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assagies, some club-sticks, a pipe made from an ox's horn, some skins, a few dried gourds to retain the milk, a wooden pillow, some beads, and small gourd snuff-boxes. These habitations are certainly snug, warm when a fire is lighted, and cool without one. They are entered by a small opening about three feet high, which is closed by a wickerwork door. The whole clump of huts is surrounded by high palings. Although they numbered near seventy thousand souls, if not more, these Kaffirs lived together, and with the white intruders, in the greatest harmony. Scarcely a case of theft or crime was known amongst them during my residence of two years and upwards. Many of them have run away from the tyranny of the Zulu king across the Tugela river; and finding safety in the protection afforded by the presence of the white men, they live a pastoral and harmless life. I have trusted myself alone amongst them, many miles from any other white man, and never met with anything disrespectful or annoying in their treatment. If much accustomed to deal with white men, they are given sometimes to ask for presents; but the less they know of the whites, the less I always found the Kaffirs so disposed. As auxiliaries in the bush they were unequalled, and I rarely moved without taking at least two with me. Enduring, cheerful, sensible, and unassuming, they were thoroughly skilled in tracking game; they could be sent home with a buck, and the horse thus be kept unencumbered, or the hunter himself free for more sport. I was always gathering some lesson from them either as to the animals which we pursued, their habits or their trail, the things good to eat in the forests or those to be avoided. The Kaffirs' ambition was limited, a cow or a blanket being sometimes the extent of their desires. In a country of this description one has the pleasure of great freedom. It is certainly pleasant for once in a life to feel like a wild man,--to throw off all the restraints imposed by the rules of society, and to wander, unwatched, uncriticised, amongst the wonders and beauties of nature. Dress, that all-important subject in civilised countries, and about which the minds of hundreds are wholly engrossed, is here a dead letter, or nearly so. Could a man dye his hide a dark brown, he might walk about with a few strips of wild-beast skins hung around him, and not attract particular attention. Novelty has certainly a wonderful charm, and perhap
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