s it may be for this reason that a man fresh from
civilisation feels so much pleasure in sharing the pastimes and
excitements of the savage. A wet tent is by no means an agreeable
residence, and frequently during the heavy rains that visited Natal, I
shouldered my gun, and paid an afternoon call to some Kaffirs who lived
a mile or so from my camping-ground. We had plenty of conversation, and
could afford mutual instruction about many subjects on which we were
each respectively ignorant. I believe that, if we inquire without
partiality, we shall find no man so ignorant but that there is some one
subject upon which he can instruct us. I rarely found a Kaffir who
could not afford me a vast amount of information on many subjects; and
all the cunning and art of an English lawyer would scarcely improve the
Kaffir's style of reasoning. I believe that common sense is more
admired by the savage than the civilised man; it certainly is by the
savages with whom I have conversed. While in civilisation the most
sensible and sound arguments or advice are "pooh-poohed" or neglected,
because they happen to come from one who is unknown in the world for
wealth, position, or fashion, amongst savages these same arguments or
advices are received at their proper valuation, irrespective of the soil
from whence they spring. The words of a chief or _induna_ [Councillor]
are generally worth hearing, and consequently receive their proper
respect; but if the logic used by either happens to be unsound, any
common man whose capacity is equal to the competition may enter the
lists, and come out victorious; a Kaffir is not too bigoted to
acknowledge that he may have been wrong. The man who thus gained a
victory by his more sensible argument would neither be much elevated nor
proud in consequence, but would merely consider himself as a man who had
pointed out a by-path that had been overlooked by the traveller. The
Kaffirs easily appreciate reasoning by analogy; I frequently tried its
powers upon them, and with invariable success. On one occasion an old
Kaffir laughed at me, because of a mistake that I made in speaking his
language. I used the word _inyama_ to express _black_, when I should
have used _mnyama_; the former word signifying _flesh_ or _meat_. After
he had laughed immoderately, I asked him how long he had known
Englishmen; he said, many tens of moons. I then said, "How much English
do you speak?"

"None."

"Why not?"

"Becau