Elizabeth a gentleman was very kind in planning my journey for me thence up to Grahamstown, King Williamstown &c.,-but, on coming into my bed room, he strongly recommended me to leave my portmanteau and dispatch box behind me, to be taken on, somewhither, by water, and to trust myself to two bags. So I tied on addresses to the tabooed receptacles of my remaining comforts, and started on my way with a very limited supply of wearing apparel. In the selection which one is driven to make with an agonized mind,-when the bag has been stamped full to repletion with shirts, boots, and the blue books which are sure to be accumulated for the sake of statistics, the first thing to be rejected is one's dress suit. A man can live without a black coat, waistcoat, and trousers. But so great is colonial hospitality wherever the traveller goes, and so similar are colonial habits to those at home, that there will always come a time, there will come many times,-in which the traveller will feel that he has left behind him the very articles which he most needed, and that the blue books should have been made to give way to decent raiment. These are difficulties which at periods become almost heartbreaking. Nevertheless I made the decision and rejected the dress suit. And I trusted myself to two pair of boots. And I allowed my treasures to be taken from me, with a hope that I might see them again some day in the further Colony of Natal. From Fort Elizabeth there is a railway open on the road to Grahamstown as far as a wretched place called Sand Flat. From thence we started in a mail cart,-or Cobb's omnibus as it is called. The whole distance to Grahamstown is about 70 miles, and the journey was accomplished in eleven hours. The country through which we passed is not favourable for agriculture or even for pasture. Much of it was covered with bush, and on that which is open the grass is too sour for sheep. It is indeed called the Zuurveld, or sour-field country. But as we approached Grahamstown it improved, and farming operations with farm steads,at long distances apart,-came in view. For some miles round Fort Elizabeth there is nothing but sour grass and bush and the traveller inspecting the country is disposed to ask where is the fertility and where the rural charms which produced the great effort at emigration in 1820, when 5,000 persons were sent out from England into this district. The Kafirs had driven out the early Dutch settlers, and the British troops had driven out the Kafirs. But the country remained vacant, and £50,000 was voted by Parliament to send out what was then a Colony in itself, that the land might be occupied. But it is necessary to travel forty or fifty miles from Fort Elizabeth, or Algoa Bay, before the fertility is discovered. Grahamstown when it is reached is a smiling little town lying in a gentle valley on an elevated plateau 1,700 feet above the sea. It contains between eight and nine thousand inhabitants of whom a third are coloured. The twothirds are almost exclusively British, the Dutch element having had little or no holding in this small thriving capital of the Eastern Province. For Grahamstown is the capital of the East, and there are many there who think that it should become a Capital of a Colony, whether by separation of the East from the West, or by a general federation of South African States-in which case the town would, they think, be more eligible than any other for all the general honours of government and legislation. I do not know but that on the whole I am inclined to agree with them. I think that if there were an united South Africa, and that a site for a capital had to be chosen afresh, as it was chosen in Canada, Grahamstown would receive from an outside commission appointed to report on the matter, more votes than any other town. But I am far from thinking that Grahamstown will become the capital of a South African Confederation. The people of Grahamstown are very full of their own excellencies. No man there would call his town a "beastly place." The stranger on the other hand is invited freely to admire its delights, the charm of its position up above the heat and the musquitoes, the excellence of its water supply, the multiplicity of its gardens, the breadth and prettiness of its streets, its salubrity, for he is almost assured that people at Grahamstown never die,-and the perfection of its Institutions. And the clock tower appended to the cathedral ! The clock tower which is the work of the energetic Dean was when I was there, not finished indeed but still so far erected as to for there was the spire to come, be a conspicuous and handsome object to all the country round. The clock tower was exercising the minds of men very much, and through a clever manœuvre, originating I hope with the Dean,-is supposed to be a town-clock tower In this way all and not an appanage of the cathedral. denominations have been got to subscribe, and yet, if you were not told to the contrary, you would think that the tower belongs to the cathedral as surely as its dome belongs to St. Paul's. In truth Grahamstown is a very pretty town, and seen, as it is on all sides, from a gentle eminence, smiles kindly on those who enter it. The British troops who guarded the frontier from our Kafir enemies were formerly stationed here. As the Kafirs have been driven back eastwards, so have the troops been moved in the same direction and they are now kept at King Williamstown about 50 miles to the North East of Grahamstown, and nearer to the Kei river which is the present boundary of the Colony ;-or was till the breaking out of the Kafir disturbance in 1877. The barracks at Grahamstown still belong to the Imperial Government, as does the castle at Capetown, and are let out for various purposes. Opening from the barrack grounds are the public gardens which are pretty and well kept. Grahamstown altogether gives the traveller an idea of a healthy, well-conditioned prosperous little town, in which it would be no misfortune to be called upon to live. And yet I was told that I saw it under unfavourable circumstances, as there had been a drought for some weeks, and the grasses were not green. I was taken from Grahamstown to see an ostrich farm about fifteen miles distant. The establishment belongs to Mr. Douglas, who is I believe among the ostrich farmers of the Colony about the most successful and who was if not the first, the first who did the work on a large scale. He is, moreover, the patentee for an egg-hatching machine, or incubator, which is now in use among many of the feathergrowers of the district. Mr. Douglas occupies about 1,200 acres of rough ground, formerly devoted to sheep-farming. The country around was all used not long since as sheep walks, but seems to have so much deteriorated by changes. in the grasses as to be no longer profitable for that purpose. But it will feed ostriches. At this establishment I found about 300 of those birds, which, taking them all round, young and old, were worth about £30 a piece. Each bird fit for plucking gives two crops of feathers a year, and produces, on an average, feathers to the value of £15 per annum. The creatures feed themselves unless when sick or young, and live upon the various bushes and grasses of the land. The farm is divided out into paddocks, and, with those which are breeding, one cock with two hens occupies each paddock. The young birds, for they do not breed till they are three years old,or those which are not paired, run in flocks of thirty or forty each. They are subject to diseases which of course require attention, and are apt to damage themselves, sometimes breaking their own bones, and getting themselves caught in the wire fences. Otherwise they are hardy brutes, who can stand much heat and cold, can do for long periods without water, who require no delicate feeding, and give at existing prices ample returns for the care bestowed upon them. But, nevertheless, ostrich farming is a precarious venture. The birds are of such value, a full grown bird in perfect |