Our ponies crackled their way over the dead silver leaves as we climbed over this old outpost hill, from whose summit the agitated freemen or soldiers would see the 'Caapmen' dancing round their fires below. The hill has a fighting reputation; terrible murders of slaves and burghers and cattle-thieving were daily recorded from the vicinity of the Bosheuvel in the first Commander's journal. Van Riebeek, walking up from his farm below, saw 'Kyekuyt,' his second outpost, burning away to the tune of this Hottentot singing; saw the Saldanhas pressing close to its base, forming one long ominous barrier along the blue shadow. His mind was full of tricks for peace. By a clever ruse he turned these savages with their herds through the Kloof Nek, hoping they might wander away to Cape Point. But they hurried back over the Constantia or Wynberg Pass, and their cattle fed with the Company's cattle, and they danced once again on the 'Hen and Chickens,' whose grey granite boulders, several small rocks clustering round a big one, would form fit temples for these worshippers of the moon. When we reached the famous 'Grey Hen' overlooking the Wynberg Park, Marinus produced a small piece of paper, and read from it this scheme of peace, signed in full by the Council and the Commander, recommending their decision to the grace of God and the approval of Amsterdam: 'That not only should the Colony be protected from the ravages of the Hottentots by the redoubts placed at intervals along the river, with the last and farthest on the Bosheuvel, called "Hout den Bul" (Hold the Bull), but a fence of bitter almonds should be planted across the Bosheuvel, stretching to the bottom and then going off at a direct angle along the river lands to the seashore.' On our way along the river we have behaved with more inquisitiveness than respect; most unsuspecting people have had their gardens and fields incautiously explored by Marinus and me. Here and there we have found in the overgrown garden of a thatched house, in a tangle of oleanders (or Chinese roses, as the Dutch call them)--and goodness knows they are the only flowers that can possibly account for the floral decorations on old China--myrtle hedges, Cape jasmine, and magnolias (can't you smell the garden?), a few little clumps of the shining, green bitter almond, the last of the old fence.