The first assistant branch goes to Malmesbury and is agricultural. Malmesbury is a corn producing countrý in the flats north of Capetown, and will, I hope, before long justify the railway which has been made. At present I am told that the branch hardly pays for the fuel it consumes. It no doubt will justify the railway as wheat can be grown in the district without irrigation, and it will therefore become peopled with prosperous farmers. Then there is a loop line to Stellenbosch, an old and thriving little Dutch town which I did not visit. It is very old, having been founded in 1684. In 1685 the French Refugees came of whom a large proportion were settled at Stellenbosch. The main line which is intended to cross the entire Colony then makes its way on to The Paarl and Wellington,—from whence it takes its passage among the mountains. This is of course in the Western Province, --which I must persist in so designating though I know I shall encounter the wrath of many South African friends of the West. In the Eastern Province there are two lines which have been commenced from the coast with the same mission of making their way up into the whole continent of Africa, one of them starting from Fort Elizabeth, intending to go on by Cradock, with a branch already. nearly finished to Grahamstown, and the other from East London travelling north by King Williamstown and Queenstown. The rivalry between the three is great. It is so great even between the two latter as to have much impaired the homogeneity of the Eastern Province. At present the chief object of them all is to secure the trade to Kimberley and the Diamond Fields. That by which I was now travelling is already open to Worcester, across the mountain, for all traffic, and for goods traffic forty miles beyond Worcester, up the valley of the Hex River.

I stopped at The Paarl to see the vineyards and orange groves, and also the ostriches. These are the industries of The Paarl, which is in its way a remarkable and certainly a very interesting place. It was only during the last month of my sojourn in South Africa that I came to see how very much lovely scenery there is within reach of the residents of Capetown. As in all countries of large area, such as South Africa, the United States, the interior of Australia, and Russia generally, of which I speak only from hearsay,—the great body of the landskip is uninteresting. The Transvaal, the Orange Free State, Griqua Land West, and the Karoos of the Cape Colony are not beautiful. This the traveller hears, and gradually sees for himself. But if he will take the trouble he may also see for himself spots that are as entrancing as any among the more compressed charms of European scenery. The prettinesses of The Paarl, however, come from the works of man almost as much as from those of Nature.

It is a very long town,-if town it is to be called,— the main street running a length of eight miles. Through all this distance one spot is hardly more central than another, though there is a market-place which the people of The Paarl probably regard as the heart of the town. It is nowhere contiguous, the houses standing, almost all, separately. It is under the paarl, or pearl rock,* which strangers are invited to ascend, but are warned at the same time that the ascent in summer may be very hot. I thanked my friend for the caution and did not ascend the mountain. I was of course told that without ascending I could not see The Paarl aright. I did not therefore see it aright, and satisfy my conscience by in

*So called from a block of granite lying on the mountain over the town, to which has been given the name of The Pearl.

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.

I was taken to the house of one gentleman,—a 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