dry and safe as a duck among these stormy waters.  Now that we are close to “fair Natal,” the country opens out and improves in beauty.  There are still the same sloping, rolling downs, but higher downs rise behind them, and again beyond are blue and purpling hills.  Here and there, too, are clusters of fat, dumpy haystacks, which in reality are no haystacks at all, but Kafir kraals.  Just before we pass the cliff and river which marks where No-Man’s Land ends and Natal begins these little locations are more frequently to be observed, though what their inhabitants subsist on is a marvel to me, for we are only a mile or so from shore, and all the seeing power of all the field-glasses on board fails to discern a solitary animal.  We can see lots of babies crawling about the hole which serves as door to a Kafir hut, and they are all as fat as little pigs; but what do they live on?  Buttermilk, I am told—­that is to say, sour milk, for the true Kafir palate does not appreciate fresh, sweet milk—­and a sort of porridge made of mealies.  I used to think “mealies” was a coined word for potatoes, but it really signifies maize or Indian corn, which is rudely crushed and ground, and forms the staple food of man and beast.

In the mean time, we are speeding gayly over the bright waters, never very calm along this shore.  Presently we come to a spot clearly marked by some odd-colored, tumbled-down cliffs and the remains of a great iron butt, where, more than a hundred years ago, the Grosvenor, a splendid clipper ship, was wrecked.  The men nearly all perished or were made away with, but a few women were got on shore and carried off as prizes to the kraals of the Kafir “inkosis” or chieftains.  What sort of husbands these stalwart warriors made to their reluctant brides tradition does not say, but it is a fact that almost all the children were born mad, and their descendants are, many of them, lunatics or idiots up to the present time.  As the afternoon draws on a chill mist creeps over the hills and provokingly blots out the coast, which gets more beautiful every league we go.  I wanted to remain up and see the light on the bluff just outside Port d’Urban, but a heavy shower drove me down to my wee cabin before ten o’clock.  Soon after midnight the rolling of the anchor-chains and the sudden change of motion from pitching and jumping to the old monotonous roll told us that we were once more outside a bar, with a heavy sea on, and that there we must remain until the tug came to fetch us.  But, alas! the tug had to make short work of it next morning, on account of the unaccommodating state of the tide, and all our hopes of breakfasting on shore were dashed by a hasty announcement at 5 A.M. that the tug was alongside, the mails were rapidly being put on board of her, and that she could not wait for passengers or anything else, because ten minutes later there would not be water enough to float her over the bar.

“When shall we be able to get over the bar?” I asked dolefully.