PORT ELIZABETH AND WALMER. n 



surface, and numbers of them are for sale in the Cape 

 Town shops, adorned with highly-coloured pictures of 

 Table Mountain, steamers going at full speed, groups of 

 flowers, Christmas good wishes, etc. We preferred, 

 however, when enclosing the leaves in our letters home, 

 to send them in all their native beauty, and with no 

 clumsy human attempts at improvement. 



The beautiful plumbago is one of the most common 

 plants, and many of the hedges about Wynberg con- 

 sist entirely of it ; the masses of its delicate blue-grey 

 flowers forming as graceful a setting for the pretty, 

 neatly-kept gardens as can well be imagined. 



We were quite sorry when the time came for going 

 back to our steamer, Port Elizabeth being our destina- 

 tion. We landed there a few days before Christmas ; 

 and, soon after our arrival, walked out to Walmer to 

 call on friends, whom we found busily engaged in deco- 

 rating the little church. Their materials consisted 

 simply of magnificent blue water-lilies evidently the 

 sacred blue lotus of the ancient Egyptians, with the 

 sculptured representations of which they are identical 

 and large, pure white arums, or, as the colonists 

 unromantically call them, " pig -lilies ; " both being 

 among the commonest of wild flowers about Walmer. 

 These, with a few large fern-fronds, and the arum's 

 own glossy leaves, formed the loveliest Christmas deco- 

 ration I have ever seen. 



There is not much to see in Port Elizabeth ; indeed, 

 it is rather uglier than the generality of colonial towns, 

 built simply for business, and with no thought of the 



