In order to arrive at a conclusion on this point I should like to be more fully informed as to what is congruous and what incongruous. What are the important elements to consider in the construction of a Dutch garden, and are these elements in sympathy with the foreground of such a picture as I had before me when I made up my mind on the subject? Now I have seen many Dutch gardens in Holland, and in Cape Colony--relics of the old Dutch Colonial days--and every one knows how conservative is this splendid if somewhat over-hospitable race. Some of the gardens lying between Cape Town and Simon's Bay, and also on the higher ground above Mossel Bay are what old-furniture dealers term “in mint condition”--I disclaim any suggestion of a pun upon the herb, which in Dutch houses at the Cape is not used in sauce for lamb. They are as they were laid out by the Solomons, the Cloetes, the Van der Byls, and the other old Dutch Colonial families; so far from adapting, themselves to the tropical and subtropical conditions existing in the Colony, they brought their home traditions into their new surroundings with results that were both happy and profitable. There are certainly no finer or more various bulbs than those of Dutch growth at the Cape, and I have never seen anything more beautiful than the heaths on the Flats between Mowbray and Rondesbosch at the foot of the Devil's Peak of Table Mountain. [Illustration: 0096] A Dutch gentleman once said to me in Rotterdam, “If you want to see a real Dutch garden you must go to the Cape, or, better still, to England--for it.” He meant that in both places greater pains are taken to maintain the original type than, generally speaking, in Holland.