when we all retired
to our kraals to rest.

On the following morning I met the old warrior who had put the necklace
on me, and sat down talking to him. He was very anxious to hear where I
had come from, and was much interested in the accounts I gave him of
India. He was puzzled to know how it was possible that our ships found
their way over the sea. There were no paths, he said, and the waves
were always altering their shape, so that he could not tell how they got
on. I told him that the men found their way by the sun and stars, but
this he could not comprehend. After some time I asked him to tell me
all he knew about his own people, and where they came from. He thought
for some time, and then gave me the following account. Spreading his
two hands on the ground he lifted the little finger of his left hand and
said, "That me." He then raised the next finger and said, "That my
father." He then raised the next and said, "That his father;" and so he
went on, to the thumb of the left hand, giving father after father.
"All these lived here," he said. Then he raised the thumb of his right
hand, and said, "That father lived in Zulu country, and quarrelled with
great chief there, and came down here."

"But how did those other fathers live?" I enquired.

He raised four more fingers, and pointing to the last said, "That father
live other side of the sun."

By this, I have since learned that he meant the other side of the
equator, or up near Somali.

"That father and all his people have great fight; too many people there,
so they come down slowly, and at last live in Zulu country. Those
fathers had strange animals that they used to ride on, and which went as
fast as an ostrich, but all these died as they came down country."

I understood from this that he meant his people formerly owned horses.

"Then," he continued, "we break up, some stop one place, some another--
we come here."

The old chief thus made out ten fathers, and, taking four generations
for a hundred, it made out that, about 250 years previously, the Caffres
must have resided not far from Nubia.

Two days after our feast all the Caffre visitors had gone home, and we
had settled down again to our usual quiet life.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

I must now pass over three years of my residence amongst the Caffres;
for although I had several adventures with wild animals, and my career
was full of interest, yet the events that occurred were very similar to