Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-11-03
LAND LONG DISTANCES
vASTNESS OF SOUTH AFRICA AP-
PALS THE TRAVELLER.
Civilization Looks Out of Place as the
Train Crosses the Veldt-Beauti-
full Mornings and Sunsets.

full Mornings and Sunsets.
From the Pail Mall Gazette.
1t is fashionable to allude to railway
journey in South Africa in tones of thinly
yelled scorn and contempt. to condemn 1t
as tiresome. complain of 1t as uninterest-
ing. 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 of an an
Client civilization which still survives the
train and the telegraph; he moves through
cities with 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 fu-
ture The cities are marvels of inventive
an echo of the hum of restless enterprise.
the murmur Of people confident they are
hurrying on to realize a great desliny.
But across the great plateau of South
Africa you seem to live always in the pres
ent. It becomes dominating idea. You
cannot picture past save like the present,
or imagine a future differing from today.
The veldt is. and it looks as If it will al
ways be as 1t Is. The slender thread of
steel which crosses it's illmitable 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 ig-
nores them. 1t does not adapt itself to them.
Inc sloW-mov1ng OK wagon alone fits in the
picture; the mail train with Its saarchlight
piercing the darkness and peace of the
night. Is, and always will be, thing apart.
1t always seems to me that there is some
thing 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
against the intruder. The country calls
disease and drought to it's aid to prevent
its freedom being shackled by the bonds of
civilization and the handouts of progress.
Space and Speed.
The space destroys speed. AS you hurry
northward or eastward from London in
mile a minute express the close-set viii
lagos 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 its speed will seem
lance of such continent, and there are
no contrasts, no near landmarks, by which
to measure the onward rush.
Yet such a journey, mOnOtOnouS as 1t is,
brings scenes which give 1t a fascination
all its own. No one can paint in words
or on canvas the beauty Of South Afr1-
can morning just after sunrise. Your
carriage stands still at some wayside sta
ton, with its solitary 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 it's space; but the sunshine is
something England never knows. the air Is
like draught Of champagne, the marvel
Gus 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 rainbow of color
gaze with languid eyes at the painting
are familiar today in the heart Of the
Dark Continent. Yet there are men living
who remember the time when the coast
tribes believed that white men were
production Of the sea, which they traV-
ersed 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. His
tory has been made quickly IN ooulh
Africa. .,1. ..a
A shrill whistle, and on again into space
All day you clatter forward-a little uncer-
tainly at times There are mysterious way
side halts in the wilderness, when you seem
to have run out of the world and been side
tracked far from the haunts or men mere
are waitings at tiny sidings from which
not a habtation is visible, and where the
only possible traffic appears to De wiz
buck or an occasional stray pullock. Inc
expected to see are absent: the country
looks deserted. Space-only space. Now
and then there glides into the picture
| town with q name known to history, the
| site of a siege, the field of a battle. The
impression it leaves is simply one of insig-
nificance No ordinary town could look
! imposing upon such plain.
| Ali day the train tolls onward growing
oh 6iCha RI q
! 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 under
| the shade of some trees. But no incident,
| no break-never was there such monotony.
| Yet you cannot conjure up a different pic
| ture Even in imagination you cannot
| transform the vedt. 1t was thus when the
! first white men pushed forward from the
shelter of the coast settlements into the I'M
| known. 1t is thus today. 1t will be thus
| in a decade-perhaps in a century.
Sunset.
| Sunset is as wonderful as the dawn. The
| STILL cloudless sky darkens rapidly as the
sun sinks below the rim of the plain. A
| solitary opje 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
| a chill breeze signs through the dry grass.
| The train puffs YEARLY on in the blackness
| of the night; ever forward, with the search
| light before the funnel, like huge eye
| sweeping the land to find human being.
| In the middle of the night theere hap
| pens curious thing. The country becomes
| peopled There is a grinding stop. A
few lights flicker hoarse voices shout un-
Ineligible orders. there arises banging
| and Gathering sufficient to wake the
Seven Sleepers. What happens-how it
happens-why 1t happens-no man knows.
1t is an eccentricity of a South African
| railway. The livelong day slips by with a
silence which almost forces one to shout
to break the stiffness. but at night these
| mysterious noises arise. Men emerge from
nowhere. and talk loudly of nothing beside
| the waiting train; figures with hammers
| beat upon the wheels or hold consultations
in stentorian tones over grease boxes;
| popular song Is roared under the windows
Of sleepers: even whole troop train of
terribly wldeawake soldiers has been met
on a particularly dark night. But these
things never happen in daytime. There
| are people in this wide land after all; but
| they only spring up at night.