Some of the most beautiful coast scenery I have ever seen is to be found in that very lovely drive by Sea Point to Hout’s Bay, and thence back to Cape Town by Constantia and Wynberg.  This is a celebrated excursion, and well deserves the praises bestowed upon it.  The road has been admirably constructed by convict labour.

A very convenient short line of railway also brings within easy reach of the inhabitants of Cape Town the pretty villages of Mowbray, Rondebosch, Rosebank, Newlands, Wynberg, Constantia, &c., where, in charming villas and other residences, so many of the wealthier classes reside.  At Constantia the principal wine farms are situated, the most noted being the Groot Constantia (the Government farm) and High Constantia.  Constantia wine can only be produced on these farms.  Another farm in this neighbourhood is Witteboomen, which is particularly noted for its peaches, there being over one thousand trees on the farm, in addition to many other kinds of fruit.  Another one, and probably the largest in the district, is named “Sillery.”  Here not many years ago the ground was a wilderness, but it has now attained a high state of perfection, there being at least 140,000 vines and hundreds of fruit trees of all kinds, under cultivation.

At Cape Town I received the first proofs of the kind and lavish attentions which everywhere in South Africa were subsequently bestowed upon me.  From everyone, without exception—­from His Excellency the Administrator and Mrs. Smyth, and the members of his staff—­from all the public men and high officials—­from members of the Cape Government, and from the leaders of the Opposition, besides from innumerable private friends, Dutch and English alike, I received such cordial tokens of goodwill, that I can only express my deep sense of appreciation of their most genial and friendly hospitality.  I bid adieu to Cape Town (which I was visiting for the first time in my life) with the conviction that I was truly in a land, not of strangers, but of real friends, who desired to do everything in their power to make my visit to South Africa pleasant and agreeable to me; and this impression I carried with me ever afterwards at every place I visited during the whole of my tour.

On Wednesday, May 29, I left Cape Town at 6.30 p.m. for Kimberley, passing Beaufort West, the centre of an extensive pastoral district, and De Aar, the railway junction from Cape Town and Port Elizabeth.  This journey is a long one, of between 600 and 700 miles, and of some forty-two hours by railway.  I travelled all through that night, and the whole of the next day, through the most remarkable kind of country I ever saw.  Flat, and apparently as level, as a bowling-green (although we were continually rising from our starting-point at Cape Town to a height at Kimberley of about 3,800 feet above the sea), a sandy and dreary desert, with occasionally low, and barren hills in the far distance—­not a tree to be seen, and scarcely any vestige of vegetation, excepting