Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/18

14 Cape Town by the Saxon on August 18, calling at Port Elizabeth and New London, or by the Durham Castle, leaving the following evening and going direct to Durban. The times were so arranged that every one arrived there on the morning of Tuesday, August 22. There is practically only one good natural harbor for ships of large tonnage on the east coast of South Africa—that of Delagoa Bay, in Portuguese territory. Much money has therefore been spent in improving the harbor at Durban by building a long mole and by dredging the shallow channel which leads into a large protected lagoon. It is now possible for the mail boats to go inside and tie up alongside of the quays. One



was struck immediately on landing by the mixture of the east and the west. Jinrickshas drawn by Zulu boys with their picturesque head-dresses, ordinary two-horse carriages, and electric cars on the trolley system carried the passengers along well-made roads bordered by trees, to private houses and hotels, where they were waited on by Indian servants. Shops of all kinds, a big department store, English churches and chapels, a synagogue, a mosque, three-storied residences, bungalows—all these made it difficult for us to realize that we were in a town which has been British territory since its foundation in 1823. As at Cape Town, there were receptions, lectures and excursions to the more interesting works of nature and man. There were only two days allotted to Durban and the majority of the party spent the greater part of one of them at Mount Edgecombe, some fourteen miles away, where the factory of the Natal Sugar Estates is situated. The company had