m on horseback, he kept
dodging about actively with many flourishes of heels and tail during the
whole afternoon.

When one is in no hurry, and the weather is fine, a delay of this kind
is rather pleasant than otherwise. While men and boys were engaged in
the fruitless chase, I wandered off into the bush in the hope of
stumbling on a tortoise or a snake, or some other creature that I had
previously been accustomed to see in zoological collections, but the
reptiles kept close, and refused to show themselves. I came, however,
on a gigantic beehive; at least it resembled one in appearance, though
the smoke that issued from a hole in its top suggested humanity. There
was also a hole in one side partially covered by a rickety door. Close
beside it stood a little black creature which resembled a fat and
hairless monkey. It might have been a baboon. The astonished gaze and
grin with which it greeted me warranted such an assumption, but when it
suddenly turned and bolted through the hole into the beehive, I observed
that it had no tail--not even a vestige of such a creation,--and thus
discovered that it was a "Tottie," or Hottentot boy. The sublime, the
quaint, the miserable, the ridiculous, and the beautiful, were before me
in that scene. Let me expound these five "heads" in order.

On my left rose the woody slopes and crags of the Zuurberg, above whose
summits the white hills and towers and gorgeous battlements of
cloud-land rose into the bright blue sky. Around me were groups of
flowering mimosa bushes, with thorns from three to six inches long,
interspersed with which were curious aloes, whose weird leafy tops gave
them the aspect of shrubs growing upside down with their roots
scrambling aimlessly in the air. In front stood the native hut, the
wretchedness of whose outside was only equalled by the filth and
poverty-stricken aspect within. Near to this were several native
children, as black as coal, as impudent-looking as tom-tits, and as
lively as crickets. Beyond all lay the undulating plains studded with
flowering shrubs of varied form and hue, and bathed in golden sunshine.

There is something sad, ay, and something mysterious, to me in the
thought that such a lovely land had been, until so recently, the home of
the savage and the scene of his wicked and ruthless deeds.

On New Year's day I dined in a public restaurant in Somerset,--in a
strange land with strangers. But the strangers were not shy. Neithe