uncle, asking their consent to my marriage with Nina. These letters
I wrote before I started for Natal, as I hoped the answers would be
awaiting me on my return.

The month passed very rapidly, and I embarked at Table Bay in the little
brigantine which was to convey me to Natal. I have sailed since that
time on many seas, but the roughest I ever experienced is off the Cape.
Well was this Cape termed the Cape of Storms, for there seemed a storm
always on hand, and no sooner had the wind been blowing hard in one
direction and then stopped, than a gale sprung up from the opposite
point of the compass. Many times, as the huge waves came rolling
towards us and seemed to be about to break over us, I thought nothing
could save us from being sent to the bottom, or turned over; but the
little vessel, which drew only eight feet of water, was like a duck on
the ocean, and though she bounded like a thing of life as the monstrous
waves approached and moved under her, she was very dry, scarcely any
seas washing over her. We were, however, thirty days on our voyage from
Table Bay to the Bluff at Natal, and we had to anchor on our first
arrival, as the wind was off shore. I scanned the well-known coast as
we lay at our anchorage, and recalled the strange scenes through which I
had passed. There were the high-wooded bluff on the west entrance to
the harbour, the low sandy hillocks to the east, where I had run the
gauntlet of the Zulus, the dense wood of the Berea bush, and the islands
in the bay where I had outwitted the Zulus, when I was in the boat. Now
that I was again in the vicinity of these scenes of my early days, I
felt in doubt as to whether I was not more a Caffre than an Englishman.
I found myself actually thinking in Caffre, and speaking sentences in
that language to myself.

I noted that there were several houses near the entrance of the harbour
and up the bay which did not exist when I left Natal. These, I
afterwards found, were the houses of some Dutchmen who had settled
there.

The wind having changed the day after our arrival, we entered the bay,
having crossed the bar in safety.

It seemed strange, after my experiences of civilised life, to come to a
place where there was not an hotel, or any house where one could put up.
I had, however, made my plans from my knowledge of the country, and had
provided myself with waterproof sheeting that I could turn into a small
tent, and so was independent of a house. Th