Here too the house was exceedingly picturesque, being surrounded by oak trees. There was no entrance hall, such as has been common with us for many years; but the rooms were lofty, spacious, and well built, and the neighbouring wilderness of a garden was wonderfully sweet with flowers. The owner was among the vines when we arrived, and as he walked up to us in the broad place in front of his house, he informed us that he was “jolly old ---- ----” This he said in Dutch. His only word of English was spoken as we parted. “Good bye, old gentleman,” he holloaed out to me as I shook hands with him. Here as elsewhere there was no breadth of cultivation. The farm was large, but away from the house, and on it there were only a few cattle. There can be no cultivation without irrigation, and no extended irrigation without much labour. Like other farmers in South Africa jolly old ---- ---- complained that his industry was sadly crippled by want of labour. Nevertheless jolly old ---- ---- seemed to me to be as well off as a man need be in this world. Perhaps it was that I envied him his oaks, and his mountains, and his old wine,--and the remaining oranges. We visited also a wool-washing establishment which had just been set up with new fashioned machinery, and then we had seen all that The Paarl had to shew us in the way of its productions. I should perhaps say that I visited the stores of a great wine company, at which, in spite of the low price of the article in which they deal, good dividends are being paid. At the wine stores I was chiefly interested in learning that a coloured cooper whom I saw at work on a cask,--a black man,--was earning £300 a year. I enquired whether he was putting by a fortune and was told that he and his family lived from hand to mouth and that he frequently overdrew his wages. “But what does he do with the money?” I asked. “Hires a carriage on Sundays or holy days and drives his wife about,” was the reply. The statement was made as though it were a sad thing that a coloured man should drive his wife about in a carriage while labour was so scarce and dear, but I was inclined to think that the cooper was doing well with his money. At any rate it pleased me to learn that a black man should like to drive his wife about;--and that he should have the means. I was very much gratified with The Paarl, thinking it well for a Colony to have a town and a district so pretty and so prosperous. The population of the district is about 16,000, and of the town about 8000. It is, however, much more like a large village than a small town,--the feeling being produced by the fact that the houses all have gardens attached to them and are built each after its own fashion and not in rows.