nd, is the dry season here.
Besides his tact in the matter of the morass, did I not drive Scotsman
the other day to the park, and did he not comport himself in the
most delightfully sedate fashion? You require experience to be on the
lookout for the perils of Maritzburg streets, it seems, for all
their sleepy, deserted, tumble-down air. First of all, there are the
transport-wagons, with their long span of oxen straggling all across
the road, and a nervous bullock precipitating himself under your
horse's nose. The driver, too, invariably takes the opportunity of a
lady passing him to crack his whip violently, enough to startle any
horse except Scotsman. Then when you have passed the place where the
wagons most do congregate, and think you are tolerably safe and
need only look out for ruts and holes in the street, lo! a furious
galloping behind you, and some half dozen of the "gilded youth" of
Maritzburg dash past you, stop, wheel round and gallop past again,
until you are almost blinded with dust or smothered with mud,
according to the season. This peril occurred several times during
my drive to and from the park, and I can only remark that dear old
Scotsman kept his temper better than I did: perhaps he was more
accustomed to Maritzburg manners.

When the park was reached at last, across a frail and uncertain wooden
bridge shaded by large weeping willows, I found it the most
creditable thing I had yet seen. It is admirably laid out, the natural
undulations of the ground being made the most of, and exceedingly well
kept. This in itself is a difficult matter where all vegetation runs
up like Jack's famous beanstalk, and where the old proverb about the
steed starving whilst his grass is growing falls completely to the
ground. There are numerous drives, made level by a coating of smooth
black shale, and bordered by a double line of syringas and oaks,
with hedges of myrtle or pomegranate. In some places the roads run
alongside the little river--a very muddy torrent when I saw it--and
then the oaks give way to great drooping willows, beneath whose
trailing branches the river swirled angrily. On fine Saturday
afternoons the band of the regiment stationed here plays on a clear
space under some shady trees--for you can never sit or stand on the
grass in Natal, and even croquet is played on bare leveled earth--and
everybody rides or walks or drives about. When I saw the park there
was not a living creature in it, for it was, as m