fire. With our assagies we now cut up the buck and fried it over the fire, and had a great feast, eating about half the animal. The remainder we concealed on the branches of a tree, for we knew that if we left it on the ground, a jackal or leopard would find it, and we should get nothing on the following day. I was told by my companions that if the men knew we had killed this buck and had not carried it to the kraal, we should all be beaten; so I must keep the secret, for my own sake as well as theirs.

Our life was very simple and quiet; and I have often thought in later years, that the life led by these Caffres was perfect freedom and luxury, compared with the slavery endured by business men in cities. A Caffre who possessed a hundred head of cattle might have acquired these by his father giving him a cow and a calf when he was a boy. Cattle increase in almost geometrical rates. Thus a cow and a calf would probably become in ten years fifty head of cattle, and the young Caffre would be a man of independent fortune. As soon as a Caffre possesses cattle, he purchases a wife, and the limit to the number of his wives is only drawn by the amount of cattle he possesses. A young good-looking girl is purchased for from eight to ten cows. These are not always paid at once, three or four being given at the time of marriage, and the remainder paid in a year or two afterwards. A wife among these people is not a matter of expense only, as it is with civilised nations; but is a profitable investment, as the wives work in the mealie gardens, do the digging and the sowing, and at the time of harvest gather in the crops. If then a man possess three or four wives, he cultivates a large piece of ground and has plenty of corn, pumpkins, and other grain, and also has cows from which he obtains milk. The men never drank fresh milk, which they call ubisi: this they consider only fit for women and boys. They placed the fresh milk in large gourds made from dried pumpkins, and which contained about two quarts of milk, which was kept for some hours exposed to the sun; the gourd was then shaken, and again allowed to rest; in about three days the milk turned and became lumpy, and had a tart taste about it, and was really meat and drink. When in this state it was called amasi. This amasi and boiled mealies were food enough for the Caffres, meat being eaten only about once a month, when some wedding took place, or a hunting expedition was successful. The Caffre men did very little except milk the cows, which they never allowed the women to do, go out hunting, and have dances, and long talks in their kraals. I should like to know what more pleasant life could be passed by any man in a civilised country than this. Had I been older or more experienced when I was living among these people, I should have been more surprised than I was at the absence of all those wishes, and anxieties, which form the principal desires of men and women in civilised countries. These Caffres had no desire for more than they possessed, except as regards cattle, and thus afforded an excellent example of the proverbs that “He who curtails his wants increases his income,” and “He whose requirements are less than his means of supply, is the only rich man.”

I was so fully occupied with the work that was drawn out for me by the Caffres, that I had not thought with much anxiety about my late fellow-passengers. I wished, however, to see Constance, and now that I could speak a little in the Caffre language, I asked where she was, and when I could see her. My inquiry and wish seemed to puzzle Inyoni, who told me she was well, but that I must not see her yet, as the chief had so ordered it. So, during six months I never saw a white person, and by that time I was to all purposes a regular Caffre boy. I could speak the language well, I could click out the proper clicks at right words, could throw an assagy better than any Caffre boy of my size. I could run faster than other Caffre boys, though I could not keep it up so well, but for a quarter of a mile I was very fast. I knew nearly every cow’s name, and could whistle and drive a herd of cattle like a Caffre. The one thing from which I suffered was the tenderness of my feet. My boots had been worn out long since, and my feet, from having worn shoes all my life, were very tender; but each day they became harder, though I often had to stop and sit down when I had trodden on a sharp stone. My only suit of clothes was worn out, but I had made a set of what the Caffres considered clothes, but were merely strips of goat’s-skin about a foot long, fastened to a leather strap round my waist. This absence of dress I found caused me to be too hot in the warm weather and too cold in the early mornings and in the cold weather; but I hardened under the conditions, and soon did not mind it.

There was an amusement that I and my two companions carried on which I afterwards found very useful. This was to procure two or three straight canes about five feet long: one end of these we used to cover with clay, we then stood opposite each other, and danced and jumped about, and then suddenly threw these at, each other, using them like an assagy. At first the Caffres used to hit me at nearly every shot, and I never touched them; but after considerable practice I became as expert as they were, and could spring on one side so as just to avoid the blow, or throw myself down, or turn the spear aside with my shield, which was an oval-shaped piece of ox-hide. At about thirty paces from each other we could never hit one another, and then we closed in till one of us was hit. We used to keep a score on a stick of the number of hits against each of us, a notch in the stick being the mark. In after years, when it was a matter of life and death, the training and practice I had gained in my boyhood was of vital importance to me in avoiding an assagy, when one was thrown at me, and my dexterity in throwing one soon became known among the tribe with which I lived. The things I could accomplish with the assagy were the following. I could throw an assagy sixty paces, which, for a boy, was very good, but two or three of the men could throw the same assagy ninety paces. At forty paces I could hit a mark as big as a man’s head about every other shot. I could throw the assagy either overhand or underhand, quivering it at the same time. If thrown overhand, the hand was held above the shoulder, and the arm from the hand to the elbow was vertical when the assagy left the hand. When thrown underhand, the back of the hand was down, and the arm from the hand to the elbow was horizontal when the spear left the hand. This underhand throwing was very effective in taking your adversary by surprise; for if you jumped about quickly and made feints, pretending to throw overhand, then suddenly throwing underhand, he very often could not dodge quickly enough to escape the weapon.

I never left my hut without one or two assagies and a knob-kerrie in my hand; for close to our kraal there were leopards, hyaenas, and other animals that were very dangerous.

There was one accomplishment that I had acquired from my companions that I had thought about night and day, and which I found very fascinating. This was “spooring,” as the English and Dutch in South Africa call it; that is, telling by the footprints what animals have passed over the ground, when they passed, and at what pace. This study is quite an art, and I occupied many months in arriving at even a superficial knowledge of the subject. Although I of course had no opportunity of learning arithmetic or any of those things that boys learn in English schools, yet I had my brain exercised by such studies as spooring and the observation necessary to enable me to practise the art. To spoor well it is necessary to know many things that appear at first sight to have nothing to do with the question. One of the things to learn was to break off branches of various sizes from different trees, to place these in the sunshine and in the shade, and then to notice how long it took for these leaves and branches to