246 An Eight Days' Ramble in Cape Colony. 



AN EIGHT DAYS' EAMBLB IN CAPE COLONY. 



BY GEORGE E. BULGEE, 

 Captain lOtli Regiment. 



" Suppose we ask for a week's leave, and take a trip to tlie 

 Paarl ?" said Hendrick to me one morning at the end of July, 

 as we sat at breakfast together in the mess-room at Cape 

 Town. " There ought to be some fine mountains in that direc- 

 tion, and we might also get some shooting." " By Jove, it is 

 a good idea," I answered ; f * a few days of wandering about 

 would be very pleasant, besides the opportunity of seeing a 

 part of the country new to us." 



The leave of absence was easily obtained, and at eleven 

 o'clock the next morning we were travelling towards our 

 destination by the Cape Town and Wellington Railway. We 

 were the sole occupants of the carriage, and, indeed, almost 

 the only passengers in the train ; for the traffic on this line is 

 very small, and we heard that it does little more than pay 

 expenses. 



For more than four years we had not seen a railway 

 carriage; and the sensation of being once more whirled along 

 by the iron horse was to me quite delightful, after the various 

 uncomfortable modes of travelling with which I had become 

 familiar on the comparatively uncivilized frontier, where it had 

 been our destiny to be quartered since March, 1860. 



The morning was very fine, and although it was rather 

 early in the season for us to see the full beauty of the country, 

 yet even the monotonous-looking Cape Flats, between Cape 

 Town and Stellenbosche, a distance of thirty-one miles, were 

 to a certain extent attractive, from the bright flowers which 

 were everywhere coming into bloom amongst the thin and 

 scattered bushes that studded the wide, arid-looking expanse 

 of glittering white sand. Near Stellenbosche the mountains 

 commence, and thence to the Paarl they form the main 

 features of the scenery. Those close to the former place — the 

 Klapmuts range, I believe — are exceedingly bold and grand ; 

 they are apparently of great height and utterly barren ; indeed, 

 seemingly naked rocks, of imposing form and majesty. * Next 

 them comes a more lengthy tier, which, I understand, are the 

 Drakenstcin or Dragon's Stone Hills. They, too, are treeless 

 masses of solemn-looking rock, trending away to the north- 

 ward, and walling-in the valley of the Great Berg River on the 

 eastern side. 



The Paarl is eighteen miles from Stellenbosche, and wo 

 arrived there shortly after one o'clock. The railway station is 



