is a small building of a construction peculiar to South Africa, and known locally as "wattle and dab." Its walls are simply made of poles, with wattles interlaced between them, the whole being daubed over with rough plaster, and then limewashed. In an inclement climate, where the winds are violent and rains are frequent, such a style of architecture would never keep out the weather. But in our mild latitude it gives capital shelter and lasts for many a long year. In this case the structure consists of one centre room, twenty feet long and fourteen wide, into which open four small rooms, two on either side, each being respectively fourteen by eight. The first serves us as parlour, dining-room, reception-room, and room of all-work, the others are all bedrooms. Overhead there is nothing but the bare sheets of iron that form the roof. As the walls are only about ten feet high, and whitewashed inside as well as out, the reader will form some idea of the charming simplicity which distinguishes this, our marine ménage.

Locks in Natal are superfluities. Until within the last year burglars and robbers were never heard of except as plaguing foreign lands. As often as not in our country districts doors are left unlocked, windows unfastened, and our houses generally accessible to any evil-disposed persons. Our primitive state hitherto has been our great security. As civilization grows and spreads all this will pass away; and there are such evidences latterly, that, as a colony, we are civilizing and degenerating concurrently. This is by way of explaining how it was that I managed so readily, with the aid of a large nail, to force open the lock, and thus obtain ingress. Although no other house is to be found at a less distance than a mile the lock was a formality-a deference to usage and nothing

more.

The sun was setting as the waggon drew up for the night at the bottom, and weary work we had dragging all our household goods up that ladderlike path before darkness set in. Although the house was let as "furnished we had a host of moveables to bring with us, the furniture being simply confined to a table, two closets, one large and four small bedsteads, some shelves, a cracked toilet glass, and a dozen chairs. It required some exertion, therefore, to put our house in order and appease our hunger, but both were duly accomplished within two or three hours. Our Kaffirs picked up a large pile of drift-wood from the beach in a few minutes, and soon a roaring fire filled our bare and curtainless apartment with a blaze of light.

Once shaken down into something like order, the everlasting boom of the breakers tempts me out. From the verandah in front I can see nothing but the vast, mystic blank of the ocean, stretching from my feet away into dim obscurity, and streaked along the shore, as far as the eye can penetrate the gloom, with white lathery bars of foam. Every few seconds, as some new roller rises darkly out of the sea, and plunges down upon the rocks in a crashing cataract of surge, a strange flash

of veiled phosphorescent light shoots along the breaker, as though some sudden blaze had burst out beneath it. This effect is quite different from the more sparkling displays of ocean phosphorescence one sees on a smaller scale when on the water at night. Only once have I seen anything like it, and that was off the coast of South America, one dark night when the ocean was crossed by broad bands of the same sort of light, emitted as we afterwards found, by a large species of jelly-fish, whose scientific denomination I am not naturalist enough to remember correctly.

Although I have been accustomed all my life to live near the sea, the constant roar of the waves only some hundred feet below produces at first an unpleasant and irritating sensation. On this first night I said that the din would certainly drive me mad if I continued there; but next night the noise was as great, and my reason seemed unimpaired; the night after that I concluded that the ocean might rave far more loudly than it did without affecting my sanity. The sea, indeed, became companionable in its vocal efforts before many days were over. Those grand tones, so unquenchably impressive, are, after all, the most eloquent of Nature's voices. For four weeks they have never ceased, and when, in the calmest weather, their fury abates, they only sink into a milder cadence. At night we have never got rid of the notion that a storm is raging. We wake, and fancy that rain is pouring down in torrents, and that a gale is howling round the house. Nothing of the sort. Go out, and the air is deliciously still, the stars shine peacefully, and all the elements are hushed except the sleepless ocean.

About seven in the morning the red dull blaze of the sun as it rises above the sea-line and looks in at our curtainless windows (there are no prying eyes to fear) wakes us all. From my pillow I look down upon the broad sea now, and usually at this time in a state of oily calm. No horizon is clearly visible in the mists of morning. It is not here as it is at sea, where the early riser enjoys the grandest aspect of the changeful ocean. The sea looks its worst at this time. Except on rare occasions when gales arise, these southern winter mornings are still, and the waves that may have tossed and tumbled in the sunlight of the preceding evening have generally subsided ere midnight. Thick vapours hang over the waters and contract the distance, the sun rises red and big, the sea looks torpid and dull; but it is not silent. Loud as ever roar the crashing breakers; and if the tide be flowing in, the din they make will be your first disturbance on awaking.

Short time does one take in dressing at so primitive a retreat. Having loosed the bit of string by which the door is temporarily fastened, I begin to do what all masters of South African households are compelled to do, namely, to set the wheels of the domestic machinery, in the shape of Kaffir and coolie servants, at work. The easy natures of these people forbid any exertion on their part that is not absolutely necessary. There they are, seated round the old grate in the reed hut, windowless, door

less, and floorless, which acts as kitchen and servants' quarters to the establishment. A large pot of maize porridge gurgles pleasantly on the fire, and their simple hearts are rejoicing in the prospect of a speedy meal. Happily, they are a docile, albeit a lazy, people, and they skip about their several duties with a song on their lips and a smile in their eyes. Not so, however, our Indian cook. He is in great straits. He can't keep the draughts out of the kitchen, and he is distressed by the utter lack of all facilities for cooking. He mutters that he can't understand why his master should desert home comforts for such a place. Nature has few charms for Sambo anywhere; to love her is to acquire a taste. My cook falls into a yet lower state of despondency on finding that both teapot and coffee-pot have been forgotten, and with a sigh he proceeds to make an earthenware pitcher without a handle do duty for those utensils, as well as, at a later stage, act as deputy for a soup tureen.

The order of the day at our watering-place is about as regular and systematic as it is at more pretentious resorts. Breakfast being over, down all the party sallies to the beach. That is the beginning and the end of our enjoyments; the shore in one phase or another engrosses all our attention. Now the tide happens to be out. Smooth and hard the sands stretch bare on either hand. Beyond them the dark rocks are left uncovered by the falling tide. An almost perpendicular bound of about a hundred feet carries us to the top of a pile of boulders, by which the beach just here is buttressed. Below these, on one side a platform of rock stretches out to the sea. This slab of sandstone is worn into numberless little basins and channels, in which lovely striped fish of tiny size and delicate proportions flit about. Further on, the pools are deeper and larger; the rocks are undermined by the sea, which you can hear champing and chafing beneath you. Now and then, an incoming wave fills these pools to overflowing, and through countless unsuspected holes and chinks the water spurts up like a fountain into your face. To the further rocks the mussels cling in black masses, tons on tons, small and great, from the delicate green-tinted youngster to the big, hoary, and bearded patriarch.

It is here that we fish. On the first morning of our arrival a Kaffir put his hook down a deep hole not more than a foot in diameter, and in a minute's time he hauled up a huge rock-cod, dark-brown and spotted, with broad greedy mouth, and ugly fins. These insignificant-looking pools, crannies though they be, give access to the still depths of sea underneath, where these fish, which are delicious eating, love to lie. But there are fish of all kinds to be had for the hauling. Come to this rock-a daily haunt of ours. Down in the clear depths you may see hundreds of beautiful creatures-some darting quickly from rock to rock, and pool to pool, others gliding slowly nearer the bottom, now poking at a bunch of seaweed, or putting to flight a shoal of smaller fry. Here are

the narrow, deep-bodied, silvery bream; the codlike, broad-backed mullet; the deep, fleshy-coloured, Cape salmon. Here, too, are fish, flashing to and fro, which in truth may be said to "bear the rich hues of all glorious things." I have seen the fish-markets of Mauritius and other Eastern places, but never have I seen fish so brilliantly and beautifully coloured as some that are common here. Two kinds in particular may be named; one being striped with jagged bands of the brightest blue and orange; the other being crossed by bars of the richest green and gold. Both are good biters and capital eating, and as they retain their colours after cooking, they are pleasant objects on the table.

But there are ugly fellows too. One little wretch in particular, from his extreme and unparalleled hideousness, we dubbed a sea-devil. In all respects he is hateful. This pariah of the fish race is cowardly but greedy, never swimming forth into the open water, but crouching in holes of the rock, or among the seaweed, not far from the surface. He has a detestable knack of seizing the bait when it gets within reach, and holding it tenaciously while you tug and tug in the belief that the hook has caught. The first fish of this kind which I brought up offered so much resistance that I reckoned upon a prize of magnificent proportions, and was rewarded by a wriggling, uncanny creature three or four inches long. This toad of the ocean is darkbrown and mottled, is scaleless, and protrudes large vicious eyes. Its mouth is far too large for its body, and overhung by masses of fleshy skin not unlike lips. Two large prickly fins, just like the wings of harpies, are placed close to the head, and a long row of similar ones runs down the back. Small yellow teeth, which have a proneness to bite, complete the picture.

But the most companionable and interesting fishes we have here are the porpoises. They are our daily visitors. A school of about a hundred appear to have their abiding place somewhere along the coast. Shortly after sunrise they come plunging and leaping up from the southward, returning again ere the day be out. They are not the uncouth creatures they appear and are reputed to be. We have excellent opportunities of observation, as these lively creatures keep close inshore, just outside the rocks, but within and amongst the breakers, which have no terrors for them. It is a rare sight to see a troop of porpoises coming head on towards the land on the crest of a roller. When caught by such a wave they turn with it, and as the great heave of water gathers itself up, walllike, and then curls over and darts down, smooth, green, and crushing, the line of porpoises may be clearly scen, at full length, regular as a squadron of cavalry, diving or rather rushing with the force of the wave into the stiller depths beneath the swirling foam.

Pleasant is it, too, to watch the porpoises leap, as I often have seen them do, clear over a breaker, or turn head over tail in their gambols, or catch at some roving fish, for which they are ever looking out. Sad havoc, indeed, do these voracious creatures make among their smaller

fellows, and a morning when no porpoises appear-a rare event--is a certain prelude to good sport.

At spring-tides, when the far-receding waves leave the rocks bare, at perfect paradise of seaside "wonders" is disclosed. The first day when we could get such a glimpse of the beauties which the sea hides happened to be Sunday, and our party were, I believe, none the worse for being compelled to wander in rapturous admiration, not amidst the fretted aisles of church or cathedral, but amidst these-the humblest, and yet the most mysterious, of Nature's works. The rocks were found to contain pool after pool, in bewildering numbers, each being in itself a most perfect and amply-furnished aquarium. Words cannot describe the purity of the water in these wave-worn cavities, but it will be understood perhaps when I say that on more than one occasion I have got a wetting by walking into one, under the delusion that it was dry. These pools are sometimes carpeted with sea-weed of vivid tints, with sponges, with fungi, or perhaps with sparkling and shell-strewn sand. All round the sides is a shaggy growth of sea-weed, while under tiny overhanging cliffs sea anemones nestle, or the starlike species of the sea urchin move curiously about. Multitudes of delicate and graceful little fish, with silvery, striped, golden, or speckled bodies, glide peacefully hither and thither, or, when disturbed, dart into some smaller out-pool—a sort of inner chamber, where the sea-weed grows thicker, the rock overhangs more, and a comfortable hiding-place can be found. The beautiful shells we pick up on the sands above are here seen animated, moving about the bottom, and taking an active part in the wonderful economy of the universe.

But time would fail me were I to write of these sub-aqueous glories as I should like to do. Their types and forms are so varied and new, their habits are so interesting and suggestive, their colours are so rich and mellow, and they, in their native loveliness, seem so confidently to defy the power of man to imitate or to match their beauties, that one could never tire of trying to do justice to such a theme. But there are other features of our watering-place yet to be described ere this rapid sketch ends. Not far up the coast the sea has scooped out of a mass of sandstone rocks three or four picturesque arches and caves, not large, but infinitely beautiful, as the afternoon sun glints through their chinks and crannies, and throws a glow upon the big boulders piled up in the background. Half-a-mile further we come to a little bay, hemmed in by tall rocks, but skirted by a delicious strip of hard firm sand. Behind and around rises, sheer from the water's edge to the height of 300 feet, an almost perpendicular hill, clothed with thick vegetation--rustling bananas, spiral aloes, and hanging creepers, whose evergreen tints are reflected, when the tide is up and the air is calm, in the waters below.

The vegetation of our shores would seem strange even to eyes accus