Well, all the time that we were steaming up to Natal I was thinking
over Sir Henry Curtis's offer. We did not speak any more on the
subject for a day or two, though I told them many hunting yarns, all
true ones. There is no need to tell lies about hunting, for so many
curious things happen within the knowledge of a man whose business it
is to hunt; but this is by the way.

At last, one beautiful evening in January, which is our hottest month,
we steamed past the coast of Natal, expecting to make Durban Point by
sunset. It is a lovely coast all along from East London, with its red
sandhills and wide sweeps of vivid green, dotted here and there with
Kafir kraals, and bordered by a ribbon of white surf, which spouts up
in pillars of foam where it hits the rocks. But just before you come
to Durban there is a peculiar richness about the landscape. There are
the sheer kloofs cut in the hills by the rushing rains of centuries,
down which the rivers sparkle; there is the deepest green of the bush,
growing as God planted it, and the other greens of the mealie gardens
and the sugar patches, while now and again a white house, smiling out
at the placid sea, puts a finish and gives an air of homeliness to the
scene. For to my mind, however beautiful a view may be, it requires
the presence of man to make it complete, but perhaps that is because I
have lived so much in the wilderness, and therefore know the value of
civilisation, though to be sure it drives away the game. The Garden of
Eden, no doubt, looked fair before man was, but I always think that it
must have been fairer when Eve adorned it.

To return, we had miscalculated a little, and the sun was well down
before we dropped anchor off the Point, and heard the gun which told
the good folks of Durban that the English Mail was in. It was too late
to think of getting over the Bar that night, so we went comfortably to