[South African Memories by Lady Sarah Wilson]@TWC D-Link bookSouth African Memories CHAPTER XVIII 3/39
Leaving the small river township--the embryo Livingstone--we followed a very sandy road uphill till we reached the summit of Constitution Hill, already mentioned. There our buggy and two small, well-bred ponies swept into a smartly-kept compound surrounded by a palisade, the feature of the square being a flagstaff from which the Union Jack was proudly fluttering.
As a site for a residence Constitution Hill could not well be surpassed, and many a millionaire would cheerfully have given his thousands to obtain such a view as that which met our eyes from the humble huts, and held me enthralled during the whole of my stay.
It must be remembered we had been travelling, since leaving the rail-head, eighty miles north of Bulawayo, through a thickly wooded and mountainous country where any extensive views were rare.
Even when nearing the Zambesi, with the roar of the Falls in one's ears, so little opening-up had hitherto been done that only an occasional peep of coming glories was vouchsafed us; hence the first glimpse of a vast stretch of country was all the more striking.
I must ask my readers to imagine the bluest of blue skies; an expanse of waving grass of a golden hue, resembling an English cornfield towards the harvest time, stretching away till it is lost in far-distant tropical vegetation of intense green, which green clearly marks the course of the winding Zambesi; again, amid this emerald verdure, patches of turquoise water, wide, smooth, unruffled, matching the heavens in its hue, are to be seen--no touch of man's hand in the shape of houses or chimneys to mar the effect of Nature and Nature's colouring.
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