From the foot of the hill on the side away from George the road to Oudtshoorn passes for about thirty miles through the Karoo. The Karoo is a great Institution in the Cape Colony and consists of enormous tracts of land which are generally devoted to the pasture of sheep. The karoo properly is a kind of shrub which sheep will eat, such as is the salt bush in Australia. Various diminutive shrubs are called “karoo,” of which most are aromatic with a rich flavour as of some herb, whereas others are salt. But the word has come to signify a vast flowery plain, which in seasons of drought is terribly arid, over which the weary traveller has often to be dragged day after day without seeing a tree, or a green blade of grass; but which in spring becomes covered with wild flowers. A large portion of the Western Province is called Karoo, and is very tedious to all but sheep. That over which I passed now was “Karoo” only in its produce, being closely surrounded by mountains. The sheep, however, had in most places given way to ostriches,--feathers at present ruling higher in the world than wool. I could not but hope as I saw the huge birds stalking about with pompous air,--which as you approached them they would now and again change for a flirting gait, looking back over their shoulders as they skipped along with ruffled tails;--I have seen a woman do very much the same;--that they might soon be made to give place again to the modest sheep. Oudtshoorn,--a place with a most uncomfortably Dutch name,--is an uninteresting village about two miles long; which would, at least, be uninteresting were it not blessed with a superlatively good hotel kept by one Mr. Holloway. Mr. Holloway redeems Oudtshoorn, which would otherwise have little to say for its own peculiar self. But it is the centre of a rich farming district, and the land in the valleys around it is very fertile. It must be remembered that fertility in South Africa does not imply a broad area of cultivated land, or even a capacity for it. Agriculture is everywhere an affair of patches, and frequently depends altogether on irrigation. Near Oudtshoorn I saw very fine crops,--and others which were equally poor,--the difference having been caused altogether by the quantity of water used. The productiveness of South Africa is governed by the amount of skill and capital which is applied to the saving of rain when rain does fall, and to the application of it to the land when no rain is falling. How far the water sent by God may, with the assistance of science, be made sufficient for the cultivation of the broad plains, I, at least, am unable to say. They who can measure the rainfalls, and the nature of the slopes by which the storms and showers may be led to their appointed places, will after a while tell us this. But it is patent to all that extensive cultivation in South Africa must depend on irrigation.