A worse climate and country for clothes of every kind and description cannot be imagined. When I first arrived I thought I had never seen such ugly toilettes in all my life; and I should have been less than woman (or more--which is it?) if I had not derived some secret satisfaction from the possession of at least prettier garments. What I was vain of in my secret heart was my store of cotton gowns. One can't very well wear cotton gowns in London; and, as I am particularly fond of them, I indemnify myself for going abroad by rushing wildly into extensive purchases in cambrics and print dresses. They are so pretty and so cheap, and when charmingly made, as mine _were_ (alas, they are already things of the past!), nothing can be so satisfactory in the way of summer country garb. Well, it has been precisely in the matter of cotton gowns that I have been punished for my vanity. For a day or two each gown in turn looked charming. Then came a flounce or bordering of bright red earth on the lower skirt and a general impression of red dust and dirt all over it. That was after a drive into Maritzburg along a road ploughed up by ox-wagons. Still, I felt no uneasiness. What is a cotton gown made for if not to be washed? Away it goes to the wash! What is this limp, discolored rag which returns to me iron-moulded, blued until it is nearly black, rough-dried, starched in patches, with the fringe of red earth only more firmly fixed than before? Behold my favorite ivory cotton! My white gowns are even in a worse plight, for there are no two yards of them the same, and the grotesque mixture of extreme yellowness, extreme blueness and a pervading tinge of the red mud they have been washed in renders them a piteous example of misplaced confidence. Other things fare rather better--not much--but my poor gowns are only hopeless wrecks, and I am reduced to some old yachting dresses of ticking and serge. The price of washing, as this spoiling process is pleasantly called, is enormous, and I exhaust my faculties in devising more economical arrangements. We can't wash at home, for the simple reason that we have no water, no proper appliances of any sort, and to build and buy such would cost a small fortune. But a tall, white-aproned Kafir, with a badge upon his arm, comes now at daylight every Monday morning and takes away a huge sackful of linen, which is placed, with sundry pieces of soap and blue in its mouth, all ready for him. He brings it back in the afternoon full of clean and dry linen, for which he receives three shillings and sixpence. But this is only the first stage. The things to be starched have to be sorted and sent to one woman, and those to be mangled to another, and both lots have to be fetched home again by Tom and Jack. (I have forgotten to tell you that Jack's real name, elicited with great difficulty, as there is a click somewhere in it, is "Umpashongwana," whilst the pickle Tom is known