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