It is distant from Cape Town twenty-three miles.

The neighbourhood is singularly dreary and barren, with comparatively little level ground, and scarcely any susceptible of cultivation.

I have often been struck with the great general similarity between the barren and sandy tracts of this district, and many parts of New South Wales, where sandstone is the prevailing rock.

In both countries there are the same low scrubby bushes, at the Cape consisting of Heaths and Proteae, and in Australia of Epacridae and Banksiae--the last the honeysuckles of the Colonists.

Even the beautiful sunbirds of the Cape, frequenting especially the flowers of the Proteae, are represented by such of the Australian honeysuckers as resort to the Banksiae.
CAFFRE WAR.
We found the Cape Colony suffering from the long continuance of the Caffre war.