LETTER III.

Graham's Town.-Population.-Situation.-Poortes.-State of Agriculture. Produce-Waggons of the Boors.-Duchany, a Kaffer Chief.-Begging. -Different Animals. - Elephant-hunting. - Singular Adventure.-The Orange River.-The Chief Chaka.-The Kaffers. Depredations committed by the Border-tribes.

How short a time can change our abode, our pursuits, and our companions! Three days and a gale of wind have done it for me, and I am now seven hundred miles from the Cape, at Graham's Town, the capital of Albany, which is the eastern frontier of the colony, bordering on Kafferland.

In this part of the country, the settlers who left England for Africa some years since, were located, that is, had grants of land bestowed upon them, and the population is almost wholly English.

Graham's Town, now a large, ugly, ill-built, straggling place, containing, I should think, nearly three thousand inhabitants and soldiers, was a few years back only a military post, and the mimosa tree stands in the principal street, beneath which, it is said, the first English officer, Colonel Graham, who led a military party there, pitched his tent. Colonel Graham is dead, and the second town in the colony bears his name,-a name that is often mentioned, and always with respect.

Houses have sprung up quickly of every variety of form, and barracks, and a church for the established faith, and chapels for all sects-Dissenters, Wesleyans, Anabaptists, Independents, &c. and last, not least, the handsomest building, and the most necessary, is a gaol.

The population is a strange mixture of lounging officers, idle tradesmen, (merchants, I beg their pardon,) drunken soldiers, and still more drunken settlers.

We have high authority for saying, that

66

your Dane, your German, and your swagbellied Hollander, drink, ho! are nothing to your English," and the English of Southern Africa have not degenerated, if fiery visages, sun-scorched and brandy-scorched, may vouch for them.

We have a circulating-library and a fashionable tailor, whose shopboard announces that he comes from the Quadrant. Piano-forte tuners, a seminary for young ladies, and an artist, who in England was employed to copy Varley's drawings, and who succeeded, by his own account, so well, as to have his copies always mistaken for the originals; but, alas! Africa affords no encouragement to art; he lives in a mud-hovel, hawks about his drawings in vain, and his pencil fails to keep him in Cape brandy.

A book of melancholy amusement might be written, contrasting the romantic expectations of the first settlers with the squalid reality of their present state.

Graham's Town lies in a hollow, surrounded by high green hills, on which are clearly traceable, to a great extent, the roads branching out like radii from a centre, while along them the heavy ox-waggons are seen slowly labouring. These hills possess no beauty of form, and never rise into magnificence, (at least, not for Africa,) but there are many glens of calm pastoral beauty among them, and many abrupt ravines, dark with trees, and rich in every flower that loves the shade; and there are openings, poortes, as they are here called, bounded on either side by high precipices, from which hang the branches of graceful and feathery foliage; while in the hollow flows a stream, now flashing into light over some opposing rock, now lost in the deep shade cast by the magnificent yellow wood trees.

These poortes are favourite haunts of mine; scenes of such calm seclusion and dreamy stillness, that the foot of man seems an intrusion on the mountain hawk and towering eagle

that have chosen them for their homes.

There

is no sound, save the hawk's shrill cry, as it skims along in the shadow of the cliff.

"Meditation here

May think down hours to moments;"

and I have often lingered in these lone solitary dells, till the sun had descended too low to reach their depths, and the dim grey tint was stealing over all, blending the green of the foliage with the varied hues of the overhanging cliffs, that seemed to bound the rider's farther progress. And I have ascended again among the hills, now bright with the effect of an evening sun, throwing a soft yellow tinge upon every object, and casting shadows from the grey weatherstained rocks, that, jutting above the surface, give shelter to the various proteas with their rich blossoms, and to many other mountain plants. In approaching the town, of which between the hills a glimpse is now and then caught, the scene is enlivened by straggling lines of cattle, which the Hottentot herdsmen are driving home,-now winding along the