There are everywhere hedges of roses, hedges which are all roses,--not wild roses but our roses of the garden though generally less sweet to the smell. And with the roses, there are everywhere weeping willows, mourning gracefully over the hitherto unaccomplished aspirations of the country. This tree, which I believe to have been imported from St. Helena, has become common to the towns and homesteads of the Transvaal. To the eye that is strange to them the roses and weeping willows are very pretty; but, as with everything else in the world, their very profusion and commonness detracts from their value. The people of Pretoria think no more of their roses, than do those of Bermuda of their oleanders. In such towns the smallness of the houses is not the characteristic which chiefly produces the air of meanness which certainly strikes the visitor, nor is it their distance from each other, nor their poverty; but a certain flavour of untidiness which is common to all new towns and which is, I fear, unavoidable. Brandy bottles and sardine boxes meet the eye everywhere. Tins in which pickled good things have been conveyed accumulate themselves at the corners. The straw receptacles in which wine is nowadays conveyed meet the eye constantly, as do paper shirt-collars, rags, old boots, and fragments of wooden cases. There are no dust holes and no scavengers, and all the unseemly relics of a hungry and thirsty race of pioneers are left open to inspection. And yet in spite of the mud, in spite of the brandy bottles, in spite of the ubiquitous rags Pretoria is both picturesque and promising. The efforts are being made in the right direction, and the cottages which look lowly enough from without have an air of comfort within. I was taken by a gentleman to call on his wife,--an officer of our army who is interested in the gold fields of the Transvaal,--and I found that they had managed to gather round them within a very small space all the comforts of civilized life. There was no front door and no hall; but I never entered a room in which I felt myself more inclined to “rest and be thankful.” I made various calls, and always with similar results. I found internal prettinesses, with roses and weeping willows outside which reconciled me to sardine boxes, paper collars, and straw liquor-guards.