Royal Hotel,
Durban, Natal.
April 5th, 1900.
[DEAR MOTHER:]
We arrived here to-day and got off in a special tug
together. We did the basket trick all right, although the
next time it came down a swell raised the tug and fractured
every one in the basket except Sangree and Rogers, the two New
York correspondents who were hanging on by the upper edges.
Cecil loved the place
which is the Midway Plaisance of cities and we had a good
lunch and managed to get into the hotel where there are over
twenty cots in the reading room, and hall. The Commandant
objected to our going to Praetoria and seemed inclined to
refuse us passes to leave Durban for Delagoa Bay. He also was
rather fresh to Cecil, so I called him down very hard, and
told him if he couldn't make up his mind whether we would go
or not, I'd wire to some others who would help him to make up
his mind quickly. He said I was at liberty to do that, so I
went out and burned wires over all of South Africa. As he
reads all the telegrams he naturally read mine and the next
morning he was as humble and white as a head waiter. But by
ten o'clock my wires began to bear fruit and he began to catch
it. Milner wired him to send us on at once and apologized to
us by another wire so all is well and we go vouched for by the
High Commissioner.
DICK.
PRETORIAmarion, May 18th, 1900.
