Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/242

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the whites are refusing them license to do business. If they are willing to work as laborers, for low wages, well and good, but if they attempt to engage in business for themselves, they are to be told that business is for Europeans only. . . . The present storm is the worst in two years. This afternoon I went past the harbor, and saw great waves dashing over the sea-*wall and lighthouse. I also saw four ships lying outside, waiting to get in, and a number inside waiting to get out. No ship has passed in or out of Durban harbor since the arrival of the Atchison hoodoo, and forty bath-houses at the beach were demolished by the waves Tuesday morning. . . . A man who has lived here fifty-four years tells me that while this section is very good for agriculture, lung fever carries off so many cattle and horses as to seriously threaten the stock-raising industry. . . . When a native African woman marries, she mixes clay with her wool, and makes a circular dome out of it which looks like a stove-pipe hat tilted on the back of the head. This head-dress forces the woman to sleep on a wooden pillow, as the Japanese women do, since the hair when once put up is not taken down for months. . . . The Natal Mercury, a Durban paper I buy every morning, contained the following amusing telegram in its issue for today: "London, March 4.—Reuter's correspondent in Washington telegraphs that Dr. W. Wilson has arrived there, preparatory to his induction into the presidency. Suffragists have been debarred from participating in the presidential procession. Numbers of the demonstrators paraded yesterday, and women mounted on horseback helped the police to clear the