Having a few days to wait here until the next mail steamer sailed to England, I happened in conversation casually to hear of a vacancy in the Natal government medical service, caused by the sudden death of a district surgeon in Victoria County, the most enterprising and rising portion of the whole colony. The following morning, while taking breakfast, two gentlemen, whom I afterward knew as large sugar planters on the coast, joined the table and began talking over the events of the week. “So he’s dead at last,” said one. “Yes, and who’ll take his place, I wonder?” said the other. After some further conversation, I gathered that the report I had heard of the sudden death of a doctor was correct, and that it was about him they were conversing. The chief speaker continued: “He made £700 a year, but could have made double if he’d liked.” Hearing all this, I introduced myself and told them who I was, when, with colonial frankness, they both strongly urged me to apply at once to the government for the appointment. I did not require to think twice over the matter, visions of £1,000 a year at two-and-twenty floated temptingly before me, so deciding at once, I determined to go to the capital, Pietermaritzburg, and see Colonel Maclean, who was acting governor at the time. This I did next day, and the colonel gave me the acting appointment. Being anxious as quickly as possible to see the district and people among whom, for at least a time, I had thrown my lot, immediately on my return to D’Urban I lost no time in visiting Verulam, the chief town of Victoria County, which was founded, I was told, in 1850 by a party of Wesleyan pioneers. Riding four miles through terrible sand, I crossed the Umgeni by a beautiful iron-girder bridge, afterward washed away by a sudden rising of the river in August, 1868, passed Jackson’s coffee estate and some extensive bush clearings, and then a few miles more brought me to Lovatt’s well-known roadside inn. All the way to Verulam, the place of my future residence, the landscape was studded near and far with thick forests, interspersed with sugar and coffee plantations, forming lovely little views; here and there, too, I could see smoke curling up from the fires where the planters were burning the timber in the forest, and many a time I halted my horse to watch around the blazing logs the groups of lithe, active, happy natives, laughing, singing and working by turn—a novel sight, indeed, to one accustomed to English coldness and stolidity.