The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1906-09-12
A LAND or GREAT DISTANCES.
TEE VASTNESS or SOUTH AFRICA
APPALS THE TRAVELLER.

u Il fashionable to allude to a railway
Journey In South Africa in tones Of thinly
yelled scorn n contempt, 10 condemn IL
as tlresoms, complain Of 1t as uninteresting,
saysa writer in the Pau Mall Gazette. There
10 spaOe-almost undreamed Of space. And
that 10 all. Through the East the traveller
ives In the past. He feels, II he has any
Imagination at all, that for the moment
he Q become part Of al ancient civiliza-
ton which still survives the train and the
Telegraph; he moves through cities with a
story In every stone: each mile brings new
pictures Of the might and wealth which
oil b most enchanting pages In the book
Of history.
In America you cross q land OF the future.
The cities are marvels of inventive genius;
sven away In the country there Is an echo
Of the hum Of restless enterprise, the muir
muir Of q people confident they are hurrying
or to realize a great destiny.
Bua across the great plateau OF South
Africa you seem to live always In the present.
II becomes a dominating idea. You cannot
picture a past save like the present, or
imagine a future differing from to-day.
The veldt Ia, and 1t looks as II 1t will always
be as IL Is. The slender thread OF steel
which crosses it's illimitable space, the little
towns act down at such great distances
from one another, play no part in the scene.
They are there, it is true; but they look
fortuitous, out Of place. Trains clang
across the Karoo, and pant up the hillsides
from Natal; but the veldt ignores them;
II does not adapt itself to them. The slow
moving OK wagon alone fits In the picture;
the mail train, with it's ~searohlight piercing
the darkness and peace of the night, is,
and always will be, a thing apart. IL
always seems to me that there Is something
curious, almost uncanny, about he great
spaces Of southern Africa-something you
do moo find In other great lands. The haste
OF modern life clashes with the spirit OF
the veldt. b There Is q silent protest against
the intruder. The country calls disease
and drought 70 Its aid to prevent its free
dom being shaokled by the bonds Of c~iviliza-
ton md the handouts Of progress.
The snace destroys speed. As you hurry
northward or eastward from London in
q mile a minute express the close set villages
fly past. increasing the impression OF haste;
but let the same engine pull the train
northward from the Cape into the heart
of Africa and it's speed will seem to slacken.
Steam cannot eat UP the distances OF such
N COIIIhSnLt anu kDeT0 are no OOntrARtRs
no near landmarks. by which to measure
the onward rush.
Yet such a journey, monotonous az IL il,
brings scenes which give it a fascination
all its own. No one can paint in words
or on canvas the beauty Of a South African
morning Just after sunrise. Your carriage
stands still at some wayside station, with
its solitary one story house and inevitable
dwarfed tree. Away, as far as the eve
a see, stretches the thin grassland. The
I-A---- Ill
its space; but the sunshine is something
England never knows. the air is like a
draught of champagne, the marvellous
c~learness and freshness-which no other
land oan equal-give new life. No breeze
yet swirls the dust across the plain. All
the world Is still, "a though lost in silent
worship of the loveliness of the Moment.
A few sleepy kafirs, wrapped close in
blanlaets which display a rainbow of color,
gaze with languid eyes at the painting
are familiar to-day In the heart Of tine
Dark Continent. Yet there are men living
who remember the time when the coast
tribes believed that white men were a
production Of the sea, which they traversed
IN Large shells, their food being the tusks
of elephants, which they would take from
the beach II laid there for them, placing
beads IN their stead, which they obtained
from the bottom of the sea. History has
been made quickly in South Africa.
m III WAAAnNiNs 1bh WI ukulu HlID ADACo.
AL day o clatter f~orward-a little I'M
certainly at times. There are mysterious
wayside hAlts in the wilderness, when
you seem to have run out of the world
and been side tracked far from the haunts
OF men; there are waitings at tiny sidings
from which not a habitation ia visible,
and where the only possible traffic appears
to be q wild buck or an occasional straw
bullock. The land is'empty. The swarms
of natives you expected to see are absent:
NhA country lNnke daaorfnd Gnoao -
space. Now and then there glides into the
picture a town with a name known 10
history, the site Of a siege, the field OF a
battle. The impression it leaves is simply
n OF insigniicance. No ordinary town
could pol imposing upon such a plain.
All day the train tolls onward, growing
weary at times as though disheartened
at the miles which still stretch ahead.
A few herds OF goats or cattle; a shy figure
IN the distance, which makes you think
of the harried Bushmen or the wild Vaal
pens; now and then a hivelike kraal away
the shade of some trees. But no
Incident, no ~break-never was there such
monotony. Yet you annot oonjure up
q different picture. Even in imagination
you cannot transform the weld. IL was
thus when the first white men pushed
forward from the shelter of the coast settle
nents into the unknown. It is thus to-day.
Z will be thus in a decade -perhaps in a
entury.
Sunset Ia as wonderful as the dawn. The
still, cloudless sky daTkens rapidly az the
sun sinks below the rim OF the plain. A
solitary kopje becomes purple, then black.
a fitting haunt for some robber chief, the
terror Of whose name has desolated the
countryside. The last glorious glow, which
no painter could reproduce, dies away,
end q hill breeze signs through the dTy
grass. The train puffs YEARLY on in the
hlackness Of the night; ever forward, with
the searchliSht before the funnel, like a
huge eye sweeping the land to find a human
Icing.
In the middle OF the night there
happens a curious thing. The country
becomes peopled. There Is a grinding
stop. A few lights flicker, hoarse voices
shout unintelliRible orders, there arises a
banging and a Gathering sufficient to wake
the Seven Sleepers. What happens-how
u happens-why II happens-no man knows.
Il IL an eccentricity Of a South African
railway. The livelong day slips by with a
silence which almost forces one to shout
70 break the stiffness, but at night these
mysterious noises arise. Men emerge from
nowhere, and talk loudly Of nothing beside
the waiting ira in; figures with hammers
beat upon the wheels or hold combinations
In stentorian tones over grease boxes;
a popular song In roared under the windows
Of sleepers; even a whole troop train OF
kaVrihlv Widaawaka anldfara has kaa1 800