and beginning almost immediately to climb with pain and difficulty the red sandy slopes of the Berea, a beautiful wooded upland dotted with villas.  The road is terrible for man and beast, and we had to stop every few yards to breathe the horses.  At last our destination is reached, through fields of sugar-cane and plantations of coffee, past luxuriant fruit trees, rustling, broad-leafed bananas and encroaching greenery of all sorts, to a clearing where a really handsome house stands, with hospitable, wide-open doors, awaiting us.  Yes, a good big bath first, then a cup of tea, and now we are ready for a saunter in the twilight on the wide level terrace (called by the ugly Dutch name “stoop”) which runs round three sides of the house.  How green and fragrant and still it all is!  Straight-way the glare of the long sunny day, the rattle and jolting of the post-cart, the toil through the sand, all slip away from mind and memory, and the tranquil delicious present, “with its-odors of rest and of love,” slips in to soothe and calm our jaded senses.  Certainly, it is hotter here than in Maritzburg—­that assertion we are prepared to die in defence of—­but we acknowledge that the heat at this hour is not oppressive, and the tropical luxuriance of leaf and flower all around is worth a few extra degrees of temperature.  Of course, our talk is of to-morrow, and we look anxiously at the purpling clouds to the west.

“A fine day,” says our host; and so it ought to be with five thousand people come from far and wide to see the sight.  Why, that is more than a quarter of the entire white population of Natal!  Bed and sleep become very attractive suggestions, though made indecently soon after dinner, and it is somewhere about ten o’clock when they are carried out, and, like Lord Houghton’s famous “fair little girl,” we

  Know nothing more till again it is day.

A fine day, too, is this same New Year’s Day of 1876—­a glorious day—­sunny of course, but with a delicious breeze stealing among the flowers and shrubs in capricious puffs, and snatching a differing scent from each heavy cluster of blossom it visits.  By mid-day F——­ has got himself into his gold-laced coat and has lined the inside of his cocked hat with plaintain-leaves.

He has also groaned much at the idea of substituting this futile head-gear for his hideous but convenient pith helmet.  I too have donned my best gown, and am horrified to find how much a smart bonnet (the first time I have needed to wear one since I left England) sets off and brings out the shades of tan in a sun-browned face; and for a moment I too entertain the idea of retreating once more to the protecting depths of my old shady hat.  But a strong conviction of the duty one owes to a “first sod,” and the consoling reflection that, after all, everybody will be equally brown (a fallacy, by the way:  the D’Urban beauties looked very blanched by this summer weather), supported me, and I followed F——­ and his cocked hat into the waiting carriage.