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. The Dutch farmers were tearing home from Kerk, in their carts - well-dressed, prosperous-looking folks, with capital horses. Such lovely farms, snugly nestled in orange and pomegranate groves! It is of no use to describe this scenery; it is always mountains, and always beautiful opal mountains; quite without the gloom of European mountain scenery. The atmosphere must make the charm. I hear that an English traveller went the same journey and found all barren from Dan to Beersheba. I'm sorry for him.

In the morning of Sunday, early, I walked along the road with Sabaal, and saw a picture I shall never forget. A little Malabar girl had just been bathing in the Sloot, and had put her scanty shift on her lovely little wet brown body; she stood in the water with the drops glittering on her brown skin and black, satin hair, the perfection of youthful loveliness - a naiad of ten years old. When the shape and features are PERFECT, as hers were, the coffee- brown shows it better than our colour, on account of its perfect EVENNESS - like the dead white of marble. I shall never forget her as she stood playing with the leaves of the gum-tree which hung over her, and gazing with her glorious eyes so placidly.

On Monday morning, I walked off early to the old Drosdy (Landdrost's house), found an old gentleman, who turned out to be the owner, and who asked me my name and all the rest of the Dutch 'litanei' of questions, and showed me the pretty old Dutch garden and the house - a very handsome one. I walked back to breakfast, and thought Worcester the prettiest place I had ever seen. We then started for Paarl, and drove through 'Bain's Kloof', a splendid mountain-pass, four hours' long, constant driving.

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