But the baby is certainly a most unwarrantable digression, and we must return to our post-cart. The discouraging part of it was that the vehicle itself had been in all the storm and rain of yesterday. Of course no one had dreamed of washing or wiping it out in any fashion, so we had to sit upon wet cushions and put our feet into a pool of red mud and water. Now, if I must confess the truth, I, an old traveler, had done a very stupid thing. I had been lured by the deceitful beauty of the weather when we started into leaving behind me everything except the thinnest and coolest garments I possessed, and I therefore had to set out on this journey in the teeth of a cold wind and driving rain clad in a white gown. It is true, I had my beloved and most useful ulster, but it was a light waterproof one, and just about half enough in the way of warmth. Still, as I had another wrap, a big Scotch plaid, I should have got along very well if it had not been for the still greater stupidity of the only other female fellow-passenger, who calmly took her place in the open post-cart behind me in a brown holland gown, without scarf or wrap or anything whatever to shelter her from the weather, except a white calico sunshade. She was a Frenchwoman too, and looked so piteous and forlorn in her neat toilette, already drenched through, that of course I could do nothing less than lend her my Scotch shawl, and trust to the driver's friendly promises of empty corn-bags at some future stage. By the time the bags came--or rather by the time we got to the bags--I was indeed wet and cold. The ulster, did its best, and all that could be expected of it, but no garment manufactured in a London shop could possibly cope with such wild weather, tropical in the vehemence of its pouring rain, wintry in its cutting blasts. The wind seemed to blow from every quarter of the heavens at once, the rain came down in sheets, but I minded the mud more than either wind or rain: it was more demoralizing. On the box-seat I got my full share and more, but yet I was better off there than inside, where twelve people were squeezed into the places of eight. The horses' feet got balled with the stiff red clay exactly as though it had been snow, and from time to time as they galloped along, six fresh ones at every stage, I received a good lump of clay, as big and nearly as solid as a croquet-ball, full in my face. It was bitterly cold, and the night was closing in when we drove up to the door of the best hotel in Maritzburg, at long past eight instead of six o'clock. It was impossible to get out to our own place that night, so there was nothing for it but to stay where we were, and get what food and rest could be coaxed out of an indifferent bill of fare and a bed of stony hardness, to say nothing of the bites of numerous mosquitoes. The morning light revealed the melancholy state of my unhappy white gown in its full horror. All the rivers of Natal will never make it white again, I fear.