Greene County herald. (Leakesville, Miss.) 1898-current, 1906-11-16
IA LAND OF GREAT DIS
TANCES.
THE vAsTNEss OF SOUTH AZ
RIGA APPALs THE TRAVELLER.

Civilization Looks Out Of Place az the
Train Crosses the veIdt--Beautifu
Mornings and Sunsets and Days of
Quiet, but Noisy Nghts-A Change
less Land.
1t Is fashionable to allude to rail-
way journey in South Africa in tones
OF thinly yelled scorn and contempt,
to condemn it as tiresome, complain
of it as uninteresting, says writer
in the Pail Mall Gazette. There is
space-almost undreamed of space.
And that is all. Through the East the
traveller lives in the past He feels,
II he has any imagination at all, that
for the moment he has become part
or an ancient civilization 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
fill the most enchanting pages in the
book of history.
In America you cross a land of the
future. The cities are marvels of in
Africa you seem to live always in the
country there is an echo of the hum
of restless enterprise, the murmur of
a people confident they are hurrying
on to realize great destiny.
But across the great plateau of So.
Africa you sem to live always in the
present. 1t becomes a dominating
idea. You cannot picture past save
like the present, or imagine future
differing from today. The veldt is,
and it looks as If it will always be as
it is. The slender thread of steel
which crosses its illimitable space,
the little towns set 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 1t
does not adapt itself to them. The
slow moving OK wagon alone fits in
the picture; the mail train, with it's
searchlight piercing the darkness and
peace of the night, is, and always will
be, thing apart. 1t always seems to
me that there is something curious,
almost uncanny, about the great
spaces of southern Africa-something
you do not find in other great lands.
The haste of modern life clashes with
the spirit of the veldt. There is a
silent protest against the intruder.
The country calls disease and drought
to its aid to prevent its freedom being
shackled by the bonds of civilization
and the handouts of progress.
The space destroys speed. AS you
hurry northward or eastward from
London in mile a minute express
the close set villages fly past, in
creasing the impression of haste; but
let the same engine pull the train
northward from the Cape into the
heart of Africa and its speed will
seem to slacken. Steam cannot eat up
the distances of such a continent, and
there are no contrasts, no near land
marks, by which to measure the on
ward rush.
Yet such journey, monotonous as
it is, brings scenes which give it
fascination of its own. No one can
paint in words or on canvas the beauty
of South African morning just after
sunrise. Your carriage stands still
at some wayside station, with it's soil
tary one story house and inevitable
dwarfed tree. Away, as far as the
eye can see, stretches the thin grass
land. The landscape holds nothing
to attract save its space; but the sun
shine is something England never
knows, the air is like a draught of
champagne, the marvellous clearness
and freshness-which no other land
can equal-give new life. No breeze
yet swirls the dust across the plain.
All the world is still, as though lost
in silent worship of the loneliness of
the moment.
A few sleepy Kaffirs, wrapped close
in blankets which display a rainbow
of color, gaze with languid eyes at the
painting monster. The white man and
his ways are familiar today in the
heart of the Dark Continent. Yet
there are men living who remember
the time when the coast tribes beliey-
ed that white men were production
of the sea. which they traversed in
large shells, their food being the tusks
of elephants, which they would take
from the beach if 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.
A shrill whistle. and on again into
space. All day you clatter forward
a little uncertainty at times. There are
mysterious wayside halts in the will
derness, when you seem to have run
out from the world and been side track
ed far from the haunts of men; there
are waitings at tiny sidings from
which not habitation is visible, and
where the only possible traffic appears
to be a wild buck or an occasional
stray bullock. The land is empty. The
swarms of natives you expected to see
are absent; the country looks desert
ed. Space-only space. Now and
then there glides into the picture a
town with a name known to history.
the site of siege, the field of a bat
tie. The impression it leaves is
simply one of insignificance. No or
binary town could look imposing upon
such plain.
All day the train tolls inward, grow
ing weary at times as though dis
heartened at the miles which still
stretch ahead. A few herds of goats
or cattle; shy figure in the distance.
which makes you think of the harried
Bushmen or the wild Vaal pens: now
and then a hive-like kraal away under
the shade Of some trees. But no in.
cident, no break-never was there
such monotony. Yet you cannot con-
jure up different picture. Even in
imagination you cannot transform the
weld. 1t was thus when the first