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 excitement. A Cape cart, with a Chinese coolie driver, and four horses apparently put in harness together for the first time, was waiting for us and our luggage at the post-office. We got into it, and straight-way began to plunge through the sandy streets once more, turning off the high-road and beginning almost immediately to climb with pain and difficulty the red sandy slopes of the Berea, a beautiful wooded upland dotted with villas. The road is terrible for man and beast, and we had to stop every few yards to breathe the horses. At last our destination is reached, through fields of sugar-cane and plantations of coffee, past luxuriant fruit trees, rustling, broad-leafed bananas and encroaching greenery of all sorts, to a clearing where a really handsome house stands, with hospitable, wide-open doors, awaiting us. Yes, a good big bath first, then a cup of tea, and now we are ready for a saunter in the twilight on the wide level terrace (called by the ugly Dutch name "stoop") which runs round three sides of the house. How green and fragrant and still it all is! Straight-way the glare of the long sunny day, the rattle and jolting of the post-cart, the toil through the sand, all slip away from mind and memory, and the tranquil delicious present, "with its-odors of rest and of love," slips in to soothe and calm our jaded senses. Certainly, it is hotter here than in Maritzburg--that assertion we are prepared to die in defence of--but we acknowledge that the heat at this hour is _not_ oppressive, and the tropical luxuriance of leaf and flower all around is worth a few extra degrees of temperature. Of course, our talk is of to-morrow, and we look anxiously at the purpling clouds to the west.