Adonis! Adonis!

The mortal youth, so strangely fair,
Lies on the cold turf pale and dead:
His heart's blood staineth the flowers red,
And a wild lament fulfills the air,
Adonis! Adonis!

EMMA LAZARUS.

LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA.

BY LADY BARKER.

D'URBAN, January 3, 1876.

I must certainly begin this letter by setting aside every other
topic for the moment and telling you of our grand event, our national
celebration, our historical New Year's Day. We have "turned the first
sod" of our first inland railway, and, if I am correctly informed, at
least a dozen sods more, but you must remember, if you please, that
our navvies are Kafirs, and that they do _not_ understand what Mr.
Carlyle calls the beauty and dignity of labor in the least. It is
all very well for you conceited dwellers in the Old and New Worlds to
laugh at us for making such a fuss about a projected hundred miles of
railway--you whose countries are made into dissected maps by the magic
iron lines--but for poor us, who have to drag every pound of sugar and
reel of sewing-cotton over some sixty miles of vile road between this
and Maritzburg, such a line, if it be ever finished, will be a boon
and a blessing indeed.

I think I can better make you understand _how_ great a blessing if
I describe my journeys up and down--journeys made, too, under
exceptionally favorable circumstances. The first thing which had to
be done, some three weeks before the day of our departure, was to
pack and send down by wagon a couple of portmanteaus with our smart
clothes. I may as well mention here that the cost of the transit
came to fourteen shillings each way for three or four small, light
packages, and that on each occasion we were separated from our
possessions for a fortnight or more. The next step to be taken was to
secure places in the daily post-cart, and it required as much mingled
firmness and persuasion to do this as though it had reference to
a political crisis. But then there were some hundreds of us
Maritzburgians all wanting to be taken down to D'Urban within the
space of a few days, and there was nothing to take us except the open
post-cart, which occupied six hours on the journey, and an omnibus,
which took ten hours, but afforded more shelter from possible rain and
probable sun. Within the two vehicles some twenty people might, at a
pinch, find places, and at least a hundred wanted to go every day of
that last wee