chap. viir. GRATIFYING VISIT TO GLEN AVON. 
225 
dreary scene of her recent bereavement to a place of shelter 
and comfort. The other valued friend, who had subsequently 
experienced the kindness of Mr. Hart, was Thomas Pringle, 
one of the gentlest and kindest of men, to whose pure bene¬ 
volence and high and noble Christian principle South Africa 
is greatly indebted for some of her present dearest privileges; 
to whose memory is due a tribute which has yet to he paid, 
but which, I feel assured, the growing love of liberty and right 
in that rapidly rising community will not allow to he either 
overlooked or forgotten. 
Grlen Avon is distinguished by fine specimens of European 
trees and magnificent orchards. I never saw such a collec¬ 
tion of noble orange trees, literally loaded with fruit, some of 
which was just beginning to turn yellow. Mr. Hart told 
me his son had sold last year 200,000 oranges, which were 
carried away by waggons-full, and sometimes several waggons- 
full at a time, to different parts of the colony; and he added 
that during the coming season he expected to have a still 
larger crop. 
In our walks, we came upon a retired dell in a sort of rocky 
recess, high above a rippling stream that wound its almost 
noiseless way amongst the stones of the wood-covered valley 
below; and while I was looking at the fruit-bearing olive, the 
only one I had seen growing by the side of the wild olive of 
the African wood, I noticed a neat stone-facing of rock-work 
round a massive door. This, I learned, was the last resting- 
place of the owner’s family—a tomb within whose precincts 
the remains of his wife were already laid. An unusually 
solemn feeling came over me while standing talking with one 
who, in the course of nature, would so soon be resting in 
peaceful silence there. It was a spot apparently formed by 
nature for such a purpose,—a quiet sheltered nook, such as 
one would choose for the last long resting-place in death. I 
more than once had occasion to notice this novel feature of a 
Q 
