Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/326

 on our window were placards announcing that the compartment was reserved, and we were not disturbed during the journey. The South-African sleeping-cars are not at all bad, except that the train conductor has so much to do that he cannot keep them as clean as they should be. The conductor did not polish my shoes at night, but I knew he was very busy, and overlooked his neglect On one or two trains we have been on, there was a man who helped the conductor, but on at least two crowded trains on which we traveled, the conductor has had no help whatever in making up the beds; the most curious thing I have ever noted in railroad travel. There is a guard on the train, who is what we call a brakeman, but he does not assist the conductor in the chamber-work. When these conductors are taking the tickets, they are as haughty as are American conductors, but when they begin lugging in sheets, pillows and mattresses, they are as humble as the most timid traveler could wish.

—This is written on the Imperial Mail train, on the line of South-African railway extending from Capetown to Victoria Falls and beyond. This will eventually become the "Cape to Cairo" railway, extending from Capetown, on the seacoast in South Africa, to Cairo, in Egypt. You may recall that Colonel Roosevelt, on his famous hunting trip in Africa, went by rail as far as he could, and then tramped through the wild country to the end of the line extending south from Egypt, and then went to Cairo. Alfred