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bound to work for him, as they now are for his parent. This is one of the provisions of Kaffir law, which it is an anomaly of our social condition to have in operation here.

Small things please these simple-minded people. The girls of our party had brought several strips of coloured rags, and these were accepted with boundless gratitude by the women, who forthwith began bedecking the brows, the arms, and the person of their lord and master with them, reserving only one bit apiece for themselves. The old man was as proud of these decorations as a gartered knight may be with his ribbon, and the whole party at once burst into a jubilant chorus, keeping time with their hands and shoulders. Vanity is no less a foible with Kaffirs than with Europeans. Not long since a party of the girls at this kraal came to see us, each having a baby strapped to her back. Happening to catch a glimpse of a swing looking-glass of fair size, an object they had never seen before, their delight was most extravagant and vociferous. Screams of astonishment and admiration filled the room. Huddling up together so that all might get a glimpse of themselves in the mirror, they began dancing, singing, and rolling their eyes and heads about after a fashion known only to such barbarians. Since that time they have brought fish and wild-fruit as bribes for permission to gaze into and dance before the magic mirror.

But I must stop, for my pen is running away with me. There are other aspects of our watering-place as novel, if not as interesting, as those I have described. Much might be said of the luxury of bathing as we have it here, with no prying eyes to care for, and the rock-bound but turbulent breakers to bound amongst. To be knocked about by these waves, lifted off your feet by an advancing breaker, and tossed up high, if not dry, upon the sands, to be scrubbed by the coarse clean sand, or whirled amidst the lather of some seething "cross-jobble," is to enjoy seabathing in its best and truest form. Then, when you have had enough of the salt water, a dozen paces across the river-bar takes you to the shallow stream, where you can have a cool fresh bath, and feel in all respects renovated. This last facility to my mind makes our bathing perfection.

Or go to the top of that little hill near the cottage, crowned by a flagstaff, and see what a glorious prospect spreads out inland. At our feet stretches northward a long narrow plain, green with nestling cane leaves, and humanized by many sugar-mills. All round it rise bold hills, dark with the primeval bush which covers all our coast lands. On the other side the valley winds westward, disclosing an ever-undulating woodland country, rising and sinking in pleasant continuity of softest vallies, where babbling brooks or sleepy rivers are flowing; while further yet the rolling uplands dilate in huge swelling heights, here and there rent by some sudden chasm, but following each other in their upward march to our mountain frontier, like the rolling billows of the sea.

And back to that sea our eye instinctively turns, for it fills more than half the horizon, and unquestionably predominates. It is in one sense a strangely silent sea; rarely, indeed, is a sail seen upon it. During our month of residence we have seen but four steamers and three sailing vessels. Coleridge might fitly have written here :

Alone, alone,-all, all alone;

Alone on a wide, wide sea.

A wide sea truly. The crested waves that come trooping up in serried order may have travelled, for aught I know, from that mysterious antarctic land investing the south pole yonder; there is naught to stop their march betwixt this shore and that far-off strand. They are the pure, deep ocean; they are in no degree of the earth, earthy. Unlike the waters of the German Ocean or the British Channel, they are the true aqua pura of the sea gods. Agencies invisible to us, operating at remote distances, gales and storms of which we are insensible, move them. In the calmest weather they break and roar incessantly, and there are few ears to hear them. Commerce has yet to stretch her wings this way, and to make these waters lively with the presence of ships and steamers. When the avenues of human industry in the northern world are filled to overflowing, then we may hope to see this sea lit with many a white sail, and all the latent goodness of the land developed; and may that day be nigh.

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"Don't you see, sir," said she, with a mock air of being offen VOL. XVI.-No. 96.

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