n the water, and sometimes up to the arm-pits, when a
bigger wave than usual came roaring in. The boat itself was so large
that, as they stood beside it, their heads barely rose to a level with
the gunwale. The boatmen at once began to heave and roll the goods over
the side. The Kafirs received them on their heads or shoulders,
according to the shape or size of each package--and they refused
nothing. If a bale or a box chanced to be too heavy for one man, a
comrade lent assistance; if it proved still too heavy, a third added his
head or shoulder, and the box or bale was borne off.

One fellow, like a black Hercules, put his wrapper on his head, and his
head under a bale, which I thought would crush him down into the surf,
but he walked ashore with an easy springing motion, that showed he
possessed more than sufficient power. Another man, hitting Hercules a
sounding smack as he went by, received a mighty cask on his head that
should have cracked it--but it didn't. Then I observed the boatmen
place on the gunwale an enormous flat box, which seemed to me about ten
feet square. It was corrugated iron, they told me, of, I forget, how
many hundredweight. A crowd of Kafirs got under it, and carried it
ashore as easily as if it had been a butterfly. But this was nothing to
a box which next made its appearance from the bowels of that capacious
boat. It was in the form of a cube, and must have measured nine or ten
feet in all directions. Its contents I never ascertained, but the
difficulty with which the boatmen got it rested on the side of the boat
proved its weight to be worthy of its size. To get it on the shoulders
of the Kafirs was the next difficulty. It was done by degrees. As the
huge case was pushed over the edge, Kafir after Kafir put his head or
shoulder to it, until there were, I think, from fifteen to twenty men
beneath the weight;--then, slowly, it left the boat, and began to move
towards the shore.

Assuredly, if four or five of these men had stumbled at the same moment,
the others would have been crushed to death, but not a man stumbled.
They came ashore with a slow, regular, almost dancing gait, humming a
low monotonous chant, as if to enable them to step in time, and making
serio-comic motions with arms and hands, until they deposited safely in
a cart a weight that might have tested Atlas himself!

It seemed obvious that these wild men, (for such they truly were), had
been gifted with all the pow