I have had a very kind letter from Lady Walker, and shall go and stay with them at Simon’s Bay as soon as I feel up to the twenty-two miles along the beaches and bad roads in the mail-cart with three horses. The teams of mules (I beg pardon, spans) would delight you—eight, ten, twelve, even sixteen sleek, handsome beasts; and oh, such oxen! noble beasts with humps; and hump is very good to eat too. _Oct._ 21_st._—The mail goes out to-morrow, so I must finish this letter. I feel better to-day than I have yet felt, in spite of the south-easter. Yours, &c. LETTER III 28_th_ _Oct._—Since I wrote, we have had more really cold weather, but yesterday the summer seems to have begun. The air is as light and clear as if _there were none_, and the sun hot; but I walk in it, and do not find it oppressive. All the household groans and perspires, but I am very comfortable. Yesterday I sat in the full broil for an hour or more, in the hot dust of the Malay burial-ground. They buried the head butcher of the Mussulmans, and a most strange poetical scene it was. The burial-ground is on the side of the Lion Mountain—on the Lion’s rump—and overlooks the whole bay, part of the town, and the most superb mountain panorama beyond. I never saw a view within miles of it for beauty and grandeur. Far down, a fussy English steamer came puffing and popping into the deep blue bay, and the ‘Hansom’s’ cabs went tearing down to the landing place; and round me sat a crowd of grave brown men chanting ‘Allah il Allah’ to the most monotonous but musical air, and with the most perfect voices. The chant seemed to swell, and then fade, like the wind in the trees. I went in after the procession, which consisted of a bier covered with three common Paisley shawls of gay colours; no one looked at me; and when they got near the grave, I kept at a distance, and sat down when they did. But a man came up and said, ‘You are welcome.’ So I went close, and saw the whole ceremony. They took the corpse, wrapped in a sheet, out of the bier, and lifted it into the grave, where two men received it; then a sheet was held over the grave till they had placed the dead man; and then flowers and earth were thrown in by all present, the grave filled in, watered out of a brass kettle, and decked with flowers. Then a fat old man, in printed calico shirt sleeves, and a plaid waistcoat and corduroy trousers, pulled off his shoes, squatted on the grave, and recited endless ‘Koran’, many reciting after him. Then they chanted ‘Allah-il-Allah’ for twenty minutes, I think: then prayers, with ‘Ameens’ and ‘Allah il-Allahs’ again. Then all jumped up and walked off. There were eighty or a hundred men, no women, and five or six ‘Hadjis’, draped in beautiful Eastern dresses, and looking very supercilious. The whole party made less noise in moving and talking than two Englishmen.