for, be it recollected, that there are no inns,
or at least the very few there are are
scattered at such great distances apart over the
country that no wagon traveller thinks of
visiting them. The wagon in fact becomes
your home and your store-house as well as
your travelling carriage. A long stretcher
is slung in it, on which is placed your bed,
which serves for a lounging couch by day.
Some people travel with a tent, but this is
unnecessary when the party does not exceed two
or three, besides the Hottentots, who sleep
under the wagon, or under a bush or
anywhere else on the ground, as soundly as their
masters in their beds.

Travellers generally take their guns with
them, as they may chance to get a little sport
on the road. At six in the morning we will
suppose the carriage to start; at about ten
you will "outspan"—that is, take out the
oxen and let them feed, and prepare for breakfast.
Your Hottentots soon collect fuel, the
wagon is drawn up close by a mimosa or some
other bush, a fire is lighted, the kettle set to
boil, the coffee prepared, the steaks cooked in
a frying-pan, and perhaps some hot cakes
made of meal baked for you; and with a
beautiful country round you, and a magnificent
sky above you, if you cannot make a good
breakfast, and feel a light heart, I fear that
you must be terribly "used up."

Then comes a stroll through the bush with
your double-barrel on your shoulder, in search
of a partridge or a Guinea fowl, or a stray
antelope; and back to the wagon, now ready
for another start.

Forward, again, till dinner-time, when the
same process is gone through. After dinner,
perhaps you will go forward another four
or five miles, and then "outspan" for the
night.

The nights of the Cape climate are glorious!
I can scarcely imagine anything more
beautiful. The sky of that deep, dark blue, which
we never see in northern climates; the moon
shining as she only can in such a sky, the
stars so bright and distinct, with the beautiful
southern cross in all its brilliancy, among
them; the perfect stillness of everything
around; the lofty and rugged mountains
where the foot of man has never trodden;
the thick dark bush, penetrable only by
the wild beast or the savage; the broad
plain covered with Aloes, Cape Heaths, Wild
Stocks, and the ten thousand variegated
shrubs which make a carpet beneath your
feet as beautiful as the canopy of heaven
above your head; and that little spot worthy
the pencil of Salvator Rosa—the dark foliage
of the bush lighted up by your fire, and
around it the dusky forms of your Hottentots
stretched at their ease, and enjoying, as none
but a half savage knows how thoroughly to
enjoy, the requisite delight of the "Dolce far
niente."

No doubt railroads are glorious inventions.
All honour, too, to Macadam, and to stage-
coaches and post-chaises; all praise to the
comforts and convenience of a good English
Inn. But if you have a spark of native poetry
in your composition, in spite of bad roads,
slow travelling, rough fare, and a bed "al
fresco," you will enjoy one of these South
African journeys more than any trip you
ever took in Europe. You have no other
travelling companions than the beauties of
Nature's works around you, fresh as from
the hands of their Creator, and the thoughts
and reflections high and holy, as such scenes
and such companionship will not fail to call
forth.

CHEMICAL CONTRADICTIONS.

SCIENCE, whose aim and end is to prove
the harmony and "eternal fitness of things,"
also proves that we live in a world of
paradoxes; and that existence itself, is a whirl of
contradictions. Light and darkness, truth
and falsehood, virtue and vice, the negative
and positive poles of galvanic or magnetic
mysteries, are evidences of all-pervading anti-
theses, which acting like the good and evil
genii of Persian Mythology, neutralise each
other's powers when they come into collision.
It is the office of science to solve these
mysteries. The appropriate symbol of the lecture-
room is a Sphinx; for a scientific lecturer is
but a better sort of unraveller of riddles.

Who would suppose, for instance, that water
—which everybody knows, extinguishes fire—
may, under certain circumstances, add fuel
to flame, so that the "coming man" who is
to "set the Thames on fire," may not be far
off. If we take some mystical grey-looking
globules of potassium (which is the metallic
basis of common pearl-ash) and lay them upon
water, the water will instantly appear to ignite.
The globules will swim about in flames,
reminding us of the "death-fires" described by
the Ancient Mariner, burning "like witches'
oil" on the surface of the stagnant sea.
Sometimes even, without any chemical ingredient
being added, Fire will appear to spring
spontaneously from water; which is not a
simple element, as Thales imagined, when he
speculated upon the origin of the Creation,
but two invisible gases—oxygen and hydrogen,
chemically combined. During the electrical
changes of the atmosphere in a thunder-storm,
these gases frequently combine with explosive
violence, and it is this combination which
takes place when "the big rain comes dancing
to the earth." These fire-and-water
phenomena are thus accounted for; certain
substances have peculiar affinities or attractions
for one another; the potassium has so
inordinate a desire for oxygen, that the moment
it touches, it decomposes the water, abstracts
all the oxygen, and sets free the hydrogen or
inflammable gas. The potassium, when
combined with the oxygen, forms that corrosive
substance known as caustic potash, and the
heat disengaged during this process, ignites