Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/226

 heard Mr. Riley say he intended to stop there. Most of the passengers will spend the night ashore, as a relief from the long experience with ship beds and ship fare. The negro ricksha men who pulled us to the hotel wore cow-horns on their heads, and pieces of leopard skin on their backs. The rickshas were marked: "For Europeans only," and the negroes carried us to the hotel on a keen trot, for a shilling each. Our men carried cow-bells, which they rang frequently as warning for pedestrians to get out of the way I have not lately been surprised as agreeably as I am in Durban. Instead of being a rough, crude place, it is one of the finest cities I have ever seen. The hotel at which we are staying is as fine in every way as the Australia in Sydney, a city of over half a million, and the price is the same: $3.60 per day, including everything. The town hall in Durban is almost as fine as the capital in some of the Australian states; and this town of sixty thousand people, half of them black, has parks, business blocks, zoölogical gardens, and private residences that would do credit to any city of any size anywhere. We hired a new Overland automobile, driven by an intelligent Englishman, and although gasoline costs forty cents a gallon here, the charge was only $3 an hour. He took us to one of the finest bathing-beaches I have seen anywhere, and many of the hotels around it would be creditable in Atlantic City. Durban is tropical, and the luxuriant growths of flowers and plants reminded us of Honolulu. Another thing I did not know about Durban is that it has thousands of Hindus; citizens of India. All the servants at the hotel where we are staying are Hindus, and wear the picturesque