We have been told wonders of the salubrity and delightfulness of the climate of Natal; but Lady Barker does not indorse the statements in which we have hitherto placed confidence. The alternations of heat and cold are very trying; the rains are sudden and violent; and thunder-storms are of almost daily occurrence and great severity. After one very grand storm she found a multitude of beautiful butterflies dead on the garden paths; their plumage was not dimmed nor their wings broken; they might have been ready prepared for a collection, quite dead and stiff. Amongst the fauna of Natal, birds, reptiles, and insects abound. The natives suffer much from snake-bites, and white new-comers from mosquitos; all classes from ‘ticks,’ which also persecute the dogs and horses. The native language is very melodious and easily learned; and the Kaffirs pick up a little English readily enough. They are indeed a clever race and very home-loving. One genius of the author’s acquaintance, called ‘Sixpence,’ had actually accompanied his master to England, whence he returned with a terrible recollection of an English winter, and a deep-rooted amazement at the boys of the Shoe Brigade who wanted to clean his boots. That astonished him, Sixpence declares, more than anything else. Lady Barker is emphatic in her advice to all colonists that they should make up their minds from the first to have Kaffir servants. One ‘Tom,’ a nurse-boy, figures in her book most amusingly; he is a capital fellow; and it is to be hoped he has abandoned the intention, which he confided to his mistress, of resigning his position after ‘forty moons,’ because by that time he should be in a position to buy plenty of wives, who would work for him and support him for the rest of his life. A Kaffir servant usually gets a pound a month, his clothes, and food. The clothes consist of a shirt and trousers of coarse check cotton, and a soldier’s cast-off greatcoat for winter—all the old uniforms of Europe find their way to South Africa; and the food is plenty of ‘mealies’—or maize meal for ‘scoff,’ the native name for a mixture which probably resembles porridge. If a servant be worth making comfortable, one gives him a trifle every week to buy meat. The only effectual punishment and the sole restraint which can be placed on the Kaffir propensity to break things, is a system of fines.