freely with red, muddy water, and the dust had already begun to cake itself into a sticky, pasty red clay.  The wagon was shut in by curtains at the back and sides, and could hold eight passengers easily.  Luckily for the poor mules, however, we were only five grown-up people, including the drivers.  The road was extremely pretty, and the town looked very picturesque as we gradually rose above it and looked down on it and the harbor together.  Of a fine, clear afternoon it would have been still nicer, though I was much congratulated on the falling rain on account of the absence of its alternative—­dust.  Still, it was possible to have too much of a good thing, and by the time we reached Pine Town, only fourteen miles away, the heavy roads were beginning to tell on the poor mules, and the chill damp of the closing evening made us all only too thankful to get under the shelter of a roadside inn (or hotel, as they are called here), which was snug and bright and comfortable enough to be a credit to any colony.  It seemed the most natural thing in the world to be told that this inn was not only a favorite place for people to come out to from D’Urban to spend their holiday time in fine weather (there is a pretty little church in the village hard by), but also that it was quite de rigueur for all honeymoons to be spent amid its pretty scenery.

A steady downpour of rain all through the night made our early start next day an affair of doubt and discouragement and dismal prophecy; but we persevered, and accomplished another long stage through a cold persistent drizzle before reaching an inn, where we enjoyed simply the best breakfast I ever tasted, or at all events the best I have tasted in Natal.  The mules were also unharnessed, and after taking, each, a good roll on the damp grass, turned out in the drizzling rain for a rest and a nibble until their more substantial repast was ready.  The rain cleared up from time to time, but an occasional heavy shower warned us that the weather was still sulky.  It was in much better heart and spirits, however, that we made a second start about eleven o’clock, and struggled on through heavy roads up and down weary hills, slipping here, sliding there, and threatening to stick everywhere.  Our next stage was to a place where the only available shelter was a filthy inn, at which we lingered as short a time as practicable—­only long enough, in fact, to feed the mules—­and then, with every prospect of a finer afternoon, set out once more on the last and longest stage of our journey.  All the way the road has been very beautiful, in spite of the shrouding mist, especially at the Inchanga Pass, where round the shoulder of the hill as fair a prospect of curved green hills, dotted with clusters of timber exactly like an English park, of distant ranges rising in softly-rounded outlines, with deep violet shadows in the clefts and pale green lights on the slopes, stretches before you as the heart of painter could