They visited a number of other places, but Barnard's sigh won the day; and a new road was made to 'Paradise' by the slaves—a road we were presently to see, still showing the hard brick foundation, winding and hugging the mountain from the present Groote Schuur Road.

There is a delicious description of a day at 'Paradise' in the wonderful 'Lives of the Lindsays'—the mad, witty Lindsays! and Anne was one of them—and she wrote as amusingly and wittily to her sisters as she wrote to Melville, and she tied up the beautiful Cape wild flowers in gauze bags to send to 'my dearest Margaret.'

I sometimes think that the letters, which are known to be in a famous collection kept from the world, must be less philosophical, less cynical, less amusing, and more in accord with the mood in which Anne wrote 'Old Robin Gray.'

That in 1797.

This in 1909—Marinus and I asking our way of an old black woodcutter, with feathery green 'Newlands Creeper' twisted round his hat—that heirloom of the old slave descendant—a broad, passive grin crinkling over his face: 'Jaa, Missis; Missis want ole slavy-house—want get by ole "Paradise"? Yaa, vat I know ole Paradise; working by dese woods tirty years—fader, grandfader, all working by "Paradise."' So we followed him, our guide, our ponies scrambling up the slippery, moss-covered pathway, the trees growing low and thick, obscuring the sunlight, the dark figure of the woodman always running before us. Deeper and deeper we plunged into the low woods, when turning suddenly to the right and going slightly downhill, quite behind the fir-covered koppie, we came into 'Paradise.' Found! and in ruins! And I picked ferns from the walls of Anne Barnard's dining-room!

Here was the courtyard with the chief buildings facing north; on the right, the long stoep showing remains of the curved, rounded steps. On the left are the walls of lower buildings—probably the kitchens which the Barnards built.

We left our ponies with the black man and pushed our way in silence through the overgrown garden, all the terraces still banked up by small stone walls, now moss-covered, past little garden paths running along the mountain-stream, and fig-trees long since overgrown and forgetful of bearing fruit; and higher up towards the mountain we found two graves and four or five chestnut-trees—'the finest chestnuts I ever saw by many, many degrees,' says Anne.

But wherever we went the thin, twisted, fantastic oaks, like deformed gnomes reared in the dark, barred the way of 'Paradise' to intruders, and with the rustling breeze the frightened squirrels and the ghosts of this Trianon rushed away before us into the gloom.

Once, when sitting alone, only breathing a little Greek poem of praise to Pan, I thought I saw a ghost of this dead 'Paradise,' forming etheresque, vague and elusive, between the green hanging strands of creepers.... It was only the web of a wood-spider caught in a shaft of sunlight which had shot through the heavy roof of leaves. The garden which should have grown the most sensitive plants now grows weeds; only in a deserted corner we found a quaint, aromatic pink flower with a scent which suggested the East.

The light was fading; Anne in her letters remarks upon this: 'The sun sets here in "Paradise" two hours sooner than on the other side of the hill, which I am told marks its height, but with lamps and candles it makes no difference. We have nothing here to annoy us—except mosquitoes and the baboons who come down in packs to pillage our garden of the fruit with which the trees are laden.'