ith its
vast hospital, already become a household word in English homes. The
dreary flats of Simon's Bay, where British war-ships lay at anchor, shut
in the view.

Pleasing as the picture is when seen from the deck of a Castle Liner,
disappointment generally overtakes the voyager who has landed. Capetown
itself has little to boast of in the way of architecture. Except
Adderley Street, which is adorned by the massive buildings of the Post
Office and Standard Bank, the thoroughfares of the town offer scarcely
any attractions. The Dutch are not an artistic race, and the fact that
natives here live not in "locations" but anywhere they choose has
covered some portions of the town's area with ugly and squalid houses.
Nor, as a matter of fact, does the general tone of thought and feeling
in Cape Colony naturally lend itself to aesthetic considerations. Even
the churches fail to escape the influence of a spirit which subordinates
everything else to practical and utilitarian considerations. Can two
uglier buildings of their kind be found in the civilised world than the
English and Dutch cathedrals at Capetown?

Another unpleasant feature of life in Capetown is the misfortune, not
the fault, of the inhabitants in being frequently exposed to the full
fury of the south-east wind. Sometimes for whole days together the Cape
is swept by tremendous blasts, which tear up the sea into white foam and
raise clouds of blinding dust along the streets of the town.

Nevertheless the kindness and generosity of the people are not in any
way lessened by these unpleasant features in their surroundings. The
warmth of colonial hospitality is acknowledged by all travellers, and
may be partly due to that love of the mother country which survives in
the hearts of Englishmen who have never left South Africa, and yet
recognise in the visitor a kind of tie, as it were, between themselves
and old England. Such hospitality blesses him that gives as well as him
that takes, and the host listens with deepest interest to his guest's
chatter about London, or perhaps the country town or village where he or
his forefathers lived in days gone by. Any one who is accustomed in
England to the conventional "Saturday to Monday" or the "shooting week"
in a country house opens his eyes with wonder when he receives a warm
invitation from a colonial to spend a month with him at his house on the
Karroo. And such invitations, unlike those which the Oriental traveller
recei