The duties of the _Natal_ were to make a trip monthly between Cape Town and Durban, taking up the mail and passengers brought out by the mail steamer coming to Cape Town, and feeding her in a similar manner from Natal. It usually took about two days to accomplish the transhipment. There was a certain amount of novelty in this work, for it was rather out of the beaten track, and the eastern ports were in a very primitive state of development. Take in the first place East London, then a very difficult port to enter even with the smallest craft. The mouth of the Buffalo river, which made the port, was closed by a sand bar that at times was impassable even by a lifeboat. The method of working was for lighters to haul out by surf lines laid over the bar and extending a fair distance into the anchorage; the ship that had cargo or passengers to discharge anchored as closely in as was prudent and then ran a warp to the buoyed end of the surf line for the lighter to reach the ship by; the work was rough, very, and the boatmen were in perfect keeping with their surroundings. I should not like to do the men an injustice, but they seemed to be the scourings of the roughness and rascality of the world. Their lives were mostly in their hands, and they did not attach much value either to them or the language with which they adorned them. It was no uncommon thing when there was a sea on the bar--and there mostly was--to see a breaker sweep a surf boat from end to end. The men generally managed to hold on, but fatal accidents were not infrequent. These boats would frequently land passengers, who were carefully battened down and in almost complete darkness while the passage was being accomplished. Both at this port and Durban, passengers were put into the lighters in large baskets lowered by the cargo whips, and if the ship were rolling it would be no uncommon occurrence to see a basket containing perhaps three or four men and women hoisted half way out and held fast by derrick and stay until the roll had subsided. People got used to it, however, and no improvement was made until the visit of the Empress Eugènie to South Africa, when it occurred to some genius that a wicker cage might be made with a door in the side which would obviate the necessity for lifting the ladies into the basket. If, however, the ladies were young and good-looking there was never much difficulty noticeable in finding volunteers to take on this arduous duty. Leaving East London the navigation of the ship was conducted on different lines to that adopted to the westward. There one could steer a course and be moderately confident of making it within reasonable limits, but between East London and Natal you had to face the full force of the Mozambique current, which mostly ran anything between three and five knots to the south-west, unless you were close in shore, when you were sometimes, but not always, favoured with a drain of eddy current.