streams gush down, and there are several brooks, proudly termed
"rivers" locally, quite visible to the naked eye. Everything in this
world is relative. I remember at Alkmaar in North Holland ascending an
artificial mound perhaps seventy feet high, planted with trees. In the
dead-flat expanse of the Low Countries, this hillock is looked on by
the natives of Alkmaar much as Mont Blanc is regarded by the
inhabitants of Geneva, with feelings of profound veneration; so in
South Africa the tiniest brooklet is the source of immense pride to
the dwellers on its banks, and rightly so, for it is the very
life-blood of the district, and literally Isaiah's "rivers of water in
a dry place." I always carefully avoided any allusion to the sixteen
different burns running through the park at Baron's Court, for it
might have looked like arrogance to boast of this super-abundance of
water in my old home, where, between ourselves, a wholly dry day was
rather a notable rarity. Where the aridity is most noticeable is in
the great oak and fir woods at Groote Schuur, the lordly
pleasure-house which Cecil Rhodes built for himself at Rondebosch,
under the slopes of the Devil's Peak. Here, under the trees, the
ground is absolutely bare; not even the faintest sign of grass, not
the smallest scrap of vegetation. Rondebosch Parish Church might have
been lifted bodily from England; it is an exceedingly handsome
building of a very familiar type, yet in the churchyard there was not
one blade of green; nothing but naked earth between the graves.
Fortunately the Australian myrtle has been introduced, a shrub that
can apparently dispense with moisture, so thanks to it every garden in
the Capetown suburbs is surrounded by a hedge of vivid perennial
green. These suburbs have a wonderfully home-like look, embowered as
they are in oak trees, and the buildings are all of the solid familiar
type; even the very railway stations, except for their nameboards,
might be at Wandsworth Common, Balham, or Barnes, instead of at