I liked Pieter Maritzburg very much,--perhaps the best of all South African towns. But whenever I would express such an opinion to a Pieter Maritzburger he would never quite agree with me. It is difficult to get a Colonist to assent to any opinion as to his own Colony. If you find fault, he is injured and almost insulted. The traveller soon learns that he had better abstain from all spoken criticism, even when that often repeated, that dreadful question is put to him,--which I was called upon to answer sometimes four or five times a day,--“Well, Mr. Trollope, what do you think of----,”--let us say for the moment, “South Africa?” But even praise is not accepted without contradiction, and the peculiar hardships of a Colonist’s life are insisted upon almost with indignation when colonial blessings are spoken of with admiration. The Government at home is doing everything that is cruel, and the Government in the Colony is doing everything that is foolish. With whatever interest the gentleman himself is concerned, that peculiar interest is peculiarly ill-managed by the existing powers. But for some fatuous maddening law he himself could make his own fortune and almost that of the Colony. In Pieter Maritzburg everybody seemed to me very comfortable, but everybody was ill-used. There was no labour,--though the streets were full of Zulus, who would do anything for a shilling and half anything for sixpence. There was no emigration from England provided for by the country. There were not half soldiers enough in Natal,--though Natal has luckily had no real use for soldiers since the Dutch went away. But perhaps the most popular source of complaint was that everything was so dear that nobody could afford to live. Nevertheless I did not hear that any great number of the inhabitants of the town were encumbered by debt, and everybody seemed to live comfortably enough. “You must begin,” said one lady to me, “by computing that £400 a year in England means £200 a year here.” To this I demurred before the lady,--with very little effect, as of course she had the better of me in the argument. But I demur again here, with better chance of success, as I have not the lady by to contradict me.