m us served them right for their
carelessness. It seemed so hard they should suffer both ways, and they
were so good-tempered and uncomplaining about it, that I fear I shall
find it very difficult to stop any threepenny pieces out of their wages
in future. A Kafir servant usually gets one pound a month, his clothes
and food. The former consists of a shirt and short trousers of coarse
check cotton, a soldier's old great-coat for winter, and plenty of
mealy-meal for "scoff." If he is a good servant and worth making
comfortable, you give him a trifle every week to buy meat. Kafirs are
very fond of going to their kraals, and you have to make them sign an
agreement to remain with you so many months, generally six. By the time
you have just taught them, with infinite pains and trouble, how to do
their work, they depart, and you have to begin it all over again.

I frequently see the chiefs or indunas of chiefs passing here on their
way to some kraals which lie just over the hills. These kraals consist
of half a dozen or more large huts, exactly like so many huge beehives,
on the slope of a hill. There is a rude attempt at sod-fencing round
them; a few head of cattle graze in the neighborhood; lower down, the
hillside is roughly scratched by the women with crooked hoes to form a
mealy-ground. (Cows and mealies are all they require except snuff or
tobacco, which they smoke out of a cow's horn.) They seem a very gay and
cheerful people, to judge by the laughter and jests I hear from the
groups returning to these kraals every day by the road just outside our
fence. Sometimes one of the party carries an umbrella; and I assure you
the effect of a tall, stalwart Kafir, clad either in nothing at all or
else in a sack, carefully guarding his bare head with a tattered Gamp,
is very ridiculous. Often some one walks along playing upon a rude pipe,
whilst the others jog before and after him, laughing and capering like
boys let loose from school, and all chattering loudly. You never meet a
man carrying a burden unless he is a white settler's servant. When a
chief or the induna of a kraal passes this way, I see him, clad in a
motley garb of red regimentals with his bare "ringed" head, riding a
sorry nag, only the point of his great toe resting in his stirrup. He is
followed closely and with great _empressement_ by his "tail," all
"ringed" men also--that is, men of some substance and weight in the
community. They carry bundles of sticks, and k