bow.

While living at Sunny Slope I paid my first visit to East London, the
occasion being an agricultural show. I accompanied the Norton family.
We traveled in an ox-wagon through the loveliest imaginable country.
Our course lay mainly down the valley of the Nahoon River, in which the
vegetation was then much richer than it is today. The little town of
East London was confined to the west bank of the Buffalo River mouth.
Where the town now stands, on the east bank, there was not a single
house in 1868. So far as I can recollect, Tapson's Hotel was the only
building between Cambridge and the sea. This building was still in
existence a few years ago. The Buffalo River had to be crossed by means
of a pontoon; the road to this was cut through dense jungle. Judging by
the spoors crossing the road this jungle must have been full of game.

After the show a large picnic was held in the forest at the well-known
Second Creek. The guests were conveyed to the spot by a paddle tug, the
Buffalo. This vessel now lies, a melancholy wreck, half-submerged, at
the mouth of the Kowie River.

At the picnic I sustained a severe moral shock. A certain doctor with
whom I was acquainted an elderly and much respected resident of King
William's Town looked upon the wine when it was red, and became
violently uproarious. My ethical orientation became disturbed; all my
canons got confused. I had seen this man wearing the insignia of
municipal dignity; he had been mayor of his town during the previous
year. Now he was acting the mountebank, to the huge amusement of a lot
of yokels.

I knew that disreputable Europeans and natives occasionally became
intoxicated, but here was my first experience of a respectable person
committing such a lapse. The shock was so painful that my enjoyment was
completely spoilt. I crept to a thicket, from which I could see without
being seen, and observed the old gentleman's antics with amazed horror.
He insisted on making a long speech, interspersed with snatches of
song. This only came to an end when some of his friends seized the
tails of his frock-coat and hauled him down. Then he was carried,
protesting loudly, to the tug.

It soon became abundantly clear that our farming could not prove a
success, so Sunny Slope was given up, and we returned to King William's
Town. Here my father, with the remainder of his capital, purchased a
property in the Alexandra Road, close to the present railway-station.
Sheep had fall