structing others how they may do so. The town from one end to the other is full of oak trees, planted as I was told by the Dutch. They did not look to be over seventy years of age, but I was assured that the growth though certain had been slow. It is perhaps the enormous number of oak trees at The Paarl which more than anything else makes the place so graceful. But many of the houses too are graceful, being roomy old Dutch buildings of the better class, built with gables here and there, with stables and outhouses around them, and with many oaks at every corner, all in full foliage at the time of my visit. At The Paarl there are no bad houses. The coloured people who pick the grapes and tread the wine vats and hoe the vines live in pretty cottages up the hill side. There is nothing squalid or even untidy at The Paarl. For eight miles you are driven through a boskey broad well-shaded street with houses on each side at easy intervals, at every one of which you are tempted to think that you would like to live.

What do the people do? That is of course the first question. It was evident from the great number of places of worship that they all went to church very often;—and from the number of schools that they were highly educated. Taking the population generally, they are all Dutch, and are mostly farmers. But their farming is very unlike our farming, and still more unlike that of the Dutch Boers up the country,—the main work of each individual farmer being confined to a very small space, though the tract of adjacent land belonging to him may extend to one or two or three thousand acres. The land on which they really live and whereby they make their money is used chiefly for the growth of grapes,—and after that for oranges and ostriches. The district is essentially wine making, though at the time of my visit

the low price of wine had forced men to look to other productions to supplement their vines.

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I was taken to the house of one gentleman, Dutchman of course,—whose homestead in the middle of the town was bosomed amidst oaks. His vineyard was a miracle of neatness, and covered perhaps a dozen acres; —but his ostriches were his pride. Wine was then no more than £3 the "ligger,"-the ligger, or leaguer, being a pipe containing 126 gallons. This certainly is very cheap for wine, so cheap that I was driven to think that if I lived at The Paarl I would prefer ostriches. It seemed to be thought, however, that a better time would come, and that the old price of £5 or £6 the ligger might again be reached. I am afraid there is some idea that this may be done by the maternal affection of the Mother Country,-which is to be shewn in a reduction of the duties, so that Cape wine may be consumed more freely in England. I endeavoured to explain that England cannot take wine from the Colonies at a lower rate of duty than from foreign countries. I did not say anything as to the existing prejudice against South African sherries. I was taken into this gentleman's house and had fruit and wine of his own producing. The courtesy and picturesque old-fashioned neatness of it all was very pleasing. He himself was a quiet well-mannered man, shewing no excitement about anything, till it was suggested to him that a mode of incubating ostriches' eggs different to his own might be preferable. Then he shewed us that on a subject which he had studied he could have a strong opinion of his own. This was in the town. The owner, no doubt, had a considerable tract of land lying far back from the street; but all his operations seemed to be carried on within a quarter of a mile of his house.

I was afterwards driven out to two country farms, but

at both of them the same thing prevailed. Here there were large vineyards, and oranges in lieu of ostriches. At one beautiful spot, just under the mountains, there was a grove of 500 orange trees from which, the proprietor told me, he had during the last year made a net profit of £200 after paying all expenses. £200 will go a long way towards the expenditure of a Dutch farmer's house. Of course there was no rent to be paid as the whole place belonged to him,—and had probably belonged to his ancestors for many generations. He was

lord also of a large vineyard which he told me had cost a great deal of labour to bring to its present perfection of cleanliness and fertility.

Here too we were taken into the house and had wine given to us,--wine that was some years old. It certainly was very good, resembling a fine port that was just beginning to feel its age in the diminution of its body. We enquired whether wine such as that was for sale, but were told that no such wine was to be bought from any grower of grapes. The farmers would keep a little for their own use, and that they would never sell. Neither do the merchants keep it,—not finding it worth their while to be long out of their money,--nor the consumers, there being no commodity of cellarage in the usual houses of the Colony. It has not been the practice to keep wine, and consequently the drinker seldom has given to him the power of judging whether the Cape wines may or may not become good. At dinner tables at the Cape hosts will apologise for putting on their tables the wines of the Colony, telling their guests that that other bottle contains real sherry or the like. I am inclined to think that the Cape wines have hardly yet had a fair chance, and have been partly led to this opinion by the excellence of that which I drank at Great Draghen

stern,-which was the name either of the farm or of the district in question.

As we had wandered through the grove we saw oranges still hanging on the trees, high up out of reach. The season was over but still there were a few. It is a point of honour to keep them as long as possible,-so that towards December they become valuable treasures. I had one given to me when we started, as being the oldest of the party. It was scrupulously divided, and enjoyed no doubt very much more than had we been sent away with our cart full.

Here too the house was exceedingly picturesque, being surrounded by oak trees. There was no entrance hall, such as has been common with us for many years; but the rooms were lofty, spacious, and well built, and the neighbouring wilderness of a garden was wonderfully sweet with flowers. The owner was among the vines when we arrived, and as he walked up to us in the broad place in front of his house, he informed us that he was "jolly old This he said in Dutch. His only word of English was spoken as we parted. "Good bye, old gentleman," he holloaed out to me as I shook hands with him. Here as elsewhere there was no breadth of cultivation. The farm was large, but away from the house, and on it there were only a few cattle. There can be no cultivation without irrigation, and no extended irrigation without much labour. Like other farmers in South Africa jolly old complained that his

industry was sadly crippled by want of labour. Nevertheless jolly old seemed to me to be as well

off as a man need be in this world. Perhaps it was that I envied him his oaks, and his mountains, and his old wine, and the remaining oranges.

We visited also a wool-washing establishment which

had just been set up with new fashioned machinery, and then we had seen all that The Paarl had to shew us in the way of its productions. I should perhaps say that I visited the stores of a great wine company, at which, in spite of the low price of the article in which they deal, good dividends are being paid. At the wine stores I was chiefly interested in learning that a coloured cooper whom I saw at work on a cask,-a black man,--was earning £300 a year. I enquired whether he was putting by a fortune and was told that he and his family lived from hand to mouth and that he frequently overdrew his wages. "But what does he do with the money?" I asked. "Hires a carriage on Sundays or holy days and drives his wife about," was the reply. The statement was made as though it were a sad thing that a coloured man should drive his wife about in a carriage while labour was so scarce and dear, but I was inclined to think that the cooper was doing well with his money. At any rate it pleased me to learn that a black man should like to drive his wife about; and that he should have the

means.

I was very much gratified with The Paarl, thinking it well for a Colony to have a town and a district so pretty and so prosperous. The population of the district is about 16,000, and of the town about 8000. It is, however, much more like a large village than a small town, -the feeling being produced by the fact that the houses all have gardens attached to them and are built each after its own fashion and not in rows.

From this place I and the friend who was travelling with me went on by cart to Ceres. It would have been practicable to go by railway at any rate to the Ceres Road Station, but we were anxious to travel over two of the finest mountain roads in South Africa, Bain's Kloof,