side. On particularly dark nights a dozen oil-lamps
standing at long intervals apart are lighted, but when it is even
moderately starlight these aids to finding one's way about are
prudently dispensed with. There is not a single handsome and hardly a
decent building in the whole place. The streets, as I saw them after
rain, are veritable sloughs of despond, but they are capable of being
changed by dry weather into deserts of dust. It is true, I have only
been as yet twice down to the town, but on both visits it reminded me
more of the sleepy villages in Washington Irving's stories than of a
smart, modern, go-ahead colonial "city." There are some fairly good
shops, but they make no show outside, and within the prices of most of
the articles sold are nearly double the same things would bring either
at Melbourne or at Christchurch. As D'Urban is barely a month away
from London in point of communication, and New Zealand (when I knew
it) nearly treble the distance and time, this is a great puzzle to me.

A certain air of quaint interest and life is given to the otherwise
desolate streets by the groups of Kafirs and the teams of wagons which
bring fuel and forage into the town every day. Twenty bullocks drag
these ponderous contrivances--bullocks so lean that one wonders how
they have strength to carry their wide-spreading horns aloft; bullocks
of a stupidity and obstinacy unparalleled in the natural history of
horned beasts. At their head walks a Kafir lad called a "forelooper,"
who tugs at a rope fastened to the horns of the leading oxen, and in
moments of general confusion invariably seems to pull the wrong string
and get the whole team into an inextricable tangle of horns and yokes.
Sometimes of a quiet Sunday morning these teams and wagons I see
"out-spanned" on the green slopes around Maritzburg, making a
picturesque addition to the sylvan scenery. Near each wagon a light
wreath of smoke steals up into the summer air, marking where some
preparation of "mealies" is on foot, and the groups of grazing
oxen--"spans," as each team is called--give the animation of animal
life which I miss so sadly at every turn in this part of the world.

In Maritzburg itself I only noticed two buildings which made the least
effect. One is the government house, standing in a nice garden and
boasting of a rather pretty porch, but otherwise reminding one--except
for the sentinel on duty--of a quiet country rectory: the other is a
small block