From Worcester we went on to a little town called Robertson, which is also the capital of an electoral division. The country here is altogether a country of mountains, varying from three to seven thousand feet high. The valleys between them are broad, so as to give ample space for agriculture,--if only agriculture can be made to pay. Having heard much of the continual plains of South Africa I had imagined that every thing beyond the hills immediately surrounding Capetown would be flat; but in lieu of that I found myself travelling through a country in which one series of mountains succeeds another for hundreds of miles. The Cape Colony is very large,--especially the Western Province, which extends almost from the 28th to much below the 34th degree of latitude S., and from the 17th to the 23rd of longitude E. Of this immense area I was able to see comparatively only a small part;--but in what I did see I was never out of the neighbourhood of mountains. The highest mountain in South Africa is Cathkin Peak, in Natal, and that is over 10,000 feet. In the districts belonging to the Cape Colony the highest is in Basuto, and is the Mont aux Sources. The highest in the Western Province is called The Seven Weeks Poort, which is in the neighbourhood of Swellendam and belongs to the district of which I am now speaking. It is 7,600 feet high. As the first and most important consequence of this the making of roads within a couple of hundred miles of Capetown has been a matter of great difficulty. In every direction passes through the mountains have had to be found, which when found have required great skill and a very heavy expenditure before they could be used for roads. But a second consequence has been that a large extent of magnificent scenery has been thrown open, which, as the different parts of the world are made nearer to each other by new discoveries and advancing science, will become a delight and a playground to travellers,--as are the Alps and the Pyrenees and the Apennines in Europe. At present I think that but few people in England are aware that among the mountains of the Cape Colony there is scenery as grand as in Switzerland or the south-west of France. And the fact that such scenery is close to them attracts the notice of but a small portion of the inhabitants of the Colony itself. The Dutch I fancy regarded the mountains simply as barriers or disagreeable obstacles, and the English community which has come since has hardly as yet achieved idleness sufficient for the true enjoyment of tourist travelling.