Travellers generally take their guns with them, as they may chance to get a little sport on the road. At six in the morning we will suppose the carriage to start; at about ten you will “outspan”—that is, take out the oxen and let them feed, and prepare for breakfast. Your Hottentots soon collect fuel, the wagon is drawn up close by a mimosa or some other bush, a fire is lighted, the kettle set to boil, the coffee prepared, the steaks cooked in a frying-pan, and perhaps some hot cakes made of meal baked for you; and with a beautiful country round you, and a magnificent sky above you, if you cannot make a good breakfast, and feel a light heart, I fear that you must be terribly “used up.” Then comes a stroll through the bush with your double-barrel on your shoulder, in search of a partridge or a Guinea fowl, or a stray antelope; and back to the wagon, now ready for another start. Forward, again, till dinner-time, when the same process is gone through. After dinner, perhaps you will go forward another four or five miles, and then “outspan” for the night. The nights of the Cape climate are glorious! I can scarcely imagine anything more beautiful. The sky of that deep, dark blue, which we never see in northern climates; the moon shining as she only can in such a sky, the stars so bright and distinct, with the beautiful southern cross in all its brilliancy, among them; the perfect stillness of everything around; the lofty and rugged mountains where the foot of man has never trodden; the thick dark bush, penetrable only by the wild beast or the savage; the broad plain covered with Aloes, Cape Heaths, Wild Stocks, and the ten thousand variegated shrubs which make a carpet beneath your feet as beautiful as the canopy of heaven above your head; and that little spot worthy the pencil of Salvator Rosa—the dark foliage of the bush lighted up by your fire, and around it the dusky forms of your Hottentots stretched at their ease, and enjoying, as none but a half savage knows how thoroughly to enjoy, the requisite delight of the “Dolce far niente.” No doubt railroads are glorious inventions. All honour, too, to Macadam, and to stagecoaches and post-chaises; all praise to the comforts and convenience of a good English Inn. But if you have a spark of native poetry in your composition, in spite of bad roads, slow travelling, rough fare, and a bed “al fresco,” you will enjoy one of these South African journeys more than any trip you ever took in Europe. You have no other travelling companions than the beauties of Nature’s works around you, fresh as from the hands of their Creator, and the thoughts and reflections high and holy, as such scenes and such companionship will not fail to call forth. CHEMICAL CONTRADICTIONS.