A thorough inspection and frequent bathing were the two best antidotes; the leaf of the Kaffir gooseberry I also found very effective; it should be bruised, laid over the part bitten, and held on by wrappers of linen. Each ride that I took brought more beauties before me; the sterile appearance of the frontier was here exchanged for the most luxuriant and fragrant vegetation. Forests appeared, hung with creepers and scented blossoms; undulating grassy slopes, with detached and park-like clumps of trees. Here and there the calm silvery water of the bay was seen in the distance through openings in the forest, or under the flat horizontal foliage of the umbrella-acacia, whose graceful shape, combined with the palm, the gigantic euphorbias, and the brilliant Kaffir-boom, formed the characteristics of this bush. Let the admirers of architectural art talk of their edifices and public buildings, they are not equal to a single tree. Bricks and mortar, stones, plaster, chimneys, etc., are heaps of rubbish when compared to a natural forest, every leaf and flower of which is a witness and an evidence of that mighty Power who creates with as much ease the endless worlds about us as the minutest details of vegetable and animal life, the perfect working and machinery of which are more than wonderful. The annoyance to which an individual must submit during a voyage over nine thousand miles of ocean is well repaid by a scene of this kind, that scarcely needs its accompaniments of many animated specimens of nature, in the shape of birds, bucks, and monkeys, to enliven it. Still, however, there are some human natures so dead to the purely beautiful, and so entirely fettered to the things less pure, that all the beauty I have so feebly described is passed over unadmired and almost unnoticed; and the same round and routine is carried on in the leisure hours of such men as though they were in Portsmouth, Plymouth, or some other well-peopled town. "How do you pass your time?" I asked of an intellectual looking gentleman with whom I dined soon after landing. "Oh, I backy a good deal, and bathe sometimes, but it is too hot to do much," was his answer. "Do you sketch?" "Well, I'm no hand at that." "Is there no game about? I have heard that bucks were numerous and elephants very near." "Well, if you bother about them, I dare say you may see lots; but it's too much trouble for me, and I am no shot." Poor miserable man! he took no interest in anything; he had no pleasure in viewing the most wonderful and beautiful works of nature, and had no gratification in placing on paper even a poor representation of the scenes before his eyes, for the future amusement of friends less favoured by locality. No! there was trouble or bother in it; there was neither, he thought, in smoking tobacco, and drinking brandy-and-water: the first habit, however, has ruined his health, the latter his prospects and character.