The Canaries Have A
Very Pretty Song, Like Our Linnet, Only Sweeter; The Rest Are Very
Inferior To Ours.
The sugar-bird is delicious when close by, but
his pipe is too soft to be heard at any distance.
To those who think voyages and travels tiresome, my delight in the
new birds and beasts and people must seem very stupid. I can't
help it if it does, and am not ashamed to confess that I feel the
old sort of enchanted wonder with which I used to read Cook's
voyages, and the like, as a child. It is very coarse and
unintellectual of me; but I would rather see this now, at my age,
than Italy; the fresh, new, beautiful nature is a second youth - or
CHILDHOOD - si vous voulez. To-morrow we shall cross the highest
pass I have yet crossed, and sleep at Paarl - then Stellenbosch,
then Capetown. For any one OUT of health, and IN pocket, I should
certainly prescribe the purchase of a waggon and team of six
horses, and a long, slow progress in South Africa. One cannot walk
in the midday sun, but driving with a very light roof over one's
head is quite delicious. When I looked back upon my dreary, lonely
prison at Ventnor, I wondered I had survived it at all.
Capetown, March 7th.
After writing last, we drove out, on Sunday afternoon, to a deep
alpine valley, to see a NEW BRIDGE - a great marvel apparently. The
old Spanish Joe Miller about selling the bridge to buy water
occurred to me, and made Sabaal laugh immensely.
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