SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

TRAVELS,

Journal of a Residence at the Cape of Good Hope ; with Excursions into the Interior, and Notes on the Natural History and the Native Tribes. By Charles J. F. Bun-

bury, F.L.S., Foreign Secretary of the Geological Society. Murray. FICTION,

Now and Then. By Samuel Warren, F.H.B., Author of " Ten Thousand a Tear," and "The Diary of a late Phyatchot." _Blackwood and Sore. MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE, A Jar. of Honey tom Mount Hybia. By Leigh Hunt. Illustrated by Pilchard Doyle.

• Smith and Elder.

Midsummer Eve; a Fairy Tale of Love. By Mrs. 8. C. Hall Longman and Co. Adventures of an Angler in Canada, Nova Scotia, and the United States. By Charles Zranmiuk Bentley.

BANBURY'S RESIDENCE AT THE CAPE OP GOOD HOPE.

REAL books of travels that carry us into unknown regions, where every meeting with our fellow men is an incident and almost every visible thing is fresh, are perhaps not absolutely rarer now than formerly, but they appear so in comparison with the number of tours which are pro- duced by the itch of writing, the facility of locomotion, and the spread of our dominion or the increase of civilization. Time was, and not beyond the memory of man either, when Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, India, and North America, were almost unexplored lands ; a journey there was an under- taking of more or less hardship and danger; and the attempt a proof of a travelling vocation, or of a mind bent upon inquiry after natural science in fresh fields and pastures new. The man who would now really become

a traveller must throw himself into the centre of Asia or Africa, at the risk of liberty or life.

A particular pursuit or special circumstances may, however, give in- terest to a visit which has lost its first freshness ; and such is the case with Mr. Bunbury's Residence at the Cape of Good Hope. Going out in 1838 with the Governor, Sir George Napier, Mr. Bunbury had more facilities for observation than fall to the lot of a common traveller. He did not, indeed, penetrate beyond the confines of the colony, and the tra- velling incidents are few and commonplace,—except the terrible jolting in a South African waggon, which the suite felt more than usual from their Governor's rapid movements. Mr. Millbury, however, is a geologist and a botanist ; and, though he introduces too much of mere nomenclature, hie general descriptions have character and vigour. He has also the ob- serving habit of mind which scientific Andy generally produces; his sketches of places and people are graphic and informing. They are also useful; for, important as the colony is, not merely for itself, but its situa- tion as placed at the extremity of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and commanding the high water-way to India, we have learned little of late about the habits and feelings of the Dutch part of the population, except as shown in the emigration of the Boers. From the period to which It refers, the following passage does not probably apply to so many persons as wen it was first written, but it describes character, and an animus that might be mischievous in case of a war. " The Cape Dutch in general have a strong dislike to the English; yet I found them tolerably civil, even on my journey back from the frontier, when I was not in company with the Governor. They will not, however, put themselves out of their way for anybody; so that a traveller must conform to their habits and hours, and at wIlkever time he arrives at a house he must wait for food till the custom- ary of the family. Coffee, indeed, is always ready, and a cup of it is offered to the stranger on his arrival; but they have no notion of making any other preparation for him; nor, perhaps, would it be reasonable to expect this. They eat two plentiful and substantial meals of animal food in the course of the day; one about noon, the other at seven or eight o'clock in the evening. They offer you coffee or tea again in the morning before you start, but seldom anything else, as they are not in the habit of eating breakfast.

" The national character of the Dutch appears to have been greatly modified in this colony by the abundance of the means of subsistence, the scanty intercourse with strangers, and the system of slavery. The Cape farmers have neither the cleanliness, the industry, nor the love of money, which are said to be characteristic

of the Hollanders in their own country. • * • a As to their physical characteristics, the Boers appeared to me, in those dis- tricts through which we travelled, to be in general a tall and large-limbed race of men; but often with something heavy and ungainly in their movements, as if their joints were not compactly knit. I have heard the same thing remarked of the inhabitants of North Holland. In the district of George, more especially, I was much struck with the almost gigantic stature of many of the young men.

SOUTH AFRICAN VEGETATION.

We travelled from Uitenhage North-eastward to Addo Drift on the Sunday ri- ver, twenty-five miles over a billy country, covered for the most part with low but thick bush "; the soil a hard clay. Though the general appearance of this kind of country is in some degree monotonous, yet its rich and singular ve- getation is very attractive to the eye of a naturalist. The strange, stiff, gaunt forms of the leafless euphorbias, which suggest the idea of some monstrous In- dian idols; the aloes, with their spear-like leaves and tall scarlet spikes; the pale 'green foliage of the spekboom, (portulacariaAfra,) which is said to be the favour- ite food of the elephant; the crassulas, covered with milk-white blossoms; the notyledOn, with its bluish leaves and bright red flowers; the scarlet geraniums peeping from amidst the other shrubs,—altogether form a combination extremely interesting to a botanical eye, and which must strike every traveller of ordinary habits of observation by its dissimilarity to anything that is to be seen in other countries. There cannot, indeed, be a vegetation more peculiar or of a more marked character.

CAPE TOWN.

Cape Town is about equal in population to Yarmouth in Norfolk; but, being less closely built, probably covers more ground. The main streets are broad and re- gular, crossing one another at right angles; but they are unpaved, and conse- quently at this season excessively dusty; many of them are shaded by rows of oak-trees; and a canal, at present nearly dry, runs down the whole length of the principal street, which is called the Heer-gracht. There are no regular foot- pavements; but in front of most of the houses are brick terraces, more or less raised above the level of the street: this terrace is called the Steep, and forms the usual evening lounging-place of the inhabitants. The houses are rather low, always flat-roofed, either white-washed or painted, with glass windows of nume- rous email panes. The mixture of English and foreign in all that meets the eye is one of the strik- ing things in this town: a great proportion of the names over the shop-doors are English; most of the advertisements, names of trades and the like, are in our own language, and one meets English faces at every turn: all this makes an odd contrast with the foreign look of the town, and the motley mixture of various us- tiouS and colours which inhabit it—Dutch, Malays, Negroes, Hotteutots, and in- termediate breeds of every shade of colour.

All heavy goods, such as wine, timber, &c., are conveyed in long low waggons, drawn by as many as twelve, fourteen, or even more oxen, and driven by a Hot- tentot with an immensely long bamboo whip. These waggons are among the most singular objects to the eye of a stranger. Those which carry lighter goods are drawn by horses, and driven often at a smart pace.

Cape Town is defended by a castle of tolerable strength, and some lesser forts. It is exposed to great heat, in consequence of its situation, facing the noon-day sun, and immediately backed by naked mountains. But the greatest inconve- nience at this season is occasioned by the dust, which is always more or less floating in the air, and dining the prevalence of a strong South-east wind is al- most intolerable: it dims the whole air, penetrates everywhere, clogs one's pores, fills one's eyes, disfigures one's clothes, spoils books and furniture: the trunks of the trees in the town look as if they had been painted with red ochre, and the verdure of the leaves is half hidden by the same red incrustation.

A visit of Sir George Napier to the confines of the colony to treat with the Caffree, and the spontaneous emigration of the Boers beyond the do- minions of the Crown, naturally turned Mr. Bunbury's attention to those subjects, and they form the most valuable portions of his book ; not alto- gether for their news, as some of that is old, but for the light they throw upon the manner in which the business of the colony is managed, and the influence at work to govern the Government upon the principles of Laputa, only substituting cant for mathematics. The Caffre border war, which has lasted for so many years, and is not yet settled, originated in this Exeter Hall influence ; which has persisted in treating the savage upon chivalrous principles that he cannot comprehend, and only regards as a sign of weakness or of folly : the same evil influence drove the Boers from the colony. Mr. Bunbury does not appear to regard the Dutch inhabitants favourably, and from the position of his friends was not likely to approve the insolent rejection of allegiance implied in their emi- gration beyond the colonial border ; but he is compelled to admit that the Boers had very heavy grievances. " 1. The inadequate compensation allotted to them on the emancipation of their slaves by the act of 1833. It does not appear that they complained, at least in any great degree, of the emancipation itself, nor that they were very desirous to maintain the system of slavery; but they complained that, whereas the English Government had emancipated their slaves under a promise of full compensation, they had in reality received scarcely a third of their value: and in this complaint there appeared to be a considerable degree of justice. 1 have been assured. that the share of compensation-money allotted to the slaveowners of the Cape was much less in proportion than that received by the other colonies. " The average value of slaves in the Cape colony was nearly double what it was in the West Indies; and the compensation was calculated with reference to these latter colonies. What was worse, the money was to be paid in London; SO that the slaeeowners of the Cape had to pay discount and commission to the amount of 12 per cent and upwards in order to receive their share at Cape Town, and for this many of them had to travel five or six hundred miles. An English speculator, taking advantage of this state of things, went out to the Cape with a large sum of money, to buy up compensation-olanns, which many of the owners, disgusted with the trouble and loss they were exposed to, were willing to sell cheap; and it turned out, I believe. a very profitable speculation. " 2. The went of adequate protection against the inroads of the Caffres, Bush- men, and other aborigines, was always urged as one of the grievances of the colo- nists residing near the frontier. " 3. A real and sore evil was the prevalence of vagrancy. Great numbers of Hottentots, Bastaards, emancipated or runaway slaves, and others, roamed about the colony, without any employment or regular means of subsistence, taking up their temporary residence wherever they thought fit, refusing work when offered to them, and committing numberless depredations on the property of the farmers,- and this without any check, owing partly. to the absence of a regular police, and more to the want of a law for the repression of vagrancy. It certainly did appear to me, and I believe to most strangers at the Cape, that some such law was one of the things most needed for the maintenance of order and for the security of pro- perty. • • • • • " 4. A great number of farmers whose cattle and horses were seized for the use of the army during the Caffre war of 1835 were afterwards unable to obtain any compensation for the losses thus sustained."

Here we have, sometimes in another, sometimes in an identical form the same evil influence that smote the prosperity of the West Indian Co- lonies, and for all practical purposes threatens their existence. The same spirit is at work in New Zealand, instigating the Natives to warfare, and exposing the lives and properties of the colonists. It causes a heavy outlay on the Western coast of Africa, with the annual loss of valuable lives, only to aggravate the miseries of the slave-trade, as the Anti- Slavery people admit. And if the Caffre war be at last ended, it is in consequence of acting in the teeth of their notions.