As I had asked him to sing, I thought I could
not do less than offer to pay in his stead; but
the melancholy old man, poverty-stricken as he
was in appearance, with a haughty tone,
declined my proposition, and paid the imposition
himself – perhaps with the last coin he
possessed.

This affair created a pause in the proceedings,
which was broken by a couple of
red-haired, long-bodied, short-legged women; who,
without any previous words of strife, so far
as I knew, stood up and began pulling each
other's hair. Some of the bystanders presently
interfered and caught hold of the combatants.
"We'll see fair play," cried the friends of
each vixen, who now tried her utmost to accomplish
what her supporters particularly urged
upon her, namely, to "go in and win." After
"going in" and attempting "to win," during a
disgusting struggle of a quarter of an hour,
the more villanous looking of the two was
declared victor, and the other having fainted, was
allowed to lie on the floor. It would have been
madness in a stranger to have attempted to
restore her to consciousness, after seeing the
brutal kick bestowed upon her by the husband
of her rival – an immensely powerful man – and
the no less brutal indifference with which this
act was viewed by the majority. I nevertheless,
as if by accident, contrived to throw some cold
ale on her face, and stooping down pretended to
wipe it off, whereas I was, in reality, bathing her
forehead. In a few minutes she revived. The
wretches were so hardened that, after calling
upon the waiting woman to fill their quart cups,
they immediately commenced singing, laughing,
and shouting as though nothing had occurred
to interrupt the harmony of the evening.
Carousing, quarrelling, and singing, continued
until twelve o'clock, when the landlord, a
bloated fellow wearing a vast amount of
showy jewellery, intimated that we must all
"bundle out;" and those who, from intoxication
or other cause were unable to move,
were "bundled" out by him and his assistants
in the most unceremonious manner.

So long as there was anything to be seen in
the street, I determined to remain there, and
until past two o'clock I was witness of scenes
of indescribable confusion and disorder. The
end of it was that a gipsy was carried to the
hospital in a dying state from stabs inflicted
by his "butty," who was allowed to escape.
"Where were the police?" A single
constable appeared on tne scene twice, but as no
murder had then been committed, he did not
deem it his duty to disperse the noisy assemblage.
The first time he came, a terrible fight
was going on, and I spoke to him, asking why
he did not interfere, and offering to aid him in
any way I could. His cool reply as he walked
away was, "O let 'em fight it out!" Fighting,
swearing, yelling, blasphemy, are nightly
practices here; murder and manslaughter are not
unknown; and night, peaceful night, especially
on Mondays and Saturdays, is made hideous by
a concourse of vile and awful sounds.

Towards three o'clock the scene changed.
The pure cool morning air of God's heaven swept
through the polluted atmosphere, and swept away
the horrible effluvia and deadly malaria of
bad drains, filthy slaughterhouses, and other
plague-hatching spots. Not a sound was heard,
and so calm and peaceful seemed the surrounding
neighbourhood that I could not believe I
was near the place, where, an hour before,
the Devil seemed to have set up his kingdom,
reigning supreme over all. I saw so much
brute passion, vice, and downright brutal wickedness,
in that one place, on that and several other
occasions, that I am tempted to ask in this wise,
what is to be done? The people are entirely
out of the reach of all existing agencies of
reformation, save the prison. Our teachers,
our clergymen, our city missionaries, like the
priest and the Levite of old, merely contemplate
them or pass by on the other side. Wholesome
literature is unknown to them, and if it
were not, three-fourths of them can barely read
or write. The condition of this wretched scum
is more unsatisfactory than it was a century
ago. The last twenty years have been years
of great progress, but these outcasts from
"society" have made no corresponding
advance in their condition. They have been
neither mentally nor morally improved in the
slightest degree. How much longer shall these
things be?

     THE CAPE OF STORMS.

EIGHT years ago I was at Simons Bay, Cape
of Good Hope, when a friend, who was, like
myself, a civil engineer, received instruction
to visit the lighthouse then newly erected at
Cape Point. His mission was to ascertain,
among other matters, how the lighthouse-keeper
could best be supplied with water. I
was glad of the chance to stand at the tip of
Africa, a spot almost unknown to white men.
Brown told me he had been there once before,
and knew the road. "Oh, dear yes; I was not
to 'flurry' myself about that; he knew the road
perfectly well."

We had a choice, he said, of two routes.
The first was the so-called "hard road" winding
round the mountain which rises abruptly
behind the single street of Simons Town,
confining the town to a space never more than
three hundred feet wide between itself and the
sea. The road over this mountain had been
cut with great labour, often through solid rock;
but once made, it appears to have been left to
make its own way in the world. The other
route is doubtless the original path of the natives
to the strip of land which terminates in Cape
Point. It is apparently a natural ledge, running
for ten miles along a nearly perpendicular
precipice, whose base is in the sea, and whose
summit is often hidden in the clouds. We
agreed to go by this route, as being the shorter
by many miles, and leave the choice of a way
home to the chapter of accidents. The ledge