The two following days were spent in looking after and collecting our cumbrous array of boxes and baskets. Tin baths, wicker chairs and baskets, all had to be counted and recounted, until one got weary of the word "luggage;" but that is the penalty of drafting babies about the world. In the intervals of the serious business of tracing No. 5 or running No. 10 to earth in the corner of a warehouse, I made many pleasant acquaintances and received kindest words and notes of welcome from unknown friends. All this warm-hearted, unconventional kindness goes far to make the stranger forget his "own people and his father's house," and feel at once at home amid strange and unfamiliar scenes. After all, "home" is portable, luckily, and a welcoming smile and hand-clasp act as a spell to create it in any place. We also managed, after business-hours, when it was of no use making expeditions to wharf or custom-house after recusant carpet-bags, to drive to the Botanic Gardens. They are extensive and well kept, but seem principally devoted to shrubs. I was assured that this is the worst time of year for flowers, as the plants have not yet recovered from the winter drought. A dry winter and wet summer is the correct atmospheric fashion here: in winter everything is brown and dusty and dried up, in summer green and fragrant and well watered. The gardens are in good order, and I rather regretted not being able to examine them more thoroughly. Another afternoon we drove to the Berea, a sort of suburban Richmond, where the rich semi-tropical vegetation is cleared away in patches, and villas with pretty pleasure-grounds are springing up in every direction. The road winds up the luxuriantly-clothed slopes, with every here and there lovely sea-views of the harbor, with the purpling lights of the Indian Ocean stretching away beyond. Every villa must have an enchanting prospect from its front door, and one can quite understand how alluring to the merchants and business--men of D'Urban must be the idea of getting away after office-hours, and sleeping on such; high ground in so fresh and healthy an: atmosphere. And here I must say that we Maritzburgians (I am only one in prospective) wage a constant and deadly warfare with the D'Urbanites on the score of the health and convenience of our respective cities. _We_ are two thousand feet above the sea and fifty-two miles inland, so we talk in a pitying tone of the poor D'Urbanites as dwellers in a very hot and unhealthy place. "Relaxing" is the word we apply to their climate when we want to be particularly nasty, and they retaliate by reminding us that they are ever so much older than we are (which is an advantage in a colony), and that they are on the coast, and can grow all manner of nice things which we cannot compass, to say nothing of their climate being more equable than ours, and their thunderstorms, though longer in duration, mere flashes in the pan compared to what we in our amphitheatre of hills