from one penny to threepence.* Not a single
establishment of the sort for English readers
exists in London.

*In the case of "Galignani's," five-pence. This, however,
is an exclusively English place. The ordinary reading-
rooms are not of course furnished in the style we have
described.

NEWS OF NATAL.

THE subjoined is extracted from the letter
of an emigrated graduate of Oxford to Mr.
Samuel Sidney, the author of the "Emigrant's
Guide." The writer is well acquainted
with English agriculture, and has spent some
time in British North America; and is,
consequently, not an inexperienced traveller in
emigration fields. His opinions, therefore,
deserve attention; but we give them solely
as his; desiring to take no responsibility
upon ourselves. Our readers will judge for
themselves between the glowing accounts
given of Natal by some travellers, and the
depreciation of the correspondent here cited.
At the same time, we think it right, to
those who may be thinking of emigrating
to Natal, to quote the following passage
from the Report of the Poor Law
Commissioners, for the year 1850:—"Early in the
year our sanction was requested for
emigration to Port Natal in South Africa. So
far as our information with regard to the
then state of that colony extended, it appeared
to be unsuitable for the particular class of
persons who usually emigrate under the
direction of Boards of Guardians; and we
found that our apprehensions upon this point
were shared by the Colonial Land and
Emigration Commissioners. We therefore declined
to give our sanction to the proposal."

The writer of the letter dates from Plaatberg
Farm, Vaal River District, Orange River
Sovereignty, South Africa.

"I am now sitting in a tent, in as wild a
spot as any in Africa, surrounded by lions,
hyenas, and all sorts of 'wild ' (as the Dutch
call game), the guest of an enterprising young
farmer, Mr. Moffat, son of the well-known
missionary. I have kept a regular journal,
but will not now enter into any farther account
of my proceedings, farther than that after I
had been about a fortnight at Maritzburgh, I
fell in accidentally with a brother of my old
friend, D——, who had just come in over the
berg (mountains) from Algoa Bay: finding he
was about to proceed, with a companion, to
the Orange River Sovereignty, with the
intention of buying a farm there, I resolved to
join them. We accordingly left Maritzburgh
on the 1st October: ascended the Drakenberg
by the Quagga Pass (close to De Beers)
on the 15th, crossing the Umgeni, Mooi,
Bushman, and Klip rivers; the latter three
times on one route. I slept under the waggon
every night, and found it too trying for my
shattered constitution, weakened by a disease
peculiar to D' Urban, called the Natal sore; a
very painful blind boil, which breaks out on
the legs and arms of new-comers, one
succeeding another, until you are thoroughly
acclimated. On reaching the spot whence
this letter is dated, about twenty-four miles
over the mountain, I could proceed no farther,
and was obliged to accept Moffat's kind
invitation to remain in his hut, until an
opportunity offered of returning to Natal; but I
have been here ill, with little intermission,
ever since the 18th of October.

"I will now give you my impressions and a
few facts that you may depend on, as I have
my information from the very best sources;
while for my impressions, do not rest too
much upon them, being in a state of
uncertainty myself about them.

"It happens that as yet I have seen more
of the Sovereignty than of Natal, although I
have travelled diagonally through the latter;
but there are one or two things about which
there can be no mistake. In the first place,
except upon some spots of which I have heard,
but not seen, unless just under the Drakenberg,
wood is a perfect myth; so much so, as
not only to render the great body of the
country the most bare, monotonous, and
uninteresting I have ever seen, but so as to
make the erection of even an outhouse a work
of great difficulty, and fences, except garden-
hedge of quince and aloe, or sod walls, an
illusion of the imagination. This is enough,
in my opinion, to prevent all comparison
between this part of Africa and other emigration
fields. Of all the rivers I have enumerated,
only one, the Mooi, is a surface stream,
or has the slightest effect on the ground, in its
immediate neighbourhood; the rest run in
deep channels between steep, high banks,
which generally make awful work with a
loaded waggon, even with a span of twelve or
fourteen fresh oxen.

"Sprients, or brooks, are found here and
there, which generally fail in the dry season,
but not always, which may be turned to
irrigating purposes. But if on a farm of six
thousand acres, forty are brought into
cultivation by such means, it is thought first-rate.

"What improvements English energy and
capital may hereafter bring into these matters
it is impossible to say. I speak of things as
they are. Under these circumstances, the
utter absurdity of the twenty-acre scheme
must strike you at once. All the inhabitants
of the Sovereignty say that Natal can neither
raise corn nor sheep, and that the Vaal River
district, which can do both, must supply them.
This, of course, must be taken cum grano;
but about corn I confess I have my fears.
There is no doubt that all grain will grow,
and grow luxuriantly, throughout Natal; but
this is the difficulty. The wheat is sown about
May, grows well, and looks beautiful. If they
can get it ripe, so as to cut it about the end of
September or early in October, the harvest
may be good; but unfortunately with the sun
that ripens, come incessant rains, and with the