- diture of a Dutch farmer's house. Of course there was no
rent to be paid as the whole place belonged to him,—and had probably belonged to his ancestors for many generations. He was lord also of a large vineyard which he told me had cost a great deal of labour to bring to its present perfection of cleanliness and fertility.
Here too we were taken into the house and had wine given to us,—wine that was some years old. It certainly was very good, resembling a fine port that was just beginning to feel its age in the diminution of its body. We enquired whether wine such as that was for sale, but were told that no such wine was to be bought from any grower of grapes. The farmers would keep a little for their own use, and that they would never sell. Neither do the merchants keep it,—not finding it worth their while to be long out of their money,—nor the consumers, there being no commodity of cellarage in the usual houses of the Colony. It has not been the practice to keep wine,—and consequently the drinker seldom has given to him the power of judging whether the Cape wines may or may not become good. At dinner tables at the Cape hosts will apologise for putting on their tables the wines of the Colony, telling their guests that that other bottle contains real sherry or the like. I am inclined to think that the Cape wines have hardly yet had a fair chance, and have been partly led to this opinion by the excellence of that which I drank at Great Draghenstern,—which was the name either of the farm or of the district in question.
As we had wandered through the grove we saw oranges still hanging on the trees, high up out of reach. The
