The people of Grahamstown are very full of their own excellencies. No man there would call his town a “beastly place.” The stranger on the other hand is invited freely to admire its delights, the charm of its position up above the heat and the musquitoes, the excellence of its water supply, the multiplicity of its gardens, the breadth and prettiness of its streets, its salubrity,--for he is almost assured that people at Grahamstown never die,--and the perfection of its Institutions. And the clock tower appended to the cathedral! The clock tower which is the work of the energetic Dean was when I was there,--not finished indeed for there was the spire to come,--but still so far erected as to be a conspicuous and handsome object to all the country round. The clock tower was exercising the minds of men very much, and through a clever manœuvre,--originating I hope with the Dean,--is supposed to be a town-clock tower and not an appanage of the cathedral. In this way all denominations have been got to subscribe, and yet, if you were not told to the contrary, you would think that the tower belongs to the cathedral as surely as its dome belongs to St. Paul’s. In truth Grahamstown is a very pretty town, and seen, as it is on all sides, from a gentle eminence, smiles kindly on those who enter it. The British troops who guarded the frontier from our Kafir enemies were formerly stationed here. As the Kafirs have been driven back eastwards, so have the troops been moved in the same direction and they are now kept at King Williamstown about 50 miles to the North East of Grahamstown, and nearer to the Kei river which is the present boundary of the Colony;--or was till the breaking out of the Kafir disturbance in 1877. The barracks at Grahamstown still belong to the Imperial Government, as does the castle at Capetown, and are let out for various purposes. Opening from the barrack grounds are the public gardens which are pretty and well kept. Grahamstown altogether gives the traveller an idea of a healthy, well-conditioned prosperous little town, in which it would be no misfortune to be called upon to live. And yet I was told that I saw it under unfavourable circumstances, as there had been a drought for some weeks, and the grasses were not green. I was taken from Grahamstown to see an ostrich farm about fifteen miles distant. The establishment belongs to Mr. Douglas, who is I believe among the ostrich farmers of the Colony about the most successful and who was if not the first, the first who did the work on a large scale. He is, moreover, the patentee for an egg-hatching machine, or incubator, which is now in use among many of the feather-growers of the district. Mr. Douglas occupies about 1,200 acres of rough ground, formerly devoted to sheep-farming. The country around was all used not long since as sheep walks, but seems to have so much deteriorated by changes in the grasses as to be no longer profitable for that purpose. But it will feed ostriches.