On Monday morning, I walked off early to the old _Drosdy_ (Landdrost’s house), found an old gentleman, who turned out to be the owner, and who asked me my name and all the rest of the Dutch ‘litanei’ of questions, and showed me the pretty old Dutch garden and the house—a very handsome one. I walked back to breakfast, and thought Worcester the prettiest place I had ever seen. We then started for Paarl, and drove through ‘Bain’s Kloof’, a splendid mountain-pass, four hours’ long, constant driving. It was glorious, but more like what one had seen in pictures—a deep, narrow gorge, almost dark in places, and, to my mind, lacked the _beauty_ of the yesterday’s drive, though it is, perhaps, grander; but the view which bursts on one at the top, and the descent, winding down the open mountain-side, is too fine to describe. Table Mountain, like a giant’s stronghold, seen far distant, with an immense plain, half fertile, half white sand; to the left, Wagenmaker’s Vley; and further on, the Paarl lying scattered on the slope of a mountain topped with two _domes_, just the shape of the cup which Lais (wasn’t it?) presented to the temple of Venus, moulded on her breast. The horses were tired, so we stopped at Waggon-maker’s Valley (or Wellington, as the English try to get it called), and found ourselves in a true Flemish village, and under the roof of a jolly Dutch hostess, who gave us divine coffee and bread-and-butter, which seemed ambrosia after being deprived of those luxuries for almost three months. Also new milk in abundance, besides fruit of all kinds in vast heaps, and pomegranates off the tree. I asked her to buy me a few to take in the cart, and got a ‘muid’, the third of a sack, for a shilling, with a bill, ‘U bekomt 1 muid 28 granaeten dat Kostet 1_s._’ The old lady would walk out with me and take me into the shops, to show the ‘vrow uit Engelland’ to her friends. It was a lovely place, intensely hot, all glowing with sunshine. Then the sun went down, and the high mountains behind us were precisely the colour of a Venice ruby glass—really, truly, and literally;—not purple, not crimson, but glowing ruby-red—and the quince-hedges and orange-trees below looked _intensely_ green, and the houses snow-white. It was a transfiguration—no less.