must spend their hard-earned money, but that they are so often compelled to throw it away because in their infancy they have not as yet learned how to spend it profitably.

Natal has had many hardships to endure and Durban perhaps more than its share. But there it is now, a prosperous and pleasant seaport town with a beautiful country round it and thriving merchants in its streets. It has a park in the middle of it, not very well kept. I may suggest that it was not improved in general appearance when I saw it by having a couple of old horses tethered on its bare grass. Perhaps the grass is not bare now and perhaps the horses have been taken away. The combination when I was there suggested poverty on the part of the municipality and starvation on the part of the horses. There is also a botanical garden a little way up the hill very rich in plants but not altogether well kept. The wonder is how so much is done in these places, rather than why so little; that efforts so great should be made by young and therefore poor municipalities to do something for the recreation and for the relief of the inhabitants! I think that there is not a town in South Africa,—so to be called,-which has not its hospital and its public garden. The struggles for these institutions have to come from men who are making a dash for fortune, generally under hard circumstances in which every energy is required; and the money has to be collected from pockets which at first are never very full. But a colonial town is ashamed of itself if it has not its garden, its hospital, its public library, and its two or three churches, even in its early days.

I can say nothing of the hotels at Durban because I was allowed to live at the club,-which is so peculiarly a colonial institution. Somebody puts your name down beforehand and then you drive up to the door and ask for your bedroom. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are provided at stated hours. At Durban two lunches were provided in separate rooms, a hot lunch and a cold lunch,-an arrangement which I did not see elsewhere. I imagine that the hot lunch is intended as a dinner to those who like to dine early. But, if I am not mistaken, I have seen the same faces coming out of the hot lunch and going in to the hot dinner. I should imagine that these clubs cannot be regarded with much favour by the Innkeepers as they take away a large proportion of the male travellers.

The population of Durban is a little in excess of that of the capital of the Colony, the one town running the other very close. They each have something above 4,000 white inhabitants, and something above half that number of coloured people. In regard to the latter there must I think be much uncertainty as they fluctuate greatly and live, many of them, nobody quite knows where. They are in fact beyond the power of accurate counting, and can only be computed. In Durban, as in Pieter Maritzburg, every thing is done by the Zulus,-or by other coloured people ;—and when anything has to be done there is always a Zulu boy to do it. Nothing of manual work seems ever to be done by an European. The stranger would thus be led to believe that the coloured population is greater than the white. But Durban is a sea port town requiring

many clerks and having no manufactures. Clerks are generally white, as are also the attendants in the shops. It is not till the traveller gets further up the country that he finds a Hottentot selling him a pockethandkerchief. I am bound to say that on leaving Durban I felt that I had visited a place at which the settlers had done the very utmost for themselves and had fought bravely and successfully with the difficulties which always beset new comers into strange lands. I wish the town and the sugar growers of its neighbourhood every success,-merely suggesting to them that in a few years' time a Zulu may become quite as handy at making sugar as a Coolie.

Pieter Maritzburg is about 55 miles from Durban, and there are two public conveyances running daily. The mail cart starts in the morning, and what is called a Cobb's coach follows at noon. I chose the latter as it travels somewhat faster than the other and reaches its destination in time for dinner. The troubles of the long road before me,—from Durban through Natal and the Transvaal to Pretoria, the Diamond Fields, Bloemfontein-the capital of the Orange Free State, and thence back through the Cape Colony to Capetown were already beginning to lie heavy on my mind. But I had no cause for immediate action at Durban. Whatever I might do, whatever resolution I might finally take, must be done and taken at Pieter Maritzburg. I could therefore make this little journey without doubt, though my mind misgave me as to the other wanderings before me.

I found the Cobb's coach,-which however was not a

Cobb's coach at all,-to be a very well horsed and well arranged Institution. We travelled when we were going at about ten miles an hour and were very well driven indeed by one of those coloured half-bred Cape boys, as they are called, whose parents came into the Cape Colony from St. Helena. Almost all the driving of coaches and mail carts of South Africa has fallen into their hands, and very good coachmen they are. I sometimes flatter myself that I know something about the driving of ill-sorted teams, having had much to do for many years with the transmission of mails at home, and I do not know that I ever saw a more skilful man with awkward horses than was this Cape driver. As well as I could learn he was called Apollo. I hope that if he has a son he will not neglect to instruct him in his father's art as did the other charioteer of that name. At home, in the old coaching days, we entertained a most exaggerated idea of the skill of the red-faced, heavy, old fashioned jarveys who used to succeed in hammering their horses along a road as smooth as a bowling green, and who would generally be altogether at their wits' end if there came any sudden lack of those appurtenances to which they were accustomed. It was not till I had visited the United States, and Australia, and now South Africa that I saw what really might be done in the way of driving four, six, or even eight horses. The animals confided to Apollo's care were generally good; but, as is always the case in such establishments, one or two of them were new to the work,-and one or two were old stagers who had a will of their own. And the road was by

no means a bowling-green all the way. I was much taken with the manner in which Apollo got the better of four jibbing brutes, who, taking the evil fashion one from another, refused for twenty minutes to make any progress with the vehicle to which they had just been harnessed. He suddenly twisted them round and they started full gallop as though they were going back to Durban. The animals knew that they were wanted to go the other way and were willing to do anything in opposition to the supposed will of their master. They were flying to Durban. But when he had got them warm to the harness he succeeded in turning them on the veld, keeping them still at a gallop, till they had passed the stage at which they had been harnessed to the coach.

As much of the driving in such a country has to be done with the brake as with the reins and whip, and this man, while his hands and arms were hard at work, had to manage the brake with his feet. Our old English coachman could not have moved himself quick enough for the making of such exertions. And Apollo sat with a passenger on each side, terribly cramped for room. He was hemmed in with mail bags. My luggage so obliterated the foot-board that he had to sit with one leg cocked up in the air and the other loose upon the brake. Every now and again new indignities were heaped upon him in the shape of parcels and coats which he stuffed under him as best he could. And yet he managed to keep the mastery of his reins and whip. It was very hot and he drank lemonade all the way. What English coachman of the old days could have rivalled him