From this place I and the friend who was travelling with me went on by cart to Ceres. It would have been practicable to go by railway at any rate to the Ceres Road Station, but we were anxious to travel over two of the finest mountain roads in South Africa, Bain’s Kloof, and Mitchell’s Pass, both of which lay on the road from The Paarl to Ceres. To do so we passed through Wellington and Wagon-maker’s valley, which lay immediately under the Hottentot mountains. I have described grapes and oranges as being the great agricultural industries of The Paarl district;--but I must not leave the locality without recording the fact that the making of Cape carts and wagons is a specialty of The Paarl and of the adjacent country. It is no more possible to ignore the fact in passing through its streets than it is to ignore the building of carriages in Long Acre. The country up above The Paarl has been called Wagon-maker’s valley very far back among the Dutch of the Cape, and the trade remains through the whole district. And at Wellington there is I believe the largest orange grove in the country. Time did not allow me to see it, but I could look down upon it from some of the turns in the wonderful road by which Mr. Bain made his way through the mountains. Rising up from Wellington is the Bain’s Kloof road which traverses the first instalment of the barrier mountains. It is the peculiarity of these hills that they seem to lie in three folds,--so that when you make your way over the first you descend into the valley of the Breede River,--and from thence ascend again on high, to come down into the valley of Ceres, with the third and last range of the Hottentots still before you. Bain’s Kloof contains some very grand scenery, especially quite at the top;--but is not equal either to Montague Pass,--or to Mitchell’s Pass which we were just about to visit. Descending from this we crossed at the fords two branches of the Breede River,--at one of which the bridge was impassable, there never having been a bridge at the other,--and immediately ascended Mitchell’s Pass. The whole of the country north and east of Capetown as far as the mountains extend is made remarkable by these passes which have been carried through the hills with great engineering skill and at an enormous cost to the Colony. It has chiefly been done by convict labour,--the labour of its own convicts--for the Colony, as my reader will I hope remember, has never received a convict from the Mother Country. But convict labour is probably dearer than any other. The men certainly are better fed than they would be if they were free. Houses have to be built for them which are afterwards deserted. And when the man has been housed and fed he will not work as a freeman must do if he means to keep his place. But the roads have been made, and Mitchell’s Pass into the valley of Ceres is a triumph of engineering skill.