I can say nothing of the hotels at Durban because I was allowed to live at the club,—which is so peculiarly a colonial institution. Somebody puts your name down beforehand and then you drive up to the door and ask for your bedroom. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are provided at stated hours. At Durban two lunches were provided in separate rooms, a hot lunch and a cold lunch,—an arrangement which I did not see elsewhere. I imagine that the hot lunch is intended as a dinner to those who like to dine early. But, if I am not mistaken, I have seen the same faces coming out of the hot lunch and going in to the hot dinner. I should imagine that these clubs cannot be regarded with much favour by the Innkeepers as they take away a large proportion of the male travellers.
The population of Durban is a little in excess of that of the capital of the Colony, the one town running the other very close. They each have something above 4,000 white inhabitants, and something above half that number of coloured people. In regard to the latter there must I think be much uncertainty as they fluctuate greatly and live, many of them, nobody quite knows where. They are in fact beyond the power of accurate counting, and can only be computed. In Durban, as in Pieter Maritzburg, every thing is done by the Zulus,—or by other coloured people;—and when anything has to be done there is always a Zulu boy to do it. Nothing of manual work seems ever to be done by an European. The stranger would thus be led to believe that the coloured population is greater than the white. But Durban is a sea port town requiring
