"King Slump" still held his sway, and things abroad looked very unsettled; so most of our friends appeared, when we met later, with very long faces.

After breakfast, leaving our luggage to the tender mercies of some officious agent, who professed to see it "through the Customs," we took a hansom and drove to the Grand Hotel, _en route_ to the hotel, in the suburb of Newlands, where we had taken rooms.

My first impressions of Cape Town certainly were not prepossessing, and well I remember them, even after all these years.

The dust was blowing in clouds, stirred up by the "south-easter" one hears so much about--an icy blast which appears to come straight from the South Pole, and which often makes its appearance in the height of summer, which season it then was.

The hansom, of the oldest-fashioned type, shook and jolted beyond belief, and threatened every moment to fall to pieces.