with them; but they hate each other in a way that is scandalous. There never was such a thing as rivals in business getting along. They try hard not to say anything against each other, but their enmity crops out in every conversation. One of them is married, and has his wife and baby here, and a bishop will arrive tomorrow to baptize the baby. The other man is a bachelor, and is trying hard to catch a leopard while I am here, in an American steel trap. Leopards prowl about the