The Sun, Moon, And Stars Are Different Beings From Those We Look Upon.

Not only are they so large and bright, but you SEE that the moon and stars are BALLS, and that the sky is endless beyond them. On the other hand, the clear, dry air dwarfs Table Mountain, as you seem to see every detail of it to the very top.

Capetown is very picturesque. The old Dutch buildings are very handsome and peculiar, but are falling to decay and dirt in the hands of their present possessors. The few Dutch ladies I have seen are very pleasing. They are gentle and simple, and naturally well-bred. Some of the Malay women are very handsome, and the little children are darlings. A little parti-coloured group of every shade, from ebony to golden hair and blue eyes, were at play in the street yesterday, and the majority were pretty, especially the half-castes. Most of the Caffres I have seen look like the perfection of human physical nature, and seem to have no diseases. Two days ago I saw a Hottentot girl of seventeen, a housemaid here. You would be enchanted by her superfluity of flesh; the face was very queer and ugly, and yet pleasing, from the sweet smile and the rosy cheeks which please one much, in contrast to all the pale yellow faces - handsome as some of them are.

I wish I could send the six chameleons which a good-natured parson brought me in his hat, and a queer lizard in his pocket. The chameleons are charming, so monkey-like and so 'caressants'. They sit on my breakfast tray and catch flies, and hang in a bunch by their tails, and reach out after my hand.

I have had a very kind letter from Lady Walker, and shall go and stay with them at Simon's Bay as soon as I feel up to the twenty- two miles along the beaches and bad roads in the mail-cart with three horses. The teams of mules (I beg pardon, spans) would delight you - eight, ten, twelve, even sixteen sleek, handsome beasts; and oh, such oxen! noble beasts with humps; and hump is very good to eat too.

Oct. 21st. - The mail goes out to-morrow, so I must finish this letter. I feel better to-day than I have yet felt, in spite of the south-easter.

Yours, &c.

LETTER III

28th Oct. - Since I wrote, we have had more really cold weather, but yesterday the summer seems to have begun. The air is as light and clear as if THERE WERE NONE, and the sun hot; but I walk in it, and do not find it oppressive. All the household groans and perspires, but I am very comfortable.

Yesterday I sat in the full broil for an hour or more, in the hot dust of the Malay burial-ground. They buried the head butcher of the Mussulmans, and a most strange poetical scene it was.

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