ocks and pinafores with a border of color exactly
like the ruddle with which sheep are branded. Especially is
it the terror of sailors, rendering the navigation along the
coast dangerous and difficult; for it blends land and water
into one indistinct whirl of vaporous cloud, confusing and
blurring everything until one cannot distinguish shore from
sea.

The vineyards of Constantia originally took their pretty name
from the fair daughter of one of the early Dutch governors,
but now it has grown into a generic word, and you see
"Cloete's Constantia," "Von Reybeck Constantia," written upon
great stone gateways leading by long avenues into the various
vine-growing plantations. It was to the former of these
constantias, which was also the farthest off, that we were
bound that pleasant summer afternoon, and from the time we got
out of the carriage until the moment we re-entered it--all
too soon, but it is a long drive back in the short cold
twilight--I felt as though I had stepped through a magic
portal into the scene of one of Washington Irving's
stories. It was all so simple and homely, so quaint and so
inexpressibly picturesque. The house had stood there for a
couple of hundred years, and looks as though it might last for
ever, with its air of cool, leisurely repose and comfort and
strength.

In the flagged hall stands a huge stalactite some ten feet
high, brought a hundred years ago from caves far away in the
distant ranges. It is shaped something like a Malay's hat,
only the peak tapers to a point about eight feet high. The
drawing-room--though it seems a profanation to call that
venerable stately room by so flippant and modern a name--is
large, ceiled with great beams of cedar, and lighted by lofty
windows, which must contain many scores of small panes of
glass. There were treasures of rarest old china and delfware,
and curious old carved stands for fragile dishes. A wealth of
swinging-baskets of flowers and ferns and bright girl-faces
lighted up the solemn, shady old room, in which we must not
linger, for there is much to see outside. First to the cellar,
as it is called, though it is far from being under ground,
and is, in fact, a spacious stone building with an
elaborately-carved pediment. Here are rows and rows of giant
casks, stretching on either hand i