Many English, Scotch and Dutch residents in Maritzberg, combined with the military stationed there, made the town lively. It was a place in which we should have liked to have pitched our tent for a longer period of time. But after several months of life as intimate as we could expect to have in a foreign land, we turned our thoughts to our home in America, that could never be replaced in our hearts, and left Maritzberg for Durban. It was a bright spring day in September when, having packed our belongings and souvenirs, we stepped on board the steam tug at Durban which was to take us and several friends over the bar to the steamer. The sea and the weather seemed to have entered into a conspiracy to put on their most alluring dress to do honour to the departing strangers, and we steamed across the bar, the little steam launch puffing and smoking as who should say, "Aha! you're going to America, aren't you?--you've got some fine steamers there, haven't you?--but look, see how busy I am, what a noise I make, and how recklessly I brave the dangers of the sand-bar, which those big fellows outside dare not tackle." All animate and inanimate nature seemed to smile on us and bid us God speed, and as we climbed up the ladder that led up the side of the good ship _Asiatic_, and emerged on her deck, we registered a vow to return some day to the land of sand and sunshine. Soon after our arrival on board the bell sounded for strangers to leave the ship, and the time came to say good-by to the good friends who had accompanied us on board. Leave-taking had become a familiar occupation with us, but yet we never seemed to overcome the misty feeling in the eyes when the time came to say the one word "Good-bye." The steamer left her moorings at four o'clock, and soon the bluff, and the many points around it which we had explored, faded away far astern, the stars came out, and the old well-known thump of the steamer's engine began to make us realise that we were going Home. The voyage around the coast has been already described. At Fort Elizabeth we were transhipped into the palatial mail steamer _Moor_, in which we were to make the journey to England. From the steamship we had a splendid view of the town of Port Elizabeth, built as it is on the hill, which rises quite from the beach. Almost every house could be seen distinctly, and every walk and spot that had become so pleasantly familiar to us, during our stay, we could trace without the aid of a glass.