we had seen all that The Paarl had to shew us in the way of its productions. I should perhaps say that I visited the stores of a great wine company, at which, in spite of the low price of the article in which they deal, good dividends are being paid. At the wine stores I was chiefly interested in learning that a coloured cooper whom I saw at work on a cask,—a black man,—was earning £300 a year. I enquired whether he was putting by a fortune and was told that he and his family lived from hand to mouth and that he frequently overdrew his wages. "But what does he do with the money?" I asked. "Hires a carriage on Sundays or holy days and drives his wife about," was the reply. The statement was made as though it were a sad thing that a coloured man should drive his wife about in a carriage while labour was so scarce and dear, but I was inclined to think that the cooper was doing well with his money. At any rate it pleased me to learn that a black man should like to drive his wife about;—and that he should have the means.
I was very much gratified with The Paarl, thinking it well for a Colony to have a town and a district so pretty and so prosperous. The population of the district is about 16,000, and of the town about 8000. It is, however, much more like a large village than a small town,—the feeling being produced by the fact that the houses all have gardens attached to them and are built each after its own fashion and not in rows.
From this place I and the friend who was travelling with me went on by cart to Ceres. It would have been practicable to go by railway at any rate to the Ceres Road Station,
