These were manifold; and he makes the most of them. No encouraging signs or omens cheered his progress through the land, bidding his heart beat high with hope. At two days' journey from Port Elizabeth he halted for the night at a farm belonging to an Englishman of independent property, who received him hospitably, but assured him that sheep-breeding was a hopeless speculation, owing to the bad pasturage, to the bushy tangled nature of the country, and to the hyenas, there called wolves, who are most destructive. As he proceeded, pasturage improved, but other plagues were apparent. In some places water was as scarce as in an Arabian desert, and as much prized--collected in pits and husbanded with the utmost care. "The maps of the colony indicate rivers of the most encouraging description in this part of the country. But the district itself presents only a series of dry water-courses, leaving evident traces of their capability of containing water for some hours after storms." These sandy and deceitful gullies intersect "a frightful country, which can only be described as a succession of low undulations, covered with large shingles, between which the most debauched-looking stunted tufts of the poisonous and prickly euphorbia, with here and there a magnificent scarlet-headed aloe, forced their way." We are at a loss to know what the ex-colonist here means by the epithet "debauched-looking," unless he intends some obscure allusion to the thirsty and disreputable aspect of the brambles, remote as they were from the vicinity of any water except one spring of "Harrowgate, which, to judge from the nasty effluvium it produced, must have been possessed of rare healing qualities." The severe droughts are the destruction of the settlers, entailing terrible losses and often total ruin, and their pernicious effects are aggravated by flights of locusts. These the farmers do what they can to keep off by smoky fires and other means, sometimes with success; but even when the insect cloud pass over a field without ravaging it, they leave a memento of their transit in the shape of innumerable eggs. In due time the young generation come forth, and being wingless cannot be driven away, but hop about and ravage every thing till their wings grow, and a gale of wind takes them off to fresh pasturage. Mrs Ward's description of a flight of locusts is remarkably striking, and given with a vigour of phrase not often found in the productions of a female pen.