Everything neat and trim and clean like the town.  The loveliest trees and the greatest variety I have ever seen anywhere, except approaching Darjeeling.  Have not heard anyone call Natal the garden of South Africa, but that is what it probably is.

It was when Bishop of Natal that Colenso raised such a storm in the religious world.  The concerns of religion are a vital matter here yet.  A vigilant eye is kept upon Sunday.  Museums and other dangerous resorts are not allowed to be open.  You may sail on the Bay, but it is wicked to play cricket.  For a while a Sunday concert was tolerated, upon condition that it must be admission free and the money taken by collection.  But the collection was alarmingly large and that stopped the matter.  They are particular about babies.  A clergyman would not bury a child according to the sacred rites because it had not been baptized.  The Hindoo is more liberal.  He burns no child under three, holding that it does not need purifying.

The King of the Zulus, a fine fellow of 30, was banished six years ago for a term of seven years.  He is occupying Napoleon’s old stand—­St. Helena.  The people are a little nervous about having him come back, and they may well be, for Zulu kings have been terrible people sometimes —­like Tchaka, Dingaan, and Cetewayo.

There is a large Trappist monastery two hours from Durban, over the country roads, and in company with Mr. Milligan and Mr. Hunter, general manager of the Natal government railways, who knew the heads of it, we went out to see it.

There it all was, just as one reads about it in books and cannot believe that it is so—­I mean the rough, hard work, the impossible hours, the scanty food, the coarse raiment, the Maryborough beds, the tabu of human speech, of social intercourse, of relaxation, of amusement, of entertainment, of the presence of woman in the men’s establishment.  There it all was.  It was not a dream, it was not a lie.  And yet with the fact before one’s face it was still incredible.  It is such a sweeping suppression of human instincts, such an extinction of the man as an individual.

La Trappe must have known the human race well.  The scheme which he invented hunts out everything that a man wants and values—­and withholds it from him.  Apparently there is no detail that can help make life worth living that has not been carefully ascertained and placed out of the Trappist’s reach.  La Trappe must have known that there were men who would enjoy this kind of misery, but how did he find it out?

If he had consulted you or me he would have been told that his scheme lacked too many attractions; that it was impossible; that it could never be floated.  But there in the monastery was proof that he knew the human race better than it knew itself.  He set his foot upon every desire that a man has—­yet he floated his project, and it has prospered for two hundred years, and will go on prospering forever, no doubt.