I cannot finish these remarks without saying that the most sensible speech I heard in the House was from Mr. Saul Solomon. Mr. Solomon has never been in the Government and rarely in opposition, but he has been perhaps of as much use to the Colony as any living man. He is one who certainly should be mentioned as a very remarkable personage, having risen to high honours in an occupation perhaps of all the most esteemed among men, but for which he must have seemed by nature to be peculiarly ill adapted. He is a man of very small stature,--so small that on first seeing him the stranger is certainly impressed with the idea that no man so small has ever been seen by him before. His forehead however is fine, and his face full of intelligence. With all this against him Mr. Solomon has gone into public life, and as a member of Parliament in the Cape Colony has gained a respect above that of Ministers in office. It is not too much to say that he is regarded on both sides as a safe adviser; and I believe that it would be hardly possible to pass any measure of importance through the Cape Legislature to which he offered a strenuous opposition. He reminded me of two other men whom it has been my privilege to know and who have been determined to seize and wear parliamentary honours in the teeth of misfortunes which would have closed at any rate that profession against men endowed with less than Herculean determination. I mean Mr. Fawcett who in our own House at home has completely vanquished the terrible misfortune of blindness, and my old friend John Robertson of Sydney,--Sir John I believe he is now,--who for many years presided over the Ministry in New South Wales, leading the debates in a parliamentary chamber, without a palate to his mouth. I regard these three men as great examples of what may be done by perseverance to overcome the evils which nature or misfortune have afflicted. The people of Capetown think of the two chambers in which the two Houses sit with something of shame, declaring that they are not at all what they ought to be,--that they are used as makeshifts, and that there has never yet been time, or perhaps money at hand, for constructing proper Houses of Parliament. Had I not heard this I should have thought that each of them was sufficiently commodious and useful, if not quite sufficiently handsome or magnificent. CHAPTER VII. WESTERN PROVINCE.--KNYSNA, GEORGE, AND THE CANGO CAVES.