he eat, eat fast as I nebber seen him before; den, when all spinach done, ole Bass he pour die wine back in die bottle. He laf, laf, and he say, putting his finger to his nose, "Hi! Hendrick, I fool you dis time, I tink, fool you pretty well."' [Illustration: OAK AVENUE, NEWLANDS] We left the river for a time and got up a side avenue into the big Newlands Avenue, near Montebello and the brewery. All this estate, once called the Palmboom, or Brewery Estate, belonged to old Dirk Van Rheenen, or Van Rhénen, Anne Barnard's friend, the most hospitable man in all the Peninsula. Dirk got the Government beer contract and built a wonderful mansion, designed with all its white stateliness and Doric pillars by a Frenchman who came out to build the Amsterdam Battery--at least, Marinus says so. But I have another story which is as well told. Anne Barnard is my authority, and she says she considers the Van Rheenen house possessed the air of a European mansion, it being erected by his own slaves from an Italian drawing he happened to meet with. There is a quaint description of how the Barnards' party went a-dining with Mynheer Van Rheenen: 'The family received us all with open countenances of gladness and hospitality, but the openest countenance and the most resolute smile, amounting to a grin, was borne by a calf's head, nearly as large as that of an ox, which was boiled entire and served up with the ears whole and a pair of gallant horns. The teeth were more perfect than dentist ever made, and no white satin was so pure as the skin of the countenance. This melancholy merry smiler and a tureen of bird's-nest soup were the most distinguished _plats_ in the entertainment. The soup was a mass of the most aromatic nastiness I ever tasted, somewhat resembling macaroni perfumed with different scents; it is a Chinese dish, and was formerly so highly valued in India that five-and-twenty guineas was the price of a tureenful of it. The "springer"[4] also made its appearance, boiled in large slices--admirable! It is a fish which would make the fortune of anyone who could carry it by spawn to England. The party was good, the game abundant, but ill-cooked, the beef bad, the mutton by no means superior, the poultry remarkably good, and the venison of the highest flavour, but without fat; this, however, was supplied by its being larded very thickly--all sorts of fruits in great perfection, pines excepted, of which there are not many at the Cape. Mynheer carried us off after dinner to see his bloom of tulips and other flowers; the tulips are very fine, and the carnations beautiful; _all were sheltered from the winds by myrtle hedges_. Our gentlemen returned delighted with the day they had spent, and very glad to have the prospect of another such.'