Maritzburg, March 5, 1876.

I don't think I like a climate which produces a thunderstorm every afternoon. One disadvantage of this chronic electric excitement is, that I hardly ever get out for a walk or drive. All day it is burning hot: if there is a breath of air it is sultry, and adds to the oppression of the atmosphere instead of refreshing it. Then about midday great fleecy banks of cloud begin to steal up behind the ridge of hills to the south-west; gradually they creep round the horizon, stretching their soft grey folds further and further to every point of the compass, until they have shrouded the dazzling blue sky, and dropped a cool filmy veil between the sun's fierce steady blaze and the baked earth below. That is always my nervous moment. F— declares I am exactly like a hen with her chickens, and I acknowledge that I should like to cluck, and call everything and everybody into shelter and safety. If little G— is out on his pony alone,—as is generally the case, for he returns from school early in the afternoon,—I think of the great open veldt, the rough broken track, and the treacherous swamp; what wonder is it that I cannot rest indoors, but am always making bare-headed expeditions every five minutes to the brow of the hill to see if I can discern the tiny figure tearing along the open, with its floating white puggery streaming behind?