"But this most paintable and decorative vegetation is not friendly to the intruder. These exquisitely toned shrubs with wild strong forms are full of repellent spikes which, like bayonets, they seem to level at you if, lured by the gentle perfume of their blossoms, you approach eye and nose too near. Depend upon it, this country was intended for thick-skinned blacks.
"As you get farther from town influences there appear much better human forms in the landscape, and to-day I was greatly struck with the appearance of an ox-waggon drawn by twelve big-horned beasts, and upon its piled-up load stood picturesque male and female Malays in white and gay colours--quite a triumphal car. A negro with immense whip walked by the side, and behind rose a long avenue of old stone-pines, and at the end of the vista the blue sky. These stone-pine avenues that border the red-earthed highways are among the most delightful of the many local beauties of the Cape, and such stone-pines! Old giants bigger than any I have seen on the Riviera. There are dense forests of them here, lovely things to look down on, with their soft, velvety masses of round tops of a rich dark green, looking like one solid mass. The wise Dutch who planted them had a law whereby any one felling one of these pines was bound to plant two saplings in its stead. We are doing a great deal of the felling without the planting.
"At Stellenbosch we got out, and, to my pleasure, I saw a long sort of char-à-banc driven at a hand gallop into the station yard, drawn by three mules and three horses--the vehicle ordered by W. to convey us to the 'Paarl.' And why 'Paarl'? Deep among the mountains rises a double peak, bearing imbedded in each summit an immense smooth rock rounded like a black titanic 'Pearl' that glistens in the sun as it beats on its polished surface. Thither we blithely sped, one driver holding the multitudinous reins of our mixed team, the other manoeuvering with both hands his immensely long whip, the gyrations of the thong being an interesting thing to watch as he touched up now this beast and now that. They have a way in this country of keeping up a uniform trot uphill, downhill, and on the level, but stopping frequently to breathe the team." (Ah! give me road travel with horses--it is more _human_ than the motor!) "After an enchanting stage through wild mountain gorges we came to an oak fixed upon by W. beforehand as marking our halting place, and there the six beasts were 'out-spanned.' The simple harness was just slipped off and laid along on the road where the animals stood, and then they were allowed to stray into the wild, tumbling bush as they liked and have a roll, if so minded. Then we lit a fire and spread our repast under the shade of the oak at the edge of a wood that sloped down to a mountain stream. All round the solemn mountains, all about us fragrant aromatic flowers and the call of wild African birds! I can well understand the passionate love an Africander-born must feel for his country. I know none that has such strong, saturating local sentiment. The horses and mules, whose feet I had espied several times waving in spurts of rolling above the undergrowth, being collected and 'in-spanned,' we set off for the Paarl Station and descended back into the Plain by rail at sunset; and as we left the mountains behind us they were flushing in the glory from the West, their shadows remaining of the same astonishing ultramarine they had kept all day. In any other country the blue would have changed somewhat, but here I don't expect anything to follow any known rules--I accept the phenomena of things around me as time goes on, and have ceased to wonder. Oh! vision of loveliness, strange and unique, which this day has given me, never to be forgotten."