Hilda's diary of a Cape housekeeper

so prettily arranged. The picture of that bright room, with its long, old-fashioned mirrors reflecting trees and sunshine and blue skies ; the dear old grand-uncle and aunt, with noble faces full of kindness and hospitality, such innate goodness depicted in every expression, how well I remember it all ! What a hospitable home it was ! how strangers were welcomed and entertained ! How kind they were to the widow and orphan many can bear their testimony to. They were a large family ; some had married, but the home party were the brightest and most charming people you could meet, and everything bore evidence of artistic taste in that delightfully arranged home. The dining-hall extended about one hundred feet, the whole length of the building, but for the sake of comfort a partition was put up of folding doors, making the diningroom about fifty feet long. There were cellars running under the house. Some of the dark ones were used for storing choice bottled wines, potatoes, etc., and the front ones, which had nice windows, were used by the servants of the family — emancipated slaves and their descendants. One charming Malay woman had been the nurse, and was devoted to the family. The butler, “ Old Charles,” was a negro from the East Coast. How exquisitely he kept the silver and polished the cut-glass dishes and goblets on the sideboard, and all the small panes of glass in the large bright windows. The beautifully proportioned building called the Cellar was some little distance off, divided from the dwellinghouse by a moat, which was always filled with water, for use in the Cellar and in case of fire, as the house was entirely thatched with brown reeds between its ornamented gables. The Cellar was double-storied, under a flat roof. The front has some well-preserved stucco-work, which is still much admired by visitors. The wine-making in my young days was done in the old classic way of “ treading out the grape ” (of late years the best of machinery is used), and the world-famed Sweet Constantia took the. first prize at many a French and English exhibition. Mr. Cloete imported the choicest varieties of grapes, and it is to them the Colony owes the delicious" Saschelas, a delicate pale-pink grape for eating; the “ Hermitage,” a beautiful bluish-red grape, which makes a sort of claret, and other endless varieties. The enormous vats, filled with the wines of different vintages, were made of teak-wood, beautifully kept and almost polished ; they always impressed me with a sense of the neatness and order which pervaded the whole place. From the long cellar a door opened into a bright room, hung with most interesting old maps — since then bought by the Royal Geographical Society, and now in London old weapons and other relics, some quaint old-fashioned chairs and escritoires ; this was Mr. Cloete’s own sanctuary. From this room the door opened on to a most exquisite view. First there was a flight of one hundred steps leading down to the valley, where was the peach orchard, vegetablegarden, and endless pear trees and bananas, also some coffee bushes brought from Mecca, or raised from seeds of the Mocha coffee, I am not quite sure which. The view from that door looking east up to the mountain, with its dark wooded ravines and its lower slopes clothed in bright pink heather and gladiolus, according to the season of the year, is one never to be forgotten.