The wine-growers are generally wealthy men, for, in spite of all obstacles, their profits are very large. Few people who even touch at the Cape fail to visit the Constantia wine farms, producing the delicious sweet wine of that name. It is grown on a mountain named after the wife of one of the former Governors of the Cape—whether in compliment to the lady’s sweetness of disposition, or her love for the wine then produced, I know not. Three farms monopolise this mountain. Even half a mile from them, the wine produced is of a very inferior flavour. They live in excellent style, these Constantia wine-growers. When first I visited one of them, a carriage-and-four and two buggies, conveying a party of Indian visitors, had just drawn up at the door. A _déjeûner_ was spread in a long, handsome, and elegantly-furnished apartment, for the entertainment of any one who might chance to come and visit the farm. Two or three superintendents were ready to show the “lions” of the place to visitors, and to give them samples of the wine to taste. There are many varieties of it. And, oh, how seductive that same Constantia is! Who can resist it in all its delicious varieties? I recollect that as I rode towards the farm I passed a toll-gate, and looking, I suppose, extremely like a “griffin” (for I had only been a week in the colony), the “pikeman” observed, as he took my twopence, and handed me the ticket, “Hopes you’ll be able to read it as you comes back, Sir!” “What do you mean?” I asked. “No offence, Sir,” said the man with a grin; “only I’ve seed a many as _couldn’t_—that’s all.” The three Constantia wine-growers are Dutchmen; and so, in fact, are nearly all the wine farmers throughout the colony. Englishmen who go out there generally take to trade or sheep-farming; and they are right,—for it requires far less experience, less capital, and less labour, to follow almost any calling at the Cape than that of a wine-grower. I think, however, that a Company might be profitably established here or in the colony, for cultivating the vine there and importing its produce to Europe. For this purpose, they should send out labourers and superintendents, carefully selected from the wine districts of France and Germany; and take care that the Madeira plan of gathering the grapes be adopted. They should agitate, too, for a reduction of the duty on the wine: at present it is far too high. Perhaps the profits would not at first be great, for there is a serious obstacle to be overcome,—a bad name in the market; but eventually I believe that the speculation would be a lucrative one, and that it would in time remove the unfortunate stigma now affixed to Cape wine. In these days of railroad travelling, when twenty miles an hour would be considered slow enough to justify a letter of complaint from “Viator” to the editor of the Times, it may rather astonish my readers to learn that twenty miles is considered a fair day’s journey at the Cape. Yet so it is.