In some respects I consider this climate has been rather over-praised. Of course it is a great deal--a very great deal--better than our English one, but that, after all, is not saying much in its praise. Then we must remember that in England we have the fear and dread of the climate ever before our eyes, and consequently are always, so to speak, on our guard against it. Here, and in other places where civilization is in its infancy, we are at the mercy of dust and sun, wind and rain, and all the eccentric elements which go to make up weather. Consequently, when the balance of comfort and convenience has to be struck, it is surprising how small an advantage a really better climate gives when you take away watering-carts and shady streets for hot weather, and sheltered railway-stations and hansom cabs for wet weather, and roads and servants and civility and general convenience everywhere. This particular climate is both depressing and trying in spite of the sunny skies we are ever boasting about, because it has a strong tinge of the tropical element in it; and yet people live in much the same kind of houses (only that they are very small), and wear much the same sort of clothes (only that they are very ugly), and lead much the same sort of lives (only that it is a thousand times duller than the dullest country village), as they do in England. Some small concession is made to the thermometer in the matter of puggeries and matted floors, but even then carpets are used wherever it is practicable, because this matting never looks clean and nice after the first week it is put down. All the houses are built on the ground floor, with the utmost economy of building material and labor, and consequently there are no passages: every room is, in fact, a passage and leads to its neighbor. So the perpetually dirty bare feet, or, still worse, boots fresh from the mud or dust of the streets, soon wear out the matting. Few houses are at all prettily decorated or furnished, partly from the difficulty of procuring anything pretty here, the cost and risk of its carriage up from D'Urban if you send to England for it, and partly from the want of servants accustomed to anything but the roughest and coarsest articles of household use. A lady soon begins to take her drawing-room ornaments _en guignon_ if she has to dust them herself every day in a very dusty climate. I speak feelingly and with authority, for that is my case at this moment, and applies to every other part of the house as well.