Then we went on to the Tradouw, and just at the entrance of the ravine we came upon a party of coloured labourers, with a white man over them, making bricks in the close vicinity of an extensive building. A party of convicts was about to come to the spot for the purpose of mending the road, and the bricks were being made so that a kitchen might be built for the cooking of their food. The big building, I was told, had been erected for the use of the convicts who a few years since had made the road. But it had fallen out of repair, and the new kitchen was considered necessary, though the number of men needed for the repair would not be very large, and they would be wanted only for a few months. I naturally asked what would become of the kitchen afterwards,--which seemed to be a spacious building containing a second apartment, to be used probably as a scullery. The kitchen would again be deserted and would become the property of the owner of the land. I afterwards heard by chance of a contract for supplying mutton to the convicts at 6½d. a pound,--a pound a day for each man;--and I also heard that convict labour was supposed to be costly. The convicts are chiefly coloured people. With such usage as they receive the supply, I should imagine, would be ample. The ordinary Hottentot with his daily pound of mutton, properly cooked in a first-class kitchen and nothing but convict labour to do, would probably find himself very comfortable. Southey’s Pass,--so called from Mr. Southey who was Colonial Secretary before the days of parliamentary government, and is now one of the stoutest leaders of the opposition against the Ministers of the day,--is seven miles from end to end and is very beautiful throughout. But it is the mile at the end,--furthest from Swellendam,--in which it beats in sublimity all the other South African passes which I saw, including even the Montague Pass which crosses the Outiniqua mountains near George. South Africa is so far off that I cannot hope to be able to excite English readers to visit the Cape Colony for the sake of the scenery,--though for those whose doctors prescribe a change of air and habits and the temporary use of a southern climate I cannot imagine that any trip should be more pleasant and serviceable;--but I do think that the inhabitants of Capetown and the neighbourhood should know more than they do of the beauties of their own country. I have never seen rocks of a finer colour or twisted about into grander forms than those which make the walls of that part of Southey’s Pass which is furthest from Swellendam.