5€ 
be something disreputable in receiving strangers indiscri- 
minately into their houses; and will conform to the practice 
of those whom they look up to as more enlightened than 
themselves. There is reason, therefore, to apprehend that 
the Colonists are in a fair way of forfeiting their claim to the 
only virtue that has not yet been grudged to them. 
* After beating about the Four-and-twenty Rivers for several 
days to little purpose, we turned our face towards Capetown, _ 
where we arrived by the route of the Green Kloof and | 
Zwartland, after an absence of about a month. With the — 
exceptions already noticed, the weather was always dry and 
oppressively hot. In the room in which we slept at Tulbagh, 
the thermometer stood one day at 109^. A ride of fifty — 
miles, exposed to the direct rays of such a sun, and to their — 
more ardent reflection from a sandy road, without a breeze  . 
to fan us, but what was created by our own motion, such a 
ride we had from the Bavians Kloof to the Branaa Valley; _ 
from De Witts to the Burgher's Drift; and from thence to — 
Capetown. They must indeed be keen sportsmen whoma _ 
month of such weather, and a few rides of such length, would — 
not satiate with the country amusements of the Cape. Our 
party flagged in their activity from day to day ; and it was easy 
to perceive, that, long before our leave of absence had expired, 
a proposal to return home-would have been eagerly embraced, 
if any of them had ventured to be the first to make it: but 
the point of honour kept them dumb. 
* The country over which we travelled is the least interest- 
ing to an admirer of natural scenery that can be imagined: 
a remark which I feel no hesitation in extending to every 
part of the Colony that I have seen. No country in the 
world, perhaps, unites so much boldness of outline with such 
unvaried tameness of detail. This tameness, arising from the 
disposition of the surface, becomes the more fatiguing to the 
eye from the total want of wood. In the whole course of our 
travels, we did not see a single tree of nature's planting, nor 
a shrub much taller than one of ourselves, In the mountain 
ravines, you sometimes meet with stumps which show that trees 
of a considerable size did formerly grow there; but nothing 
