it, though the effect from a distance is not so
good. It is very odd how unevenly the necessaries of existence are
distributed in this country. Here at D'Urban anything hard in the
way of stone is a treasure: everything is soft and friable: sand and
finest shingle, so fine as to be mere dust, are all the available
material for road-making. I am told that later on I shall find that
a cartload of sand in Maritzburg is indeed a rare and costly thing:
there we are all rock, a sort of flaky, slaty rock underlying every
place. Our last day, or rather half day, in D'Urban was very full of
sightseeing and work. F---- was extremely anxious for me to see the
sun rise from the signal-station on the bluff, and accordingly he,
G---- and I started with the earliest dawn. We drove through the sand
again in a hired and springless Cape cart down to the Point, got into
the port-captain's boat and rowed across a little strip of sand at the
foot of a winding path cut out of the dense vegetation which makes
the bluff such a refreshingly green headland to eyes of wave-worn
voyagers. A stalwart Kafir carried our picnic basket, with tea and
milk, bread and butter and eggs, up the hill, and it was delightful
to follow the windings of the path through beautiful bushes bearing
strange and lovely flowers, and knit together in patches in a green
tangle by the tendrils of a convolvulus or clematis, or sort of wild,
passion-flower, whose blossoms were opening to the fresh morning air.
It was a cool but misty morning, and though we got to our destination
in ample time, there was never any sunrise at all to be seen. In fact,
the sun steadily declined to get up the whole day, so far as I knew,
for the sea looked gray and solemn and sleepy, and the land kept its
drowsy mantle of haze over its flat shore; which haze thickened and
deepened into a Scotch mist as the morning wore on. We returned by
the leisurely railway--a railway so calm and stately in its method
of progression that it is not at all unusual to see a passenger step
calmly out of the train when it is at its fullest speed of crawl,
and wave his hand to his companions as he disappears down the by-path
leading to his little home. The passengers are conveyed at a uniform
rate of sixpence a head, which sixpence is collected promiscuously
by a small boy at odd moments during the journey. There are no nice
distinctions of class, either, for we all travel amicably together in
compartments which are a