sends a first-class steamer once a month from Southampton to Algoa Bay, without touching at Capetown.
Port Elizabeth, as I walked away from the quay up to the club where I took up my residence, seemed to be as clean, as straight, and as regular as a first class American little town in the State of Maine. All the world was out on a holyday. It was the birthday of the Duke of Edinburgh, and the Port-Elizabethians observed it with a loyalty of which we know nothing in England. Flags were flying about the ships in the harbour and every shop was closed in the town. I went up all alone with my baggage to the club, and felt very desolate. But everybody I met was civil, and I found a bedroom ready for me such as would be an Elysium, in vain to be sought for in a first class London hotel. My comfort, I own, was a little impaired by knowing that I had turned a hospitable South African out of his own tenement. On that first day I was very solitary, as all the world was away doing honour somewhere to the Duke of Edinburgh.
In the evening I went out, still alone, for a walk and, without a guide, found my way to the public park and the public gardens. I cannot say that they are perfect in horticultural beauty and in surroundings, but they are spacious, with ample room for improvement, well arranged as far as they are arranged, and with a promise of being very superior to anything of the kind at Capetown. The air was as sweet, I think, as any that I ever breathed. Through them I went on, leaving the town between me and the sea, on to a grassy illimitable heath on which, I told myself, that with
