Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/331

 love the railroad track, and the engineer is compelled to slow up, and drive them off with his whistle This evening we are about as far in the interior of Africa from Capetown as the Mississippi river is from New York, and are beginning to have trouble with dust. I believe I have never been bothered with dust as I am here; but we cannot see it—it seems to be a part of the air We passed within thirty miles of Serome, containing thirty thousand people, and one of the largest native towns in South Africa. The chief of this tribe does not allow liquor to be sold in his territory, and is quite progressive. He rules over a territory a hundred miles square. In his town of Serome there are a good many white storekeepers and traders, who buy corn, skins, etc., and ship them to the railroad by ox teams. Serome is in a vast territory known as the "Protectorate;" the British government protects the natives in their right to rule through chiefs. British officials, usually army officers, are scattered throughout the territory, to advise and really rule the chiefs. The natives have their own petty courts, but the superior courts are British. We are well out of the Boer territory now. The Boers once planned to annex the vast territory now known as Rhodesia, which fact caused Cecil Rhodes to hurry into the country with an armed force, and claim it for the British The tracks of the South-African railway are uniformly good, and as night approached, the weather became cooler. The dust we experienced earlier in the day came from a desert where discomfort is always experienced At one place, we saw a negro hoeing corn in a field, stark naked. Whether the negro was man or woman, I