My last little subsidiary tours in South Africa were made from Capetown to the country immediately across the Hottentot mountains after my return from Oudtshoorn and the Cango Caves. It had then become nearly midsummer and I made up my mind that it would be very hot. I prepared myself to keep watch and ward against musquitoes and comforted myself by thinking how cool it would be on my return journey, in the Bay of Biscay for instance on the first of January. I had heard, or perhaps had fancied, that the South African musquito would be very venomous and also ubiquitous. I may as well say here as elsewhere that I found him to be but a poor creature as compared with other musquitoes,--the musquito of the United States for instance. The South African December, which had now come, tallies with June on the other side of the line;--and in June the musquito of Washington is as a roaring lion. On this expedition I stopped first at The Paarl, which is not across the Hottentot mountains but in the district south of the mountains to which the Dutch were at first inclined to confine themselves when they regarded the apparently impervious hills at their back as the natural and sufficient barrier of their South African dominions. There is now a railway out of Capetown which winds its way through these mountains, or rather circumvents them by a devious course. It branches from the Wynberg line a mile or two out of Capetown, and then pursues its way towards the interior of Africa with one or two assistant branches on the southern side of the hills. The Wynberg line is altogether suburban and pleasant. The first assistant branch goes to Malmesbury and is agricultural. Malmesbury is a corn producing country in the flats north of Capetown, and will, I hope, before long justify the railway which has been made. At present I am told that the branch hardly pays for the fuel it consumes. It no doubt will justify the railway as wheat can be grown in the district without irrigation, and it will therefore become peopled with prosperous farmers. Then there is a loop line to Stellenbosch, an old and thriving little Dutch town which I did not visit. It is very old, having been founded in 1684. In 1685 the French Refugees came of whom a large proportion were settled at Stellenbosch. The main line which is intended to cross the entire Colony then makes its way on to The Paarl and Wellington,--from whence it takes its passage among the mountains. This is of course in the Western Province,--which I must persist in so designating though I know I shall encounter the wrath of many South African friends of the West. In the Eastern Province there are two lines which have been commenced from the coast with the same mission of making their way up into the whole continent of Africa, one of them starting from Port Elizabeth, intending to go on by Cradock, with a branch already nearly finished to Grahamstown, and the other from East London travelling north by King