The whole of the first day's journey was over ground made historic in the war of the Axe in 1846, and in subsequent Kaffir wars. My one travelling companion the post-contractor at Umtata, had held a

Sir Thomas Upington; as he went through the pile of letters with a map of South Africa, remarked: "Now, if you could only extend your tour into native territory, you would at the end of it have seen more of Africa south of the Trans-lieutenant's commission in the more recent vaal, not only than any traveller from the old country, but than any Africander." Just as he was uttering the words the door opened, and in walked Mr. de Wet, the secretary for native affairs, who had that morning returned from an official tour in the Transkei. "This is providential," said the attorney-general; and before the interview ended I had decided to visit Kaffraria, the minister for native affairs promising to ask the chief magistrate of Tembuland to summon a pitso · -a great gathering of native chiefs.

A month later, after a wonderful journey of over a thousand miles through the southern parts of Cape Colony, I left King William's Town on my way into Kaffirland. The people in the old frontier town had advised me, as my time was not unlimited, to push on by post-cart from Kei Road through the Transkei as far as Umtata, the capital of Tembuland. The road at first lay through miles of monotonous rolling veldt, and after an hour or two of driving in the low Cape-cart drawn by six horses, the air was so clear that our destination at night was plainly visible when still fifty miles away. This was the Amaxosa country, the scene of the great cattle-slaughter of 1857. To a young girl, Nongquanse, a Kaffir Marie Bernadette, there appeared on the banks of a stream the spirit of a dead chief, who bade her tell the nation to slay all the cattle of their vast herds, and to destroy all the corn stored in pits. Then on a certain day myriads of oxen would issue from the earth to take the place of the slaughtered kine; fields of ripe, waving corn would spring up; the ancient warriors of the past would reappear; and the sky would fall to crush the whites and the Fingo dogs. Agents of the British government and missionaries vainly tried to stem the frenzy. Two hundred thousand hides of slaughtered cattle were bartered to traders for trifles, and great kraals were prepared for the promised herds. Thousands of the Amaxosa race were famishing even before the appointed day; at sunrise the whole na tion was watching for the morning, and as the hours went by without any of the portents appearing, the Kaffirs awoke to the reality hat they had been duped. In British Kaffraria alone there perished that year of famine nearly seventy thousand natives.

Gcaika and Gcaleka campaign, and entertained me with his adventures. He pointed out a spot where in one engagement he could not extract the cartridge from his rifle. A native, seeing him thus helpless, threw an assegai at him, which struck his saddle. A friendly Fingo now came up and went for the Gcaika at close quarters. The two Africans pointed their guns at one another's foreheads, and the officer, incapacitated from helping his ally, gazed expecting to see two black heads blown to atoms; both pulled their triggers - and both had forgotten to load!

In our first stage, the grass of the rolling veldt looked as green as English pastures in June, beneath the deep blue sky; but presently heavy clouds began to gather, and a terrific thunderstorm raged all round us. We escaped the worst of it; but later in the day we climbed a mountain road, strewn with giant boulders washed down by the deluge, and the next morning we passed a kraal where three native women had been struck dead by the lightning - the Kaffir huts, notwithstanding their lowness, frequently attracting thunderbolts. As the Kei River was approached, beyond the straggling village of Komgha, the country became very picturesque, the mimosa-trees, fragrant after the rain, giving it the appearance of a park laid out amid mountain terraces, till suddenly the Kei bridge came in sight-the finest bridge in Cape Colony - uniting the old eastern province and Kaffraria.

On the river-bank squatted a group of Red Kaffirs-six young men, all well built, and all adorned with great care - Fingo mashers. On their heads they wore a fan-like erection of feathers; their blankets had slipped down and they sat in complete nudity, excepting for their necklaces of beads, armlets and anklets of metal, rings or feathers pierced through their ears, and the minute adornment which Kaffir modesty ordains for its males. They sang a monotonous chant, swinging their arms from their heads to the ground, and when it was done they got up, threw their blankets over their bodies as gracefully as a Spaniard adjusts his poncho, and with an insolent air swaggered into the canteen of the Kei Bridge Hotel. These boys are the worst class of natives to deal with, in their pride at having

passed the age of circumcision. They | refuse to work, but when brought before the magistrates plead that they are poor blacks. They form the class in which the native difficulties will lie in the future. English rule has disestablished the authority of the chiefs to which their fathers looked, and these youths are growing up bereft of their tradition, with nothing else to reverence in its place. Tembuland had just been given the franchise; but though the black population is estimated in proportion to the whites as two hundred to one, the restriction which disallows the qualification in respect of property held tribally makes the proportions of the electorate in the opposite ratio of black and white.

We lay that night at Toleni, where, on a mountain-top, a long, low building containing post-office, store, and inn, stands among a cluster of Fingo huts, shaped like beehives, with roofs of thatch and walls of mud. From this point to Umtata the postal authorities allow twenty hours for the mail-carts, but as the swift Kaffir horses can do the distance in fourteen, the hour for starting is four in the morning instead of ten at night, thus giving the rare passengers a little rest. The solitude of the green plains at sunrise is unbroken save for some flocks of stork. The natives are not matutinal, and nothing stirring is seen round about the frequent kraals till the day is well aired. The first signs of life we encountered were at Ibeka, a station of the Cape Mounted Rifles, one of the smartest military bodies in the empire, and most serviceable in native warfare. The men came running round the cart from the native huts they inhabit to receive the mails, the enormous size of the bags being explained by the fact that many of these young braves are Englishmen of respectable family, whose chief link with the old country is the receipt of newspapers from regretful rela

tives.

buland ran up to help us outspan. The horses being unloosed, the Kaffirs drove them into the river, shouting and clapping their hands as they were borne down the stream by the current. On to a primitive pontoon the blacks lifted the cart with loud cries of "hamba," in sound not unlike the Neapolitan jammo, and of equiv alent meaning; and so we passed out of Fingoland.

At Umtentu, in Tembuland proper, that afternoon we espied a great multitude of kaffirs assembled in a kraal, and found that the headman had just completed his brewing, and was entertaining all the neighboring kraals at a beer-drinking. Most of the men squatted within a wat tled enclosure ladling out the beer from barrels, and drinking it from pumpkin calabashes; while the women sat in rows before the huts, many of them carrying children slung in blankets behind. For a consideration the men, and afterwards the women, agreed to dance. The dancers did not lift their feet from the ground, but, letting their blankets slip, they advanced slowly with a quivering motion, their breasts protruding and all their mus cles shaking, while they brandished their clubs and assegais aloft. The women meanwhile chanted a wild accompani. ment, clapping their hands till their turn came, when they stripped themselves to the waist, and advanced in line with animated postures and gestures. The only dignified figures in the dance were the unhappy babes, who, swathed in blankets, had their young heads whacked against their mother's glossy backs, without for a moment losing their imperturbable com. posure. This early discipline more probably accounts for the hardness of the Kaffir skull than the theory of exposure to the sun. After the remuneration had been distributed, and as we were driving away, a dozen boys and girls followed us asking for directions about the division of the money, as some of the visitors were of the Pondo nation, which neither loves nor respects the Fingos, who were present in large numbers; so we departed leaving a likely prospect of black wigs on the green that night.

Whenever we ascended a rise we could now see before us the great Drakensberg range, which, rising in Pondoland, runs right through Natal into the Transvaal. On all sides scenes of native life met us. Two tiny boys, black as jet and stark Umtata, which we reached before sunnaked, ran among a flock of goats; each set, after a drive of ninety miles, is a long, seized one by the horns, and, leaping on straggling village, which, from the chartheir backs, they galloped after us for a acter of its architecture, looks in the mile. Now we descended to the Bashu distance like the preparation for an agriRiver, so swollen by yesterday's storm cultural show. The rolling hills above that the drift could not be forded. As we the river, which is the frontier of inde went down the steep declivity to the roar-pendent Pondoland, resemble the Sussex ing stream six naked non-electors of Tem-downs, and the Kaffir huts, like stumpy

21

IE

2

ricks, keep up the illusion that the scene | ger from Umtata had announced the comis in England. Here, in the little town, ing of the stranger, and the "leopard's Major Elliot dwells in a cluster of native tail" had forthwith been sent round to all huts which stand in a large garden, and the headmen. This is the fiery cross of administers justice as chief magistrate of the Pondos. The tail of a leopard mounted a great native province, with power of life on a rod, when found within a kraal, is and death over the people, who consider known to be a silent summons for the themselves his subjects, and him the em- headman to repair to the chief's “ "great bodiment of British rule in South Africa. place," or wherever the chief is. The My time being somewhat limited, the Eastern family is paramount in Pondomajor decided that as it would be impos- land, but the Western chief, who is not in sible to assemble a "pitso" of large pro- the succession, is the grand elector, and portions, in the absence of the principal Nquiliso's uncle, Mquikela, being dead, tributary chief at an exhibition at Gra- our entertainer was in the unpleasant pohamstown, a better plan would be that sition of having to nominate a successor Mr. Merriman, the magistrate of Umtata, from among four more or less powerful should take me for an expedition into candidates. Pondoland, and a messenger was forthwith despatched to the chief Nquiliso to request him to summon a meeting of his tribe to welcome a visitor from over the great sea.

Nqailiso, who looked rather like Aida's father in the opera, thanked the magistrate for the friendliness of his message to the effect that the visit was not for the purpose of making any claim, but merely to introduce a traveller, and he added: "The stranger must eat of my bread." This is the modest form which the Bantus of the coast use to offer a guest "a white ox of the herd." As it appeared to me rather embarrassing to have to go through Africa for the rest of my travels driving a cow, it was explained that after accepting it I might offer it again to the tribe for a feast. the Faste of flesh being a rare treat for the natives, notwithstanding the vastness of their herds, which are kept unimpaired as an outward sign of wealth, excepting when used for purposes of barter. Immediately half-a-dozen naked Pondos rushed into the drove, and seizing by the horns a white ox, they threw it on the ground and cut its throat barbarously with assegais. While it was being skinned almost before it was lifeless, a circle was formed of the chief, his counsellors, and people. Nquiliso and his guests sat on a bench, which was probably a missionary

Two mornings later we set out on horseback, accompanied by two young officials, one of whom was an admirable interpreter, and our sole escort was a mounted Kaffir policeman. A few miles outside British territory we passed through a prosperouslooking kraal, full of sleek oxen. This belonged to an opulent headman, whose wealth so excited the chief's cupidity, that the witch-doctors were bidden to find a pretext for "smelling out" the owner of the fat cattle. It was a time of drought, and the witch-doctors soon discovered that he had large stores of grain in his pits, so they charged him with sorcery, inasmuch as he had defied the elements by making a disrespectful gesture at the sun. The rain, however, came, and his life was spared for that occasion. As we were upsaddling after our midday rest, there passed us a man driving a small flock of goats and several head of cattle. This was the husband of a lady physician who is ruining the practice of the local witch-relic. Outside our circle sat a wild-looking doctors, and he was taking home his wife's fee for attending a patient.

At last we reached the chief's kraal. A large drove of horses showed that a numerous gathering had assembled. The kraal was not unlike other Kaffir villages, but the round enclosure for cattle was rather bigger, and there were a greater number of mud-and-wattled huts grouped around. Outside a vast herd of cattle was grazing, of which hereafter. Nquiliso, chief of western Pondoland, was easily recognized by his cap of royal leopard's skin, and as we dismounted he advanced to meet us, and received us with imposing dignity. The previous night the messen

group, a deputation from the Konjwayi — the people of Gwadiso, the most considerable of the minor chiefs, who were waging war with the Pondos, and had come to talk over a demand of cattle as war indemnity for men slain in battle; but our host had said that as he was entertaining he could not talk till to-morrow.

When we had settled ourselves in a circle, the raw, smoking liver of the ox was handed round, which the Pondos devoured, holding the meat aloft in the one hand, and with the other slicing off a gobbet which fell into the mouth. Nquiliso then asked if we had brought him a present, whereupon the magistrate produced a

small jar of whiskey. A rude cup was and title connected with the Beaufort fambrought, and the chief himself fished out ily, as if it were a London building estate. from bag of beaded skin a corkscrew! Sir Hercules Robinson, whose rule in days Our native constable had first to taste, to to come will probably be accounted more show that the drink-offering was not poi- successful than that of any British adminsoned. Then the chief drained a bumper istrator who preceded him at the Cape, himself, and after offering the cup to us, may congratulate himself that as yet no he passed it to some of the counsellors Herculaneum has been dedicated to him; sitting on his left hand, who drank with but it will hardly be credited that the name much dignity, one of them remarking that of a brave and unfortunate commander is the liquid was "softer than fat." Then vilely travestied in a Kaffrarian settlement Nquiliso beckoned to a young and hand-called Colleywobbles. After that, the some boy with almost Grecian features, suburbs of Kimberley named Gladstone not to drink himself, but only to act as and Beaconsfield are models of Cockney cup-bearer to the chief's " great son refinement and originality. Boklène, who sat a little in advance of the circle upon a kaross of buckskin. The cup was thus borne to him, this distinction being reserved for the heir, all the others, counsellors and headmen, coming up to the chief till the jar was exhausted. Boklène is a good-looking, disdainful individual of eight-and-twenty. He has seven wives and as many children. For two years he was a student in the Wesleyan seminary at Buntingville, about twenty miles from the kraal where we were, but he has completely relapsed into the habits of his tribe; perhaps the name of Buntingville was too much for his fastidious feelings.

The expansion of the Anglo-Saxon race, with all its civilizing benefits, is vulgarizing the habitable globe, and in no particular is this more striking than in the nomenclature of new settlements. In South Africa this importation of Americanisms, like Buntingville, is the more wanton, as the old Bantu names of places are singularly musical. The Dutch were offenders in this respect before we came, but where a name has historical significance, whether Boer or British, there is some excuse for it. For instance, it is not uninterest. ng to trace the etymology of the quaint town of Stellenbosch to a combination of the patronymics of Governor van der Stell and his wife Constantia Bosch, whose Christian name also lives in the famous vineyard beneath Table Mountain. Or again, no one could complain if each English governor or colonial statesman of mark left his name attached to one burgh or province. No one would grudge this amount of immortality for the valiant and eccentric Sir Harry Smith; but Harrismith, Ladismith, Aliwal North, and Aliwal South, are reiterations as ugly as they are needless; and because Lord Charles Somerset once governed Cape Colony, that is no reason why South Africa should be studded with every name

To return to the young Pondo chieftain. I beckoned to me a native who was smok ing a curious inlaid pipe, and he had agreed to sell it to me, when Boklène, who had been eying the transaction, arose, and with a gesture of great dignity ordered the man to return the money, saying: "The stranger is our guest; whatever he desires must be a gift; " so the coin had subsequently to be slipped surreptitiously into the pipe-owner's palm. Conversation then became general with the aid of our clever interpreter the old chief, with all the courtly unction of an Italian monsignore, repeating his expressions of gratitude for a friendly visit of ceremony without any disagreeable business in the background, and of hope that it was the beginning of a new era. We asked if the tribe had any grievance. Boklène said that their chief trouble was an epidemic of pleuro-pneumonia; that they hoped that the English surgeon of Umtata might come and inoculate them, as similar treatment for smallpox had saved the tribe. His own powerful arms bore the vaccination marks; and he added, amid much laughter, that the witch-doctors ascribed the present epidemic to the ma.ig. nant influence of a monkey and a snake, but that the day of the witch-doctors had ended-upon which assertion we received a gruesome commentary that very night.

There was an aged counsellor, whose noble features were Arab rather than Bantu, who plied me with questions about the great white chief over the seas—a subject, as Livingstone testifies, always of the deepest interest to the children of the African wilderness. I explained that she was a woman-a queen; that she had reigned for more than half a hundred years; and that her fiftieth anniversary had been celebrated by "a great dance given to all the nation, at which many oxen were slain." "Has she a great son, and what is his age?" I told him of the