Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/371

 *where. We hear of great drouths, and of the people paying a shilling a gallon for water. Some of the towns have built electric-light plants, but often there is no water for the engines, and people use candles for illuminating. Enterprising men build modern hotels in the towns, but frequently there is no water for the modern baths, and the guests do well to get enough water to drink Another pest here is white ants. They kill forest trees, and undermine the foundations of houses; they devour furniture and clothing—yet the country is so fair that it seems a pity to turn it over to desolation. On the line between Bulawayo and Salisbury there are a good many towns, including one built around the best gold mine in Rhodesia. And how the people turned out to see the train come in! At one place we estimated that there must have been five hundred around the station. Trains travel over the line only two or three times a week, and people seem to come from great distances in the country to see the trains go by. But between the stations there were millions of acres of land as wild as it was in the days of Adam Early in the morning our English passengers walked about in pajamas when we stopped at stations; Englishmen love that sort of thing. At Victoria Falls they visited the Rain Forest in pajamas, and in Johannesburg I was told that on Sundays and holidays, pajamas are worn around houses and yards until lunch-time. Englishmen show their pajamas so much that I cordially hate that particular form of night-dress; Englishmen have the same passion for running around in pajamas that American boys have for running around in baseball suits