Durban, January 3, 1876.

I must certainly begin this letter by setting aside every other topic for the moment and telling you of our grand event, our national celebration, our historical New-Year's Day! We have “turned our first sod” of our first inland railway, and, if I am correctly informed, at least a dozen sods more; but you must remember, if you please, that our navvies are Kafirs, and they do not understand what Mr. Carlyle calls the beauty and dignity of labour in the least. It is all very well for you conceited dwellers in the Old and New Worlds to laugh at us for making such a fuss about a projected hundred miles of railway—you whose countries are made into dissected maps by the magic iron lines; but for poor us, who have to drag every pound of sugar and reel of sewing cotton over some sixty miles of vile road between this and Maritzburg, such a line, if it be ever finished, would be a boon and a blessing indeed.

I think I can better make you understand how great, if I describe my journeys up and down: journeys made, too, under exceptionally favourable circumstances. The first thing which had to be done some three weeks before the day of our departure, was to pack and send down by waggon a couple of portmanteaus with our smart clothes.