r, everything has been so
comfortable, everybody so kind, that one would indeed be cold-hearted
if, when the last moment of our halcyon voyage arrived, it could bring
with it anything short of a regret.

With the same chivalrous goodness and courtesy which has taken thought
for the comfort of our every movement since we left Dartmouth, our
captain insists on seeing us safely on board the Florence (what a
toy-boat she looks after our stately ship!) and satisfying himself
that we can be comfortably settled once more in our doll's house of a
new cabin. Then there comes a reluctant "Good-bye" to him and all
our kind care-takers of the Edinburgh Castle; and the last glimpse we
catch of her--for the Florence darts out of the bay like a swallow in
a hurry--is her dipping her ensign in courteous farewell to us.

In less than twenty-four hours we had reached another little port,
some hundred and fifty miles or so up the coast, called East London.
Here the harbor is again only an open roadstead, and hardly any vessel
drawing more than three or four feet of water can get in at all near
the shore, for between us and it is a bar of shifting sand, washed
down, day by day, by the strong current of the river Buffalo. All
the cargo has to be transferred to lighters, and a little tug steamer
bustles backward and forward with messages of entreaty to those said
lighters to come out and take away their loads. We had dropped our
anchor by daylight, yet at ten o'clock scarcely a boat had made its
appearance alongside, and every one was fuming and fretting at the
delay and consequent waste of fine weather and daylight. That is to
say, it was a fine bright day overhead, with sunshine and sparkle all
round, but the heavy roll of the sea never ceased for a moment. From
one side to the other, until her ports touched the water, backward and
forward, with slow, monotonous heaving, our little vessel swayed with
the swaying rollers until everybody on board felt sick and sorry.
"This is comparatively a calm day," I was told: "you can't possible
imagine from this what rolling really is." But I _can_ imagine quite
easily, and do not at all desire a closer acquaintance with this
restless Indian Ocean. Breakfast is a moment of penance: little G----
is absolutely fainting from agonies of sea-sickness, though he has
borne all our South-Atlantic tossings with perfect equanimity; and it
is with real joy that I hear the lifeboat is alongside, and that the
kin