Dr. Johnson who says that if a child were to note down the common occurrences of the day for a certain period, an interesting volume might be compiled from such a journal. On this principle, then, I ask the indulgence of such as may read the following sketch from Kafirland.

Behold a regiment fairly on the march! It was our good fortune to see the troops pass by at a distance; we heard the merry band winding through the town, the drums beating faint and fainter, while we were safely and comfortably housed under the hospitable roof of friends who knew the miseries of a first day's march: but not in these light pages may we dwell on the regrets of parting with that precious circle which we "left behind us."

It was on the 12th of January, 1848, that after leaving Graham's Town, we looked down from a hill-top upon a little valley watered by a clear but narrow stream: here were encamped the troops with whom we were about to journey. On this hill-top we said "Goodbye" to our friends; but the soldiers below caught sight of one who, although of high command, had shared their dangers and privations throughout the war, and a shout ascended which roused the neighbouring echoes. He whom they so cheered lifted his cap from his brow,sunburnt it was, and the once black hair had now become thin and grey from exposure to climate,—and deprecating so public a farewell, hurried from us, turned the corner of a mountain slope, and we saw him no more. Excited by the shouts, the crowd, and the sight of scattered tents, wagons, Hottentots, and oxen, our horses danced down the hill, pattered through the little stream, and entering the encampment at a smart canter, we were glad to turn our steeds aside to a corner, where our own tents and wagons stood ready to receive us. A sorry contrast was such refuge after the spacious and pleasant mansion we had left; but we were homeward-bound, and that was the watchword of consolation: and now, as a "hint to emigrants," we call attention to some of the arrangements for the journey.

Observe the retiring-place for the night,-a wagon some twelve feet long by four wide. Our servants are not new travellers; they have taken care that the wind shall not enter at the front; the fire is made to leeward, and the tent is pitched close by, with a clean table-cloth spread on a wagon-box, camp-stools, a cask of fresh water, and a dinner hotter than you could have it in a more refined salle-à-manger. The meal is scarcely over, when evening begins to draw her curtain over the scene,-the sun makes a sudden dip behind the mountains,the drums, accompanied by the clear, sweet fifes, beat the retreat, and the tired soldiers lie down to rest.

Night comes, one of those calm nights so lovely in Africa! You retire to your wagon, and all is so still that the very breathing of the oxen tied to the tressel-boom of your wagon (to secure them from thieves and wolves) is distinctly audible. At midnight, perhaps, the air begins to sigh, and before dawn your strange sleeping apartment rocks beneath the force of the blast. A flood of rain beats heavily on the canvass roof-the oxen moan-the horse, fastened to the wheel, shakes you in your bed in his trial to get free, and you might be frightened at the almost incomprehensible sounds which have roused you from your sleep, if a peal of laughter near you did not induce you to ask the cause of the merriment, when you are told a tale

• Treck-journey.

of tent-pegs unloosened, and some one awaking and finding himself enveloped in a shroud of soaking canvass, from which he is at length extricated by his light-hearted comrades. The storm ceases, silence succeeds, and a blessed sleep takes you back to some old-remembered and familiar spot, perhaps among the peaceful "nooks and corners of Old England;" but you are aroused by the blast of a bugle close by, sounding the reveillée, and then r-r-rr-row!-row-dow! row! The drums again and the merry fifes ring out that pretty,— pretty air of

"The sun was up, the morn was gay,

The drums had beat the Reveillée."

The colours, which have been sacredly guarded near the commanding officer's bivouac, are removed with due honours; you peep out of your long and narrow home; the men are mustering on parade; your own tent is struck; the troops march past, the band playing "The girl I left behind me," as if some devoted young lady had been doomed to solitude upon the camp ground; your driver shrieks "Trek!" your foreloupier (ox-leader) screeches and leaps before the cattle like a young imp, and you are fairly under weigh. The sun rises at last, a perfect glory, above the mountains, and by noon the heat is intense at certain seasons.

The weary, foot-worn soldiers linger by the wayside, and in sheer pity you accede to their request to let their arms be put into your wagon; whereupon you admit two or three loaded muskets, not liking to confess that you are half afraid of such implements of mischief, and accepting as graciously as you can the assurance that "there is no fear, as they've got no caps on," you lie down again. Having made a sylvan toilet within the folds of your tent at the first outspan,* and, overpowered by the atmosphere, fall into a deep sleep, from which you wake with an incipient headache, in consequence of the proximity of your temple to something very hard, which proves to be the muzzle of a loaded musket!

The resting-place on the second day's march was on a well-watered plain. Many of these plains are watered by vleys or pools many miles in diameter. While sitting in front of our tent after sunset, a melancholy procession passed by. It was a funeral: there was no coffin, no military pomp, no parade, no muffled drums; the poor victim of drunkenness, that curse of military marches, especially in South Africa, was borne past us in a canvass winding-sheet. The grave was ready, and he was buried in silence. The solitude of such a grave, as we looked back on it the next morning, was as awful as it is indescribable.

The fourth day brought us to that pleasant scene on which I more particularly desire to touch. We had ridden on through a great deal of thick brush, and under a brilliant, blazing sun, when, as we drew near Sunday's river, our attention was attracted by the sight of several white tents, scattered in picturesque order about a charming spot at the edge of the road. Around it were trees of African and European growth; the oak and the euphorbia, the yellow-wood tree (the deal of the country), the mimosa and arbutus shrubs, the Persian lilac, the myrtle, the jessamine, and crowds of other plants, from the stately forest king to the glowing bulbs, the strelitza regina, the aga

*Outspan, where the oxen are unyoked, near grass and water.

panthus, and a host of dazzling flowers variegating the green turf,-a carpet of Nature's own beautiful weaving. Beyond this stretched an amphitheatre of hills, and behind it swept the river, fast rising, as we knew by the roar gradually increasing. It had been quite a relief to exchange the noisy, shaking wagon for a well-paced active horse, and I was thus enabled to ride into the midst of the miniature encamp

ment.

Here there was evidently what is so necessary to the success of all communities, a head of the party; for, from a tent larger than the rest-and all were of a superior description to such military equipments,-waved a flag; and within, on a table covered with a shewy cloth, stood the débris of a dinner, bottles, glasses, &c.

The encampment presented a busy scene, and a very peaceable one, after the sad evidences of war which I had witnessed three months before in the upper districts of the Winterberg Mountains. Each domicile contained its little stretcher, a cottage-table, a camp-stool, and there were even some portable arm-chairs. Screened from the sun by the curtain of one tent, sat a woman at work; looking out from another were merry English children, and some came out of their playground among the mimosa bushes to gaze with shaded eyes upon our cavalcade; implements of husbandry lay in all directions, spades, sickles, a plough, a grindstone, and various others just unpacked; but what was delightful beyond all else was the working party at the drift. Here they were only thirty miles from the spot on which they had landed, actually detained for employment, for which they were well paid by government, while they and their families were supplied with good meat and bread. For want of hands this drift (ford) had long been difficult to pass; and now here were our own countrymen, who had left our crowded streets and noisome manufactories, or the poor hut where, at this very time of year, they might have starved from cold and hunger, absolutely offered work on the threshold of their new home.

They rested from their labours as we passed them by. Verily, it was a goodly sight to see those spades and pickaxes fairly in use. Indeed, but for them her Majesty's regiments might have been detained in crossing the river till it was too swollen to permit a passage; and it was quite refreshing to hear the remarks of the little band of emigrants as wagon after wagon, with their wild drivers and armed escorts rattled down the hill to the river's brink. Women and children came out upon the camp-ground to see us all go by.

I asked one young woman, thoroughly English in her demeanour, if they thought they should like the country they had adopted. She replied cheerfully,-"Oh! yes, she was sure she should." They had plenty of work, did not know how long they should remain in their present station, nor did they seem to care. The few minutes left us gave us only time to wish them prosperity, and to tell them "they had come at the right time."

The river was fast rising when we overtook the troops, and as the first wagon reeled down the little lane cut by the labourers, we were told that the stream could not be safely forded on horseback. The confusion that followed is indescribable. There stood the foremost wagon, while officers, drivers, guards, and servants shouted to its forelouper to advance. Some said we must go up the stream to another drift; others said "no ;" and the ladies were bidden to get

VOL. XXIV.

M M

into their lumbering conveyances at once. There were so many orders that we heard none distinctly, and I have only a vague recollection of the oxen making a sudden plunge into the rapid river. My horse's head was seized, and I was told to dismount with all speed; a bevy of young girls, officers' daughters, had already scrambled into the back of the wagon, and looked picturesque enough, with wreaths of fresh jessamine wound round their bonnets, from beneath which eyes peeped out full of mirth, while their uncontrollable laughter mingled with the Babel of tongues, Scotch, Irish, and Hottentot!

A long habit-skirt was a terrible incumbrance, and I had no way of reaching the sort of coupé in which my young lady friends had ensconced themselves than that of being lifted into it, as if mounting my horse. In this manner I got no farther than a sort of shelf or step hanging below the coupé, for the vehicle inclining downwards, was difficult of access at the back. As it moved on, one or two gentlemen were glad to avail themselves of "a lift ;" and I was no better off when the wagon was fairly on its way than I should have been on horseback, for my habit-skirt was at least three inches deep in the water.

"There, now you are all right,-quite comfortable," said one of the party, in a satisfactory voice, as he seated himself contentedly beside me on the swinging-step.

"Not quite," I replied, laughing, as the wagon reached the bed of the river, and in another minute I was drawn up into the coupé by the girls. I certainly felt safer in this position, for as the wagon ascended the steep hill after crossing the stream, we all stood, as it was, a fair chance of tumbling out. However, we "supported each other" as well as could be expected under such "trying circumstances ;" and while the panting cattle rested, we watched the string of troops and wagons following us, oxen kicking, Hottentots screaming, and soldiers as unmanageable as children, the river coming down rapidly, the baggage-guard in despair, doubtless anticipating a bivouac, and perhaps a week's detention on the wrong side of the river.

At last all had passed; the stream came tumbling on over the stones, the cattle struggled up the sandy acclivity with their heavy burdens, the soldiers toiled slowly after them, and the emigrants resumed their peaceful and useful occupation.

The next day and the next we travelled on our weary way, and on the 19th of January looked down from an eminence on Port Elizabeth, now an important and flourishing town, with its fine bay, full of shipping; and just rounding the point of Cape Receif, where the Thunderbolt steamer was wrecked in 1847, we observed a vessel of war, which was making all speed to its anchorage to receive us on board.

I have elsewhere alluded to the hospitality and attention shewn to the 91st regiment by the officers and crew of H. M. steamer Geyser. We reached the shores of England after a six years' sojourn in a country subject to scenes of strife and violence, in some of which we have borne our part, we rest with confidence in the hope that by a well-arranged system of colonization the noble territory whose resources have been but lately developed will become an honour to England, and a refuge for her poor; while the unhappy savage who has so long been the object of mistaken pity, or the victim of pseudo-philanthropic partyists, may share with the settler the benefits of religious civilization.

* Algoa Bay.

MARIA EDGEWORTH.

WHEN Considering the imaginative literature of England during the past half century, the historian to come,-especially if there be anything of the Salique law-giver in his composition,-will possibly be surprised by the value of the contributions made to it by women. It is pleasant meanwhile for contemporary chroniclers to reflect how many among these have been allowed by "Time and Change" to live to the full enjoyment of their virtuous and bright reputation:-to have seen one fashion pass and another succeed, and the illustrations of truth and beauty which they originated, as clear and as little likely to wane as at the moment of being given forth to the world, amidst all the fevers and tremors of virgin authorship. The authoress of "The Canterbury Tales" has lived to become a classicJane Porter, to read the long list of historical novels of which her own and her sister's were the predecessors; Joanna Baillie, though

"Retired as noontide dew,"

delightful example among those who have been the equal and chosen. friends of men of genius, and yet have kept, not acted the keeping of their womanly simplicity,-has been searched out on her Hampstead Hill, by the voices of the worthiest of the world bringing her their precious and honest tributes. And here, now that we are at the end of a period of novelists,-now that the spasmodic manufacturers of horrors have had their day,- -now that the Silver Fork people have "said their say," and can hardly find a reader in the Porter's black chair, or in the drowsy Abigail, who sits up waiting for the return of Lady Anne from Almack's,-now that the last school, that of "The Wooden Ladle," with its tales of jails and hospital anatomies, and garret graces, and kennel kindlinesses, begins to tire, and its sentimentality to be proved "a hollow thing,"-here do we find ourselves, returning to the Good Fairy who delighted us in the young days when a " book was a book,"-being called to the pleasant duty of pronouncing an éloge (as they say in France) upon the authoress of "Castle Rackrent," and the "Absentee," and "Vivian," and "Basil Lowe," and "Harry and Lucy,"-the excellent and incomparable Maria Edgeworth.

Our éloge, however, shall not be," after the manner of the French," a piece of unmitigated flattery. No one has more closely and systematically addressed herself to the understanding than the delightful novelist whom we shall attempt to characterise; in the case of no one, therefore, is the keenest intellectual appreciation more of a necessity. The Della Cruscans did well to rhapsodize over one another's Della Cruscanisms; the class-novelists must look to be propped by class-panegyric, or assailed by class-prejudice ;—the romantic, to be romantically approached with compliments of the superlative degree. We will try to be "fair and honest" with one, the whole scope and tissue of whose authorship has been to defend fairness and honesty by the inculcation of truth and high principle.

By Miss Edgeworth's own preface to the third edition of the Memoirs of her Father, we are reminded that eighty-two years have elapsed since she was born, being the daughter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, by the first of four wives, born in England, and