competition for their possession. But ostrich feathers may become a drug. When the nurse-maid affects them the Duchess will cease to do so. Grahamstown is served by two ports. There is the port of Fort Elizabeth in Algoa Bay which I have already described as a thriving town and one from which a railway is being made across the country, with a branch to Grahamstown. All the mail steamers from England to Capetown come on to Algoa Bay, and there is also a direct steamer from Plymouth once a month. The bulk of the commerce for the whole adjacent district comes no doubt to Fort Elizabeth. But the people of Grahamstown affect Port Alfred, which is at the mouth of the Kowie river and only 35 miles distant from the Eastern Capital. I was therefore taken down to see Port Alfred. I went down on one side of the river by a four-horsed cart as far as the confluence of the Mansfield, and thence was shewn the beauties of the Kowie river by boat. Our party dined and slept at Port Alfred, and on the following day we came back to Grahamstown by cart on the other side of the river. I was perhaps more taken with the country which I saw than with the harbour, and was no longer at a loss to know where was the land on which the English settlers of 1820 were intended to locate themselves. We passed through a ruined village called Bathurst,—a village ruined while it was yet young, than which nothing can be more painful to behold. Houses had been built again, but almost every house had at one time, that is in the Kafir war of 1850,-been either burnt or left to desola tion. And yet nothing can be more attractive than the land about Bathurst, either in regard to picturesque situation or fertility. The same may be said of the other bank of this river. It is impossible to imagine a fairer district to a farmer's eye. It will grow wheat, but it will also grow on the slopes of the hills, cotton and coffee. It is all possessed, and generally all cultivated;-but it can hardly be said to be inhabited by white men, so few are they and so far, between. A very large proportion of the land is let out to Kafirs who pay a certain sum for certain rights and privileges. He is to build his hut and have enough land to cultivate for his own purposes, and grass enough for his cattle; and for these he contracts to pay perhaps £10 per annum, or more, or less, according to circumstances. I was assured that the rent is punctually paid. But this mode of disposing of the land, excellent for all purposes as it is, has not arisen of choice but of necessity. The white farmer knows that as yet he can have no security if he himself farms on a large scale. Next year there may be another scare, and then a general attack from the Kafirs; or the very scare if there be no attack, frightens away his profits; —or, as has happened before, the attack may come without the scare. The country is a European country,-belongs that is to white men,-but it is full of Kafirs;-and then, but a hundred miles away to the East, is Kafraria Proper where the British law does not rule even yet. No one wants to banish the Kafirs. Situated as the country is and will be, it cannot exist without Kafirs, because the Kafirs are the only possible labourers. To utilize the Kafir and not to expel him must be the object of the white man. Speaking broadly it may be said of the Colony, or at any rate of the Eastern district, that it has no white labourers for agricultural purposes. The Kafir is as necessary to the Grahamstown farmer as is his brother negro to the Jamaica sugar grower. But, for the sake both of the Kafir and of the white man, some further assurance of security is needed. I am inclined to think that more evil is done both to one and the other by ill defined fear than by actual danger. Along the coast of the Colony there are various sea ports, none of which are very excellent as to their natural advantages, but each of which seems to have a claim to consider itself the best. There is Capetown of course with its completed docks, and Simon's Bay on the other side of the Cape promontory which is kept exclusively for our men of war. Then the first port, eastwards, at which the steamers call is Mossel Bay. These are the chief harbours of the Western Province. On the coast of the Eastern Province there are three ports between which a considerable jealousy is maintained, Fort Elizabeth, Port Alfred, and East London. And as there is rivalry between the West and East Provinces, so is there between these three harbours. Fort Elizabeth I had seen before I came up to Grahamstown. From Grahamstown I travelled to Port Alfred, taken thither by two patriotic hospitable and well-instructed gentlemen who thoroughly believed that the commerce of the world was to flow into Grahamstown viâ Port Alfred, and that the overflowing produce of South Africa will, at some not far distant happy time, be dispensed to the various nations from the same favoured harbour. "Statio bene fida carinis," was what I heard all the way down, or rather promises of coming security and marine fruitfulness which are to be results of the works now going on. It was all explained not get over the bar to me, how ships which now could would ride up the quiet little river in perfect safety, and take in and discharge their cargoes on comfortable wharves at a very minimum of expense. And then, when this should have been completed, the railway from the Kowie's mouth up to Grahamstown would be a certainty, even though existing governments had been so shortsighted as to make a railway from Fort Elizabeth to Grahamstown-carrying goods and passengers ever so far out of their proper course. It is a matter on which I am altogether unable to speak with any confidence. Neither at Fort Elizabeth, or at the mouth of the Kowie where stands Port Alfred, or further eastwards at East London of which I must speak in a coming chapter, has Nature done much for mariners, and the energy shown to overcome obstacles at all these places has certainly been very great. The devotion of individuals to their own districts and to the chances of prosperity not for themselves so much as for their neighbours, is almost sad though it is both patriotic and generous. The rivalry between places which should act together as one whole is distressing;-but the industry of which I speak will surely have the results which industry always obtains. I decline to prophesy whether there will be within the next dozen years a railway from Port Alfred to Grahamstown,—or |