The description given to me as to trade at the Knysna was not altogether encouraging. The people were accustomed to cut wood and send it away to Capetown or Fort Elizabeth, and would do nothing else. And they are a class of Dutch labourers, these hewers of wood, who live a foul unholy life, very little if at all above the Hottentots in civilization. The ravines between the spurs of the mountains which run down to the sea are full of thick timber, and thus has grown up this peculiarity of industry by which the people of the Knysna support themselves. But wood is sometimes a drug,--as I was assured it was at the time of my visit,--and then the people are very badly off indeed. They will do nothing else. The land around will produce anything if some little care be taken as to irrigation. Any amount of vegetables might be grown and sent by boat to Capetown or Algoa Bay. But no! The people have learned to cut wood, and have learned nothing else. And consequently the Knysna is a poor place,--becoming poorer day by day. Such was the description given to us; but to the outward eye everybody seemed to be very happy,--and if the cabbage had been a little more boiled everything would have been perfect. The rough unwashed Dutch woodcutters were no doubt away in their own wretched homes among the spurs of the mountains. We, at any rate, did not see them. Cutting timber is a good wholesome employment; and if the market be bad to-day it will probably be good to-morrow. And even Dutch woodcutters will become civilized when the schoolmaster gradually makes his way among them. But I did express myself as disappointed when I was told that nothing was ever done to restore the forests as the hill-sides are laid bare by the axe. There will be an end to the wood even on the spurs of the Outiniqua range, if no care be taken to assist the reproduction of nature. The Government of the Cape Colony should look to this, as do the Swiss Cantons and the German Duchies. The Knysna is singularly English, being, as it is, a component part of a Dutch community, and supported by Dutch labour. I did not hear a Dutch word spoken while I was there,--though our landlady told us that her children played in Dutch or in English, as the case might be. Our schoolmaster was English, and the parson, and the magistrate, and the innkeeper, and the tradesmen of the place who called in during the evening to see the strangers and to talk with the magistrate from distant parts about Kreli and the Kafirs who were then supposed to be nearly subdued. It is a singularly picturesque place, and I left it on the following morning at 5 A.M. with a regret that I should never see the Knysna again.