IN TENTS EY THE TRANSVAAL.*

WERE it not for the sad contrast. with the present time at the seat of war in Africa which this book is continually suggesting, it would have given us unmixed pleasure. We have never read a more lively or graphic volume of travels, and it illustrates and explains much that we are reading and hearing every day in the various accounts of our warlike operations. The Messrs. Bentley have done their part to make the narrative zestheti- rally attractive, and the type and paper and even delicate binding are worthy of the bright and cheerful subject-matter within. But the little sheaf of three golden assegais, which ornaments the cover, is a shadow over the book—if the paradox may be allowed—reminding us as it does of the wholesale slaughter of our poor countrymen and of one who was not our countrymen, though we think of him as if he were. But to judge fairly of this pleasant volume, we must forget all that has happened this year, and go back to the time when the forces were gathered on the frontier for nominally defensive purposes, and when penetrating into Zululand was a distant possibility only, and one but little expected. It is impossible to follow the fortunes of the courageous and lively authoress and her husband, even for a few months, without identifying ourselves with them, and we breathed more freely, therefore, when we left them, at the end of the book, rolling about in the unwieldy Tyne,' on their way to Old England once more. Alas I Mrs. Hutchinson de- * Li Tests in the Transvaal. By Mrs. Hutchinson. 1 vol. London : Richard Bentley and Son. stroyed half our cheerful comfort by a foot-note, more honest than considerate, informing us that since she wrote her "hus-

band has rejoined his regiment in the field."

We are not surprised to see how numerous are the passages which we have marked for extract, and sorry to think for how few we have space ; indeed, there is scarcely a page without something either amusing or interesting, and we

glean from many passages—more than merely interesting— as coming from a sojourner in the Transvaal, important—

that Mrs. Hutchinson is one of those who think the war un- provoked and unnecessary, and Sir Bartle Frere a dangerous High Commissioner. In speaking of the ball given at Maritz- burg in his honour, at a time when she was not rich in gay dresses and was very sunburnt, Mrs. Hutchinson says :—" But, forbid it Heaven ! that I should allow a little sun-tan, and the meagre condition of my travelling wardrobe, to withhold me from gazing enthusiastically upon a personage whose efforts have been so largely calculated to aid, let us say, promotion in my husband's profession !" The following passage is very interesting, as illustrating the opinions held by some of those on the spot of the policy of our Govern- ment fifteen months ago, and prophesying the special dangers and difficulties from which we have since so terribly suffered:—

" Most of the Kafirs whom we have interrogated agree in saying that Cetewayo, the Zulu king, will not fight unless the quarrel is forced upon him. This idea we deprecate, of course, as being dia- metrically opposed to the policy of conciliation, which, we are given to understand, is the one which the Government is pursuing at pre- sent. Nevertheless, there are not wanting evidences of a tendency in colonial quarters to distort and exaggerate any of the Zulu King's pec- cadilloes, which, if not suppressed, must eventually neutralise all the efforts that are being made for peace. I do not believe, for my part, that the Home Government would readily undertake a war which could not fail to prove so long and expensive a one as a campaign against the Zulus must inevitably be. The expense of transport in this country is enormous, and it is evident to us that there is a dis- position on the part of the colonists to make the most of their present opportunities, by disposing of their waggons, oxen, and stores of every kind to the Government at absurdly exorbitant rates. The drought, too, which we hear is prevailing up country, would not fail to add to our difficulties in the event of a campaign ; while it would not materially affect the Kafirs, who, besides always knowing where to find water, are able to endure the want of it better than the British soldier. Lightly clad, and having no baggage to carry, they can move in large bodies twenty or thirty miles in at least half the time that a column of regular troops, encumbered with waggons and spans of oxen, would take to get over the distance."

Mrs. Hutchinson's travels carried her from Durban to Utrecht. The route was by Westville, Pinetown, and Camperdown, to Maritzburg ; thence over the Umgeni to Howick, Weston, and Estcourt ; thence across Bushman's river to Colenso ; over the

Tugela and ostrich-plain to Blaawkranz and Ladysmith; over Slip river and the Biggarsberg mountains to Newcastle, and across the Incandu river to Fort Amiel—half-way from Durban to Pretoria. From Newcastle was but a two days' march to Utrecht, crossing the Buffalo in the course of it ; and at Utrecht Mrs. Hutchinson remained with her husband and his regiment nearly to the end of the book, the return journey being very briefly summarised. The interest, perhaps, culminates with the arrival at Utrecht, as the adventures of the journey add amusement and excitement to the interest of novelty.

There is no classification of subjects, and nothing didactic or prosy from one end to the other, and`yet the book is full of in- formation, given, as the circumstances of the journey bring them uppermost, in a natural disorder, and with a gossipy brevity and lively humour that never weary. Climate, health, weather, scenery—notably, the Umgeni Falls and the valley of the Bush- man's River—flora, birds, beasts, reptiles, and insects ; natives, their character, religion, customs, and costumes ; towns, hotels, roads, vehicles, oxen and their drivers, shops, prices, tents, food, and hardships of travel, are all touched with a bright intelli- gence that leaves us in ignorance that we have been instructed at all—with a belief that we have only been reading a book of amusing adventures—till we begin to summarise the informa- tion that we have gleaned. When we do so, we find this a book which we should strongly recommend to any one going out voluntarily to settle in any part of the country described, that he may judge, from the account of a perfectly impartial writer—not a colonial land agent—whether, apart from the risks of commercial or agricultural success, he thinks he can

stand the contrasts of heat and cold, the terrible droughts and dust-clouds ; the arid, dreary monotony of the average country, in which lovely scenery is the exceptional oasis ; the weary jolting over diabolical roads in the slowest of vehicles, drawn

by meek oxen, urged by frightful shriekings and cruel— but, we gather, necessary—goadings and thrashings ; and whether he can endure the isolation, almost solitude, of the life, only varied by the society of the morose Boer, or the good- natured but not very companionable Kafir. Nevertheless, it is only fair to the Kafir to repeat some of the remarks which Mrs. Hutchinson makes about him. She says, for instance,—

" There is something extremely nice and engaging about these people, and even the humbler classes have a natural politeness of manner, which contrasts strikingly with the swagger and vulgarity too often found in certain orders in more civilised societies. I should suppose that such a thing as a vulgar Kafir is absolutely unknown."

And again, when our authoress and her friends are attending a Kafir wedding, she says :—

"They all seemed pleased to see us, and though evidently amused at our appearance and dress, forbore from any impertinent exhibi- tion of curiosity, and treated us with that unaffected politeness and good-nature which is a most winning characteristic of Kafir manners_

I was surprised to see what really pleasing faces many of the women had, and how tastefully their rather meagre toilettes were

arranged. When one saw all these light-hearted, good- humoured people, dancing their quaint steps and brandishing their fanny cow-hide shields, one could not help an earnest wish that the war, said to be impending, may, by some means or other, be averted. Although, doubtless, they can be ferocious enough when excited, as one can see from their gestures and general demeanour, yet there is a simplicity about them which makes them seem almost like children, after all. They themselves deride the notion of a war with us, and declare that the great Cetevrayo himself is desirous above all things of maintaining peace. But, of course, at home things can only be known through the representations of people who are on the spot; and there seems to be here a general tending of things towards war, barring, perhaps, the inclinations of the Kafirs themselves."

We must give our readers the following graphic account of the travelling, and, we heartily wish we had space to supplement it with the humorous description of the way in which these terrible roads are repaired,—if repaired it can be called :— " The rambling of the thirteen waggons, the shrieking of the drivers, and the cracking of the thirteen shamboks,' soon put an end to our doze. What the lungs of these drivers can be made of, or how they manage to keep up their incessant storm of yells, bellowings, and howls, are mysteries which Europeans cannot hope to penetrate. At every hitch of the great lumbering machine against a stone, or in a hole in the road, the driver shouts, howls, and screams to the strain- ing beasts ; applies his formidable shambok ' (a whip so heavy that I could hardly lift one, and which makes a report almost as loud as a revolver) to their sides, knocks his heels against the driving-box, throws himself about as if he were possessed, and threatens every ox separately and individually, calling upon each by name. The fore- looper comes to his assistance by hanging with all his weight on to the first pair of oxen, pounding them with his fists, slapping them with the reins, and gathering up handfuls of dirt and gravel to throw into their faces. The hitch continuing, the noise redoubles ; two or three other Kafirs, attached to other waggons, rash delightedly into the melee. All kick, all shout, and all throw gravel. The driver scrambles down from his box, and runs along to give each pair the benefit of a few strokes from his bullock-hide persuader. The great team sways from side to side of the road, as the oxen shy from the application of the whip, which, heavy as it is, the drivers use with so much precision that they can pick out any ox from the spans of six- teen and eighteen, and follow up the warning process of ' naming ' him with a few admonitory cuts. The oxen low and snort, and, after a few ineffectual attempts to back and wind themselves up in the chain, there is a strong pull all together, and the waggon comes out of its hole or over its stone with a great jump and a bang, which has a galvanic effect on any hangers-on that there may be, and causes the ' insiders ' to see a whole firmament of stars."

But we must pass over passage after passage of the curious, in- teresting, or amusing matter with which this volume—all too short—is crowded, and conclude with a description of the un- tempting side of the life in tents in the Transvaal, without which we should almost be playing Hamlet with the omission of the character of Hamlet. Mrs. Hutchinson had been perched for a time in a most lovely spot, high on the hill-side above

Utrecht ; but it was winter in the Transvaal, and they had come down again

For the last few days up there, however, the cold had been un- endurable; snow had even fallen, and had withstood the melting powers of the sun for two or three days, imparting to the hills quite homelike effects, which we never expected to have seen in South Africa. But, refreshing as it was to be able to fancy ourselves for a moment in England, the illusion, unluckily, did not carry us BO far as to make us imagine ourselves inside substantial walls, and sitting in front of a glowing fire, with a good sheet of plate-glass, instead of a thin canvas, between us and the cold. And it is marvellous how un.- exhilarating is even the most bracing cold, when it has to be en- countered in a tent like a sieve, with the moon and stars beautifully visible overhead, and through which the wind sweeps as it listeth, raffling your hair as you lie in bed. It is distinctly not amusing, but, on the contrary, to the last degree dreadful and depressing, to have to lie in bed to get warm, and finding that fail, to have to get up to avoid being frozen; to have to sit in a tent like a wet rag, with all your clothes as wet as if (in laundry parlance) they had been `damped for ironing,' with the utter impossibility of drying them staring you in the face. It is not inspiriting to know that nothing except the sus- pension of the ordinary laws of cause and effect can save you from an attack of ague or rheumatic fever ; to have your chair, your bedstead, anything that unanspectedly touches the tent, turned straightway into a channel for the conduction of a miniature waterspout ; to strike your head against the tent, and bring a perfect shower-bath upon your clothes, which will have to dry of their own accord—when the sun comes out, probably in a day or two !—to have no lunch, because the snow and rain have put the fire out ; to make your dinner off watery stew, plus any amount of grease ; and, moreover, to have to eat the said stew out of its native stew-pan, because the state of the weather renders any at- tempt at dishing up' ridiculous Since our return to Utrecht, it is not the cold that we have been martyrs to, but the dust. Oh, the hours that those sandstorms blow day after day ! and oh, the unspeakable griminess and grittiness of everything get-at-able, clothes and provisions included ! All day long a sort of dull-red cloud seems sweeping across the veldt, and an incessant storm of hot sand, that -cuts into your eyes like needles, hails down upon the tent. The wind, too, which is hot and parching to an extraordinary degree, does not seem to come in puffs and gusts, as it does at home, but in one con- tinuous, unbroken blast, that makes you feel quite out of breath to hear it. Everything taken up from the table leaves a perfect representation of itself, printed in the dust, which has collected round it, though it may not have been lying there more than five minutes or so ; and from time to time, sand will pour in at the door of the tent, which is always, of course, rigidly laced and closed, as if some one were empty- ing it out of a funnel. Everything eatable has to be brought to table in a covered saucepan, and even the teapot, at such times, appears with a little hood of linen to protect the spout. The air, too, appears to get almost intolerably dry and burning. Our skins regularly seem to peel away, and our bands have cracks and chaps in them, as in the coldest weather at home. The few treasures the white ants left us have been entirely ruined by several weeks of this weather—books of all kinds warping out of all recognition, even though kept in drawers ; and the ivory cases of my opera-glasses splitting into a hundred pieces, until there is nothing left of them to hold the lenses together. The incessant noise and flapping of the tent is wearying beyond be- lief, and the bulging and motion of it make one feel almost as if one were on a ship, watching the sails ; some people even going so far as to say that it makes them sea-sick."