or 5s., or perhaps nothing, an acre for the freehold of it, can hardly expect the same security which a tenant enjoys in England, who pays probably 20s. an acre for the mere use of his land. As I have now finished the account of my travels in the two Provinces and am about to go on to Natal, I will say a few words first as to the produce of the Cape Colony. In the Cape Colony, as in Australia, wool has been for many years the staple of the country;--and, as in Australia the importance or seeming importance of the staple produce has been cast into the shade by the great wealth of the gold which has been found there, so in South Africa has the same been done by the finding of diamonds. Up to the present time, however, the diamond district has not in truth belonged to the Cape Colony. Soon after these pages will have been printed it will probably be annexed. But the actual political possession of the land in which the diamonds or gold have been found has had little to do with the wealth which has flowed into the different Colonies from the finding of the treasures. That in each case has come from the greatly increased consumption created by the finders. Men finding gold and diamonds eat and drink a great deal. The persons who sell such articles are enriched,--and the articles are subject to taxation, and so a public revenue is raised. It is hence that the wealth comes rather than from the gold and diamonds themselves. Had it been possible that the possession of the land round the Kimberley mines should have been left in the hands of the native tribes, there would have been but little difference in the money result. The flour, the meat, the brandy, and the imported coats and boots would still have been carried up to Kimberley from the Cape Colony. But of the Colony itself wool has been the staple,--and among its produce the next most interesting are its wheat, its vines, and its ostriches. In regard to wool I find that the number of wooled sheep in the Cape Colony has considerably increased during the last ten years. I say wooled sheep, because there is a kind of sheep in the Colony, native to the land, which bear no wool and are known by their fat tails and lob ears. As they produce only mutton I take no reckoning of them here. In 1875 there were 9,986,240 wooled sheep in the Colony producing 28,316,181 pounds of wool, whereas in 1865 there were only 8,370,179 sheep giving 18,905,936 pounds of wool. This increase in ten years would seem to imply a fair progress,--especially as it applies not only to the number of sheep in the Colony, but also to the amount of wool given by each sheep; but I regret to say that during the latter part of that period of ten years there has been a very manifest falling off. I cannot give the figures as to the Cape Colony itself, as I have done with the numbers for 1865 and 1875;--but from the ports of the Cape Colony there were exported--