Capetown would be no city without a railway. The Colony at present has three starting-points for railways from the coast, one of which runs out of Capetown, with a branch to Wynberg which is hardly more than a suburb and is but eight miles distant, and a second branch to Worcester which is intended to be carried up the country to the distant town of Graaf Reynet and so on through the world of Africa. The line to Wynberg is of infinite importance to the city as giving to the inhabitants easy means of access to a charming locality. Capetown itself is not a lovely spot on which to reside, but the district at the back of the Table Mountain where are Mowbray, Rondebusch, Wynberg and Constantia,--which district is reached by the railway,--supplies beautiful sites for houses and gardens. There are bits of scenery which it would be hard to beat either in form or colour, so grand are the outlines of the mountain, and so rich and bountiful the verdure of the shrubs and timbers. It would be difficult to find a site for a house more charming than that occupied by the bishop, which is only six miles from town and hardly more than a mile distant from a railway station. Beyond Wynberg lies the grape district of Constantia so well known in England by the name of its wine;--better known, I think, forty years ago than it is now. All these places, Rondebusch, Wynberg, Constantia and the rest lie on that promontory which when we look at the map we regard as the Cape of Good Hope. The Dutch had once an idea of piercing a canal across the isthmus from sea to sea, from Table Bay to False Bay,--in which lies Simon’s Bay where is our naval station,--and maintaining only the island so formed for its own purposes, leaving the rest of South Africa to its savagery. And, since the time of the Dutch, it has been suggested that if England were thus to cut off the Table Mountain with its adjacent land, England would have all of South Africa that it wants. The idea is altogether antagonistic to the British notion of colonization, which looks to a happy home for colonists or the protection natives, rather than the benefit or glory of the Mother Country. But were such a cutting off to be effected, the morsel of land so severed would be very charming, and would demand I think a prettier town than Capetown.