ivened the route by pointing out various spots where frightful
accidents had occurred to the post-cart on former occasions: "You see
that big stone? Well, it war jest there that Langabilile and Colenso,
they takes the bits in their teeth, those 'osses do, and they sets off
their own pace and their own way. Jim Stanway, he puts his brake down
hard and his foot upon the reins, but, Lord love you! them beasts
would ha' pulled his arms and legs both off afore they'd give in. So
they runs poor Jim's near wheel right up agin that bank and upsets the
whole concern, as neat as needs be, over agin that bit o' bog. Anybody
hurt? Well, yes: they was all what you might call shook. Mr. Bell, he
had his arm broke, and a foreign chap from the diamond-fields, he gets
killed outright, and Jim himself had his head cut open. It was a bad
business, you bet, and rough upon Jim. Ja!"

All the driver's conversation is interlarded with "Ja," but he never
says a worse word than that, and he drinks nothing but tea. As for
a pipe, or a cigar even, when it is offered to him he screws up his
queer face into a droll grimace and says, "No--thanks. I want all
my nerves, I do, on this bit of road.--Walk along, Lady Barker: I'm
ashamed of you, I am, hanging your head like that at a bit of a hill!"
It was rather startling to hear this apostrophe all of a sudden, but
as my namesake was a very hard-working little brown mare, I could only
laugh and declare myself much flattered.

Here we are at last, amid the tropical vegetation which makes a green
and tangled girdle around D'Urban for a dozen miles inland: yonder is
the white and foaming line of breakers which marks where the strong
current, sweeping down the east coast, brings along with it all the
sand and silt it can collect, especially from the mouth of the Umgeni
River close by, and so forms the dreaded bar, which divides the
outer from the inner harbor. Beyond this crisp and sparkling line of
heaving, tossing snow stretches the deep indigo-blue of the Indian
Ocean, whilst over all wonderful sunset tints of opal and flame-color
are hovering and changing with the changing, wind-driven clouds.
Beneath our wheels are many inches of thick white sand, but the
streets are gay and busy, with picturesque coolies in their bright
cotton draperies and swiftly-passing Cape carts and vehicles of all
sorts. We are in D'Urban indeed--D'Urban in unwonted holiday dress and
on the tippest tiptoe of expectation and exc