The chameleon in the hotel court.  He is fat and indolent and contemplative; but is business-like and capable when a fly comes about —­reaches out a tongue like a teaspoon and takes him in.  He gums his tongue first.  He is always pious, in his looks.  And pious and thankful both, when Providence or one of us sends him a fly.  He has a froggy head, and a back like a new grave—­for shape; and hands like a bird’s toes that have been frostbitten.  But his eyes are his exhibition feature.  A couple of skinny cones project from the sides of his head, with a wee shiny bead of an eye set in the apex of each; and these cones turn bodily like pivot-guns and point every-which-way, and they are independent of each other; each has its own exclusive machinery.  When I am behind him and C. in front of him, he whirls one eye rearwards and the other forwards—­which gives him a most Congressional expression (one eye on the constituency and one on the swag); and then if something happens above and below him he shoots out one eye upward like a telescope and the other downward—­and this changes his expression, but does not improve it.

Natives must not be out after the curfew bell without a pass.  In Natal there are ten blacks to one white.

Sturdy plump creatures are the women.  They comb their wool up to a peak and keep it in position by stiffening it with brown-red clay—­half of this tower colored, denotes engagement; the whole of it colored denotes marriage.

None but heathen Zulus on the police; Christian ones not allowed.

May 9.  A drive yesterday with friends over the Berea.  Very fine roads and lofty, overlooking the whole town, the harbor, and the sea-beautiful views.  Residences all along, set in the midst of green lawns with shrubs and generally one or two intensely red outbursts of poinsettia—­the flaming splotch of blinding red a stunning contrast with the world of surrounding green.  The cactus tree—­candelabrum-like; and one twisted like gray writhing serpents.  The “flat-crown” (should be flat-roof) —­half a dozen naked branches full of elbows, slant upward like artificial supports, and fling a roof of delicate foliage out in a horizontal platform as flat as a floor; and you look up through this thin floor as through a green cobweb or veil.  The branches are japanesich.  All about you is a bewildering variety of unfamiliar and beautiful trees; one sort wonderfully dense foliage and very dark green—­so dark that you notice it at once, notwithstanding there are so many orange trees.  The “flamboyant”—­not in flower, now, but when in flower lives up to its name, we are told.  Another tree with a lovely upright tassel scattered among its rich greenery, red and glowing as a firecoal.  Here and there a gum-tree; half a dozen lofty Norfolk Island pines lifting their fronded arms skyward.  Groups of tall bamboo.

Saw one bird.  Not many birds here, and they have no music—­and the flowers not much smell, they grow so fast.