The Water Is
Clear As Crystal, And Is Hot Enough Just NOT To Boil An Egg, I Was
Told.
At last, one reaches the little gap between the brown hills
which one has seen for four hours, and drives through it into a
wide, wide flat, with still craggier and higher mountains all
round, and Worcester in front at the foot of a towering cliff.
The
town is not so pretty, to my taste, as the little villages. The
streets are too wide, and the market-place too large, which always
looks dreary, but the houses and gardens individually are charming.
Our inn is a very nice handsome old Dutch house; but we have got
back to 'civilization', and the horrid attempts at 'style' which
belong to Capetown. The landlord and lady are too genteel to
appear at all, and the Hottentots, who are disguised, according to
their sexes, in pantry jacket and flounced petticoat, don't
understand a word of English or of real Dutch. At Gnadenthal they
understood Dutch, and spoke it tolerably; but here, as in most
places, it is three-parts Hottentot; and then they affect to
understand English, and bring everything wrong, and are sulky: but
the rooms are very comfortable. The change of climate is complete-
-the summer was over at Caledon, and here we are into it again - the
most delicious air one can conceive; it must have been a perfect
oven six weeks ago. The birds are singing away merrily still; the
approach of autumn does not silence them here.
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