desire.  Nestling out of sight amid this rich pasture-land are the kraals of a large Kafir location, and no one can say that these, the children of the soil, have not secured one of the most favored spots.  To me it all looked like a fair mirage.  I am already sick of beholding all this lovely country lying around, and yet of being told that food and fuel are almost at famine-prices.  People say, “Oh, but you should see it in winter. Now it is green, and there is plenty of feed on it, but three months ago no grass-eating creature could have picked up a living on all the country-side.  It is all as brown and bare as parchment for half the year. This is the spring.”  Can you not imagine how provoking it is to hear such statements made by old settlers, who know the place only too well, and to find out that all the radiant beauty which greets the traveler’s eye is illusive, for in many places there are miles and miles without a drop of water for the flock and herds; consequently, there are no means of transport for all this fuel until the days of railways?  Besides which, through Natal lies the great highway to the Diamond Fields, the Transvaal and the Free States, and all the opening-up country beyond; so it is more profitable to drive a wagon than to till a farm.  Every beast with four legs is wanted to drag building materials or provisions.  The supply of beef becomes daily more precarious and costly, for the oxen are all “treking,” and one hears of nothing but diseases among animals—­“horse sickness,” pleuro-pneumonia, fowl sickness (I feel it an impertinence for the poultry to presume to be ill), and even dogs set up a peculiar and fatal sort of distemper among themselves.

But to return to the last hours of our journey.  The mules struggle bravely along, though their ears are beginning to flap about any way, instead of being held straight and sharply pricked forward, and the encouraging cries of “Pull up, Capting! now then, Blue-bok, hi!” become more and more frequent:  the driver in charge of the whips is less nice in his choice of a scourge with which to urge on the patient animals, and whacks them soundly with whichever comes first.  The children have long ago wearied of the confinement and darkness of the back seats of the hooded vehicle; we are all black and blue from jolting in and out of deep holes hidden by mud which occur at every yard; but still our flagging spirits keep pretty good, for our little Table Mountain has been left behind, whilst before us, leaning up in one corner of an amphitheatre of hills, are the trees which mark where Maritzburg nestles.  The mules see it too, and, sniffing their stables afar off, jog along faster.  Only one more rise to pull up:  we turn a little off the high-road, and there, amid a young plantation of trees, with roses, honeysuckle and passion-flowers climbing up the posts of the wide verandah, a fair and enchanting prospect lying at our feet, stands our new home, with its broad red tiled roof stretching out a friendly welcome to the tired, belated travelers.