Down many of the streets of the town,--down all of them that are on the slope of the descent,--little rivulets flow, adding much to the fertility of the gardens and to the feeling of salubrity. Nothing seems to add so much to the prettiness and comfort of a town as open running water, though I doubt whether it be in truth the most healthy mode of providing for man the first necessary of life. Let a traveller, however, live for a few days but a quarter of a mile from his water supply and he will learn what is the comfort of a rivulet just at his door-step. Men who have roughed it in the wilderness, as many of our Colonists have had to do before they have settled themselves into townships, have learned this lesson so perfectly that they are inclined, perhaps, to be too fond of a deluge. For purposes of gardening in such a place as Pretoria there can be no doubt about the water. The town gardens are large, fertile, and productive, whereas nothing would grow without irrigation. The streets are broad and well laid out, with a fine square in the centre, and the one fact that they have no houses in them is the only strong argument against them. To those who know the first struggling efforts of a colonial town,--who are familiar with the appearance of a spot on which men have decided to begin a city but have not as yet progressed far, the place with all its attributes and drawbacks will be manifest enough. To those who have never seen a city thus struggling into birth it is difficult to make it intelligible. The old faults of old towns have been well understood and thoroughly avoided. The old town began with a simple cluster of houses in close contiguity, because no more than that was wanted. As the traffic of the day was small, no provision was made for broad spaces. If a man could pass a man, or a horse a horse,--or at most a cart a cart,--no more was needed. Of sanitary laws nothing was known. Air and water were taken for granted. Then as people added themselves to people, as the grocer came to supply the earlier tanner, the butcher the grocer, the merchant tailor his three forerunners, and as a schoolmaster added himself to them to teach their children, house was adjoined to house and lane to lane, till a town built, itself after its own devise, and such a London and such a Paris grew into existence as we who are old have lived to see pulled down within the period of our own lives. There was no foresight and a great lack of economy in this old way of city building.