_Rathfelder’s Halfway House_, 6_th_ _November_.—I drove out here yesterday in Captain T—’s drag, which he kindly brought into Capetown for me. He and his wife and children came for a change of air for whooping cough, and advised me to come too, as my cough continues, though less troublesome. It is a lovely spot, six miles from Constantia, ten from Capetown, and twelve from Simon’s Bay. I intend to stay here a little while, and then to go to Kalk Bay, six miles from hence. This inn was excellent, I hear, ‘in the old Dutch times’. Now it is kept by a young Englishman, Cape-born, and his wife, and is dirty and disorderly. I pay twelve shillings a day for S— and self, without a sitting-room, and my bed is a straw paillasse; but the food is plentiful, and not very bad. That is the cheapest rate of living possible here, and every trifle costs double what it would in England, except wine, which is very fair at fivepence a bottle—a kind of hock. The landlord pays £1 a day rent for this house, which is the great resort of the Capetown people for Sundays, and for change of air, &c.—a rude kind of Richmond. His cook gets £3 10_s._ a month, besides food for himself and wife, and beer and sugar. The two (white) housemaids get £1 15_s._ and £1 10_s._ respectively (everything by the month). Fresh butter is 3_s._ 6_d._ a pound, mutton 7_d._; washing very dear; cabbages my host sells at 3_d._ a piece, and pumpkins 8_d._ He has a fine garden, and pays a gardener 3_s._ 6_d._ a day, and black labourers 2_s._ _They_ work three days a week; then they buy rice and a coarse fish, and lie in the sun till it is eaten; while their darling little fat black babies play in the dust, and their black wives make battues in the covers in their woolly heads. But the little black girl who cleans my room is far the best servant, and smiles and speaks like Lalage herself, ugly as the poor drudge is. The voice and smile of the negroes here is bewitching, though they are hideous; and neither S— nor I have yet heard a black child cry, or seen one naughty or quarrelsome. You would want to lay out a fortune in woolly babies. Yesterday I had a dreadful heartache after my darling, on her little birthday, and even the lovely ranges of distant mountains, coloured like opals in the sunset, did not delight me. This is a dreary place for strangers. Abdul Jemaalee’s tisanne, and a banana which he gave me each time I went to his shop, are the sole offer of ‘Won’t you take something?’ or even the sole attempt at a civility that I have received, except from the J—s, who, are very civil and kind.