D

URBAN :

South Africa's Seaside Resort

CHAPTER IV

Durban : The Town

UST as no man by taking thought may add one cubit to his stature, so no pen, even that of a Rudyard Kipling or a Rider Haggard, can add to or take from the beauties inherent in the many interesting records which have made the eolony of Natal famous, and the seaside town of Durban a first favourite with health-seekers and tourists, not only in South Afriea but with those who come from beyond her borders. But while it is not given to mere man to adequately express in pen pictures the charm of this beauty spot, which nature has painted during one of her more lavish moods, it is possible in several ways to bring these beauties into closer toueh with the over- worked business man—grown siek of the eternal dust of the Transvaal and the materialism and turmoil of its golden pivot—the isolated dwellers on the veldt änd remote farms, the up-eountry townsman, and the touring public who may visit these shores.

Max O'Rell once referred to Duroan as " the prettiest and most coquettish town in the South African Colonies," and if that be the opinion of a visitor and writer of much insight and Observation a decade ago, what would be the opinion of those who visited the seaside town and port of Durban to-day—after its years of wakefulness and watchfulness in all matters of municipal import ?

But the novelist with his delicate distinction in the use of the English vocabulary, displayed wisdom in selecting the epithet " coquettish," for the word seems exactly to express one—if not the —peculiar charm of Durban, with the

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