In the year 1841, a young Englishman, without fortune, friends, or prospects in his own country, not unwisely resolved to seek all three in a land where the race of life is run upon a less crowded course than in thickly-peopled Britain. He embarked for the antipodes. His ship must have sailed on a Friday—unless, indeed, we may attribute the mishaps and disasters she encountered to a deficient outfit and an incompetent captain. Compelled to put into Portsmouth to amend bad stowage, she next cast anchor—after being buffeted by storms, wearisomely becalmed, and visited by the small-pox—in a Brazilian port, there to take in live-stock and fresh provisions. Once more at sea, it was soon discovered that these—for whose reception three weeks had been idled away at Bahia—would scarcely last three weeks longer. So a pause must be made at the Cape. The ship was a tub, the captain a bungler, the lighthouse (since removed) was invisible where most needed. The vessel struck on the rocks of Table Bay, upon which, all night long, the breakers furiously hurled her to and fro. The darkness was profound, the ship full of water, rescue seemed hopeless, the boom of the signal-guns was drowned by the roar of the storm. At last succour came. Five gallant fellows perished in bringing it, but perished not in vain. Crew and passengers were taken off the wreck. Life was saved, but goods were lost. After five tedious months, which, with ordinary skill and foresight, should have brought the young emigrant to his final destination, he found himself stranded at the Cape, instead of landed at New Zealand; his clothes, money, letters—all he possessed, in short—buried, fathoms deep, beneath the stormy billows of the South Atlantic.

To this calamity are we indebted for the spirited volume before us. The proverb about "an ill wind" exactly fits the occasion. After a while a ship was chartered for those who chose to proceed to New Zealand. Mr Cole was not of the number. He had conceived a liking for the Cape Colony, and proposed remaining there. He did so for five years, with what amount of profit we are not informed, but evidently passing his time pleasantly, and departing with regret. He made himself well acquainted with Cape life in most of its phases, and amongst all classes; and he has cleverly transferred to paper the vivid impressions he received.

How Mr Cole occupied himself during his residence at the Cape does not appear from his narrative. His active disposition, as well as his own statement of his slender means, forbids the supposition of rambling for mere amusement's sake. Whatever his employment, he travelled much, and visited most parts of the colony, preferring the rural districts to the towns. The first glimpse he gives of South African scenery is pleasing enough. With a fellow-passenger he drives out to Rondesbosch, "the Richmond of Cape Town," a pleasant cluster of handsome houses, with large gardens. Thence, along an excellent road, to Wynberg, another agreeable village.

"Beyond Wynberg the road loses its trim, pretty, artificial appearance, and becomes more African and barren. No, not barren either; for who could apply such a term to land covered with an innumerable variety of Cape heaths in full bloom?—aloes, wild stocks, and a thousand other delicate and lovely plants, making a natural carpet, more beautiful than all the corn-fields and gardens of civilisation. This road leads to Constantia, famed for the delicious wine to which it gives its name."

A history of celebrated vineyards would be a work attractive alike to the antiquarian and to the bon vivant. Strange that it has never been written, considering how many it would interest. Its author would not fail to note the peculiarity of certain small spots of ground, differing to all appearance in no way from hundreds of thousands of neighbouring acres, save in the quality of their grape juice. Near at hand, the Rhine ascending, St John's Mount furnishes an example. Far south of the line, thousands of leagues removed, Constantia's hill repeats the marvel.

"There are but three farms, situated on the side of a hill, where the grape producing this beautiful wine grows. It has been tried, but without success, in various other parts of the colony. Even a mile from the hill, the wine is of a very inferior description. The hill is named after the wife of one of the former governors of the Cape—whether from the lady's too great fondness for its productions, history sayeth not. The Constantia wine-farmers are rich men, and have elegant and well-furnished houses, surrounded by gardens and their vineyards. The names of the three farms and their proprietors are—High Constantia, Van Reenen; Great Constantia, Cloete; Little Constantia, Coligne. A visit to them is a treat."

So thought Jones, a thirsty Cockney, who shared the buggy with Mr Cole. The "pikeman" grinned as they paid the toll and inquired the way to the renowned vineyards. "He hoped," he said, "they'd look as well when they comed back." A demand for an explanation was met by the deprecatory reply, "that he meant no offence, but had see'd many look very different arter swallowing the sweet stuff up there—that's all." Whereupon Jones, indignant, savagely whipped the hired nag, and they soon reached Great Constantia.

"We visited the vineyards, which are kept beautifully neat and trim; and we then went to the storehouses, which are models of cleanliness. Here we tasted a dozen varieties of the delicious wine; and I began to have an exact idea of the pikeman's observation. Nothing can be more seductively delicious than the purest and best Constantia. I may remark, however, that I have never tasted a perfect specimen of it in England. The greater quantity of so-called Constantia, sold in London, is sweet Pontac, a very inferior wine, grown all over the Cape colony—at least, wherever there are wine farms.

"We afterwards visited the other two farms, and found everything equally handsome, liberal, clean, and well-ordered; and we tasted all the varieties of each of these also. I now began to have a very clear idea of the pikeman's meaning."

So did Jones, perhaps, when, with fishy eyes and uncertain gait, he climbed the buggy, assumed the reins, and drove homewards, shaving every gate he passed through and corner that he turned. At a certain distance from the vineyard he informed his companion that the sweet wine was "stunning," and, having expressed that opinion, astounded him by the announcement that he had ordered three butts of the best to be sent to his (Cole's) lodgings, which consisted of two very minute rooms. Besides the difficulty of stowing so large a store of liquor, Mr Cole made no doubt it would be booked to him, and was equally certain he should have to pay for it, Jones being a shipwrecked passenger, and copperless Cockney, already in his debt. His first impulse was to pitch Jones out of the gig; his second, to countermarch and countermand. But Jones, positively refusing to return, drove valiantly onwards.

"After driving for about an hour along what seemed to me a very circuitous route, we were approaching the entrance to some grounds, very like those we had quitted. On coming still nearer, Jones remarked that 'he did not recollect passing this d——d place before.' I did. So I suggested that I would just run in and ask the way. I left him for a minute, and returned with full instructions as to our route, and with much persuasion managed to keep my friend to the right road to Cape Town. I had no fears about the wine now, for we had returned to Constantia, and I had countermanded the order. Jones knew nothing about it next day."

Much valued by the wine-merchant, Cape wines, as a class, and with the single exception of Constantia, are odious to the English consumer. Theirs is the dog's misfortune;—they have a bad name, which the growers do their best to keep up by sending to the mother-country the worst product of their vines. Mr Cole frequently pointed out to them the bad policy of this. The answer he got was, that Cape wine is in such disesteem that it is bought in England without distinction of vintage or class, the worst fetching as good a price as the best. Yet, according to Mr Cole, there is a vast difference in the qualities; and even the best are susceptible of great improvement, if properly managed. On the subject of wine-growing at the Cape, he makes some shrewd observations, which, if ever the unlucky colony is restored to tranquillity and delivered from dread of Kafirs, may be well worth the consideration of speculators conversant with that class of cultivation.

"There is a great similarity between the Cape and the Madeira grape. Both are cultivated much in the same manner, and in both the natural acidity is great; but the grand point of difference between the two is in the time of gathering the grapes. In Madeira they are not gathered till so ripe that many begin to fall, and are withered from over-ripeness: these, of course, are rejected. By this means a smaller amount of wine is obtained from a vineyard than would have been produced had the grapes been gathered earlier; but the quality of the wine is improved beyond conception. Every grape is full, ripe, and luscious, and the wine partakes of its quality. Nothing can prove more clearly the necessity of the grape being fully, and even over ripe, than the difference of the wine produced on the north side of the island of Madeira, where this perfection of the grape can scarcely be attained, and that grown on the south side: the latter is luscious and rich; the former is Cape, or little better. Now, at the Cape, the object of the farmer always is to get the greatest quantity of wine from his vineyard; and consequently he gathers his grapes when they are barely ripe, and none have fallen or withered; whereby he fills his storehouses with wine full of that acidity and vile twang which all who have tasted shudder to recall. Some of the wine-growers in the colony have lately pursued a different course, and with vast success."

English colonists these, not Dutch, for the boers are wedded to old systems. Had the first settlers at the Cape been Frenchmen from Rheims and Bordeaux, instead of Dutchmen unused to more generous drink than swipes and Geneva, the vintage of South Africa might now be renowned instead of despised. One of Mr Cole's fellow-passengers was a Frenchman, from Champagne, a smart, active fellow, who had followed all sorts of occupations, from teaching French to commanding a privateer. Shipwrecked and penniless, but far from dejected, he prevailed on a companion in misfortune, an Englishman, who had means, to take a wine-farm, and him for a partner. The Cape champagne they made was excellent, and often since, Mr Cole pathetically declares, when swallowing extract of gooseberries at a public or private dinner-table, in England, he has sighed for a bottle of their vintage. He sums up the subject as follows:—

"From observation and experience, I am inclined to think that a company might be profitably established, here or at the Cape, for cultivating the vine in the colony, and importing its produce to Europe; but they must send out their own labourers and superintendents, carefully selected from the best vineyards in Germany or France; take care to adopt the Madeira plan of gathering the grapes; agitate for a reduction of the duty on the wine, which is too high; and do all they can to get rid of their greatest obstacle—a bad name in the market."

Disguised as sherry or Madeira, who can tell how much Cape he annually swallows? Port wine, too, is adulterated with a red Cape called Pontac. Were the cultivation of the African wines improved, and the best qualities imported, there is no reason why we should despise, in its neat dress, that which we have so often accepted under Spanish or Portuguese colours. And certainly it would be more satisfactory to drink the produce of a British colony than that of countries who show so little disposition to reciprocate the liberality of our tariffs, and our immense consumption of articles of their growth. Nor is the vine the only plant which, with proper care and encouragement, might, in Mr Cole's opinion, and with every appearance of probability, be raised at the Cape, to an extent that would greatly diminish the necessity we are now under of purchasing from the thankless foreigner.

"On the very spot where the village of Somerset now stands, TOBACCO was first raised in the colony, under the care of a Dr Makrill. Like almost everything else, it grew and flourished admirably in a Cape soil, and is now raised in considerable quantities in various parts of the colony. It is called Boer's tobacco, to distinguish it from the various species of the imported weed. Here, again, the want of proper energy, so constantly observable in the colonists, whether Dutch or English, is displayed. Every man smokes—and immense numbers also chew—tobacco. The Hottentots of both sexes take heaps of snuff—not, by the way, up their nostrils, but in their mouths!—and yet tobacco has to be imported to a considerable extent into a country which might not only grow enough for its own wants, but sufficient to supply half the world besides. Every one admits the fact; but the answer is, 'Want of labour,' that eternal complaint of South Africa. There is much truth in it; but there is a considerable 'want of energy' also."

There is no manifest reason why, with care and good cultivation, we should not grow cigars at the Cape, such as might successfully vie—if not with the regalias of the Havannah—at least with the indigenous cabbage, and with the coarser Cuban and South American weed. If an ardent sun be one essential for obtaining a fine description of tobacco—and we are led to suppose so by considering the latitudes whence the best sorts come, and the inferiority of those grown in Europe—there is no want of it in certain districts of Cape Colony. At Fort Beaufort the heat is so terrible that the sentries' buttons are said to melt and drop off. But it is a delightful peculiarity of the Cape climate, that, even in these desperately hot places, it is always healthy. As regards the "want of labour," alleged by the colonists as an excuse for neglecting many valuable sources of profit, it is only to be repaired by encouraging a steady stream of emigration from the mother country to the Cape. The general and most important impression left upon the reader's mind by Mr Cole's book—which, although light and often playful in style, contains valuable information, and is the book of a sensible man—is, that, with its fertile soil and beautiful climate, it ought to become a most prosperous and flourishing country. Immigration and good government are all it wants. Of course, neither of these has it any chance of obtaining so long as Lord Grey rules its destinies; but we may venture to hope that he will not do so long. The Cape, Mr Cole justly observes, has never been a "pet" colony with our Colonial administration. Incompetent governors, threats of convict importations, and Kafir wars, have rendered it unpopular with every class of emigrants. And, doubtless, they have all, more or less, contributed to the apathetic indolence and discouragement which, as we gather from Mr Cole's volume, is to be noted in most of the colonists. With the Dutch, apathy may be in some degree constitutional; but it is not natural to Englishmen; nor is it to be explained by any enervating or sickly properties of the climate. As to the sheep-farmer, he is the very incarnation of laziness.

"He turns out of bed about eleven, huddles on a pair of trousers, with the shirt he slept in; thrusts his feet into a pair of shoes, pulls a wide-awake hat over his head, and his toilet is complete. He then sticks a short pipe into his mouth, loiters about the homestead, and talks to Hottentots not more lazy than himself, from the simple reason that that were impossible; takes a cup of coffee, and perhaps a chop; smokes and dozes away the whole day; looks at the sheep as they come home in the evening; 'slangs' the herds, eats mutton again, and calls it 'dinner;' smokes again, and drinks 'smoke,' (Cape Smoke is a sort of brandy;) pulls off his shoes, hat, and nether garments, and turns in again, to snooze till eleven the next day, and then gets up, and goes through the same process once more."

When the white man sets such example, what can be expected from the black? The Hottentots are the general servants of the colony, both farm and domestic, at least in all the eastern districts. Shocking bad ones they are, but yet they get good wages, abundant food, and are engaged without being asked for a character, which indeed were superfluous trouble, one very bad one fitting them all.

"A Hottentot," says Mr Cole, "is the most improvident, lazy animal on the face of the earth. He will work for a month, and, as soon as he has pocketed his wages, leave his master, and be drunk whilst he has a solitary sixpence left. He is a living paradox; a drunkard, and a thief, and yet one that can practise abstinence, and never rob his master. Sometimes you may trust him with anything of any value, whilst in your service, and he will not pick and steal. After he has left you, he will as soon appropriate your Wellingtons (if he calls to see his successor in office) as wear his own shoes. He is the dirtiest fellow on earth, and will clean neither your rooms, your boots, nor your knives and forks, unless you are eternally driving him to his work; yet he will wash his hands with the utmost care before he touches the food he is preparing for your dinner, though he has the greatest natural antipathy to the contact of cold water."

These Hottentots have an ugly habit of leaving their master in a body, without apparent cause, or previous notice. It is their way of taking a holiday. They are sure to find employment, when willing again to work; the demand, even for such labour as theirs, being much greater than the supply. As yet civilisation has done little for them. As to the result of missionary efforts, Mr Cole estimates it as exceedingly small. There is considerable discrepancy between his statements on this head and the glowing reports occasionally issued by missionary societies, of their successful labours amongst the heathens of Africa. Briefly, but forcibly, Mr Cole shows up the humbug and delusion of the system. From personal experience he declares himself convinced that, out of every hundred Hottentot Christians, (so styled,) ninety-nine have no notion of a future state.

"I have frequently been at the bedside of the sick and dying Hottentot, who has been a constant attendant at some missionary chapel, and I have asked him whether he has any fear of dying? He has smiled, and said,

"'None.'

"I have asked him whether he expected to go to heaven? and he has answered,

"'No.'

"'Where then?'

"'Nowhere.'

"I have endeavoured to explain to him that his minister must have taught him the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments. He has laughed and said, that perhaps it might be so, 'for the master, but not for him; he lies down and dies, that is all—that is enough.' This I have heard over and over again from the lips of some of the 'pet' Christians of missionaries—model men, whom they talk of and point out to every 'griffin' in the colony, and write long communications about, to their societies in England."

Professing Christians abound amongst the Hottentots, for the sake of the temporal advantages. Every missionary station has a tract of land belonging to it, on which the Hottentot who attends school and chapel regularly, and assumes a becoming appearance of piety, is permitted to build a hut, and plant a garden. Seeds and tools are given to him; and, with very little labour, he is enabled to pass the rest of his time in idleness.

"It is notorious," says Mr Cole, "that these people, living at the missionary stations, are the idlest and most useless set in the colony. You cannot frighten a farmer more seriously than by telling him that a missionary station is going to be established near him. Visions of daily desertion by his servants float across his mind's eye."

But if the Hottentot be a bad servant, and if, notwithstanding the well-meant but misdirected efforts of missionaries, whose zeal might find better employment at home, he still continues an idle, besotted, and filthy savage, there yet is to be found, in his immediate vicinity, a still more degraded and untractable race. These are the Boschjesmen, or Bushmen, of whom specimens have been exhibited in England. In their own land they live in a state of barbarism, without clothes, often without huts, growing no corn or vegetables, and subsisting upon such animals as they can kill with their arrows—also upon locusts.

"In the year 1844 or 1845, a traveller in their country came upon whole kraals, (or villages,) which appeared at first to be deserted; but he found, on searching, that 'most of the inhabitants were still there—dead! There were great quantities of dead locusts in their huts, and the supposition was, that they had died from eating them, either from some poison contained in them, or from a surfeit."

They are fierce and cruel, and as mischievous as monkeys, to which they bear a strong resemblance. On the first journey that he made in a waggon, Mr Cole had as "leader"—the name given to the boy who leads the two front oxen of the span—a Bushman lad, about four feet high, the most hideous monster, according to the description given of him, that ever walked on two legs. The expression of his countenance was diabolical, his disposition equally so. The lash was the only argument he understood; and even to that, owing to the extraordinary toughness of his hide, he was long callous.

"On one occasion the waggon came to the brow of a hill, when it was the leader's duty to stop the oxen, and see that the wheel was well locked. It may readily be imagined that a waggon which requires twelve oxen to draw it on level ground, could not be held back at all by two oxen, in its descent of a steep hill, unless with the wheel locked. My interesting Bushman, however, whom I had not yet offended in any manner, no sooner found himself at the top of the hill, than he let go the oxen with a yell and a whoop, which set them off at a gallop down the precipitous steep. The waggon flew from side to side of the road, destined, apparently, to be smashed to atoms every moment, together with myself, its luckless occupant. I was dashed about, almost unconscious of what could be the cause, so suddenly had we started on our mad career. Heaven only knows how I escaped destruction, but we positively reached the bottom of the hill uninjured.

"The Bushman was by the waggon-side in an instant, and went to his place at the oxen's head as coolly and unconcernedly as if he had just performed part of his ordinary duties. The Hottentot driver, on the contrary, came panting up, aghast with horror. I jumped out of the waggon, seized my young savage by the collar of his jacket, and, with a heavy sea-cow-hide whip, I belaboured him with all my strength, wherein, I trust the reader will think me justified, as the little wretch had made the most barefaced attempt on my life. I almost thought my strength would be exhausted before I could get a sign from the young gentleman that he felt my blows; but at length he uttered a yell of pain, and I knew he had had enough. Next day I dropped him at a village, and declined his farther services."

Waggon-travelling in the Cape Colony is a slow, but not a disagreeable, manner of locomotion. The same team of oxen takes you through, however great the distance; and as grass and water are all they get—and sometimes a scanty ration of these—the pace is necessarily very moderate, twenty miles a-day being considered good going. Of course you have abundant stores in your waggon; for inns are scarce, and it is not usual to quarter yourself on the farmers, as you do when travelling on horseback. A stretcher, with a mattress on it, is slung in the waggon, to lounge on by day and sleep on by night; or if the party be numerous, a tent is pitched at evening. The Hottentots sleep under the waggon or round the fire. The start is at six in the morning. At ten a two hours' halt is made, to eat and smoke, to sketch or shoot. At noon, the cattle, which have been turned out to graze, are "in-spanned," and the march continues till three or four o'clock. Then another halt and another meal; a pipe, a shot at an ostrich or bushbuck; and then once more on the road for two hours, before "out-spanning" for the night. The bivouac is delightful; the sky of a deep dark blue, the moon radiant, the magnificent Southern Cross glittering in the heavens, underfoot a carpet of scented and variegated blossoms, stillness over all, and in the dark shadow of the bush a bright fire, with the wayfarers stretched lazily around it. The whole thing is a pleasant sort of picnic party, and it is easy to believe Mr Cole when he declares that he never enjoyed a European trip so much as waggon-travelling in South Africa. Of course this is the sunny side of the picture. Disagreeable occurrences are by no means unfrequent. A bridgeless rivulet, swollen to a torrent by recent rains, detains you for a week upon its banks, on half rations or less. Your Hottentots discover a hedge tavern, and whilst you take a stroll with your gun during the "out-span," they get helplessly drunk, and you must halt for the day. You thrash them and stop their tobacco; they revenge themselves by accidentally upsetting you in the next river you cross; or they neglect to watch the grazing oxen, which are next heard of ten miles off, having been "pounded" by some surly landholder, with whose green corn they had taken a liberty. The traveller who dreads such mishaps and desires faster progress, packs a valise, straps it on his saddle, and throws his leg over a sturdy Cape horse, which will carry him fifty or sixty miles a day without flinching. Here is Mr Cole's sketch of these useful, ill-looking animals:—

"Generally speaking, a regular Cape horse, one whose pedigree cannot be traced to any imported stallion, is an ugly brute. He is about fourteen hands high, and his chief characteristics are, a low narrow shoulder, a ewe neck, and a goose rump. His 'pins' are generally pretty good. He is villanously broken; his mouth is as tough as an oak; his pace is a shuffling, tripping, wriggling abomination, between an amble and a canter, with a suspicion of a 'run' in it. Put him beyond this pace, and he gallops as awkwardly as a cow. As for walking, he is innocent of the pace beyond three miles an hour. Trotting, neither he, nor his breaker, nor breeder, nor owner (if a Dutchman) ever heard of. He is apt to be ill-tempered too—often given to kicking, and occasionally to 'bucking.' So much for his evil qualities."

Some of his good ones have been already implied. He is hardy, enduring, can live on grass, do without groom or stable. You may shoot off his back—or sleep on it, for his pace is the easiest of motions. He is never ill, save of one complaint, which resembles glanders, (although it is a different disease,) and is always fatal. This malady he evidently contracts in the pastures, for horses kept in the stable, and never allowed to graze, are not subject to it. He is cheap to buy.

"A horse good enough for all ordinary purposes may be bought from £9 to £15. I once rode a journey of two hundred and thirty miles with the same set of horses, (four in number, one for my servant, one for myself, one for saddle-bags, and another for changing) in four days. The most expensive of the four cost me £12, and the cheapest £4, 10s. It is true that I fed them well on the road, but a Dutch boer would have taken them the same distance without a handful of corn all the way."

Mounted on one of these serviceable brutes, Mr Cole rambled about the colony, sleeping at inns when he found them, but much oftener profiting by the boundless hospitality of the Cape farmers, and making acquaintance with all sorts of people, from puny Cockney settlers to gigantic Dutch boers. The latter are—

"The finest men in the colony. I have seen them constantly from six feet two to six feet six inches in height; broad and muscular in proportion. Their strength is immense. They are great admirers of feats of daring, strength, and activity. A mighty hunter, such as Gordon Cumming, would be welcomed with open arms by every Dutch boer in South Africa. Poor Moultrie, of the 75th, the 'lion-hunter' par excellence, was one of their idols. So is Bain, the 'long-haired,' who has made some half-dozen excursions into the far wilderness in search of the lord of the forest and all his subjects. They hunt far more than the English farmers, and are, as I have said, 'crack' shots, though they use a great, long, awkward, heavy, flint-locked gun, that would make Purdey or Westley Richards shudder with disgust."

Frugal and industrious, these stalwart descendants of Hollanders have one great fault, almost a fatal one in a new country. They have a rooted antipathy to novelty and improvement. They use the same lumbering plough their big-breeched forefathers imported from the Low Countries some eighty years ago, although it requires twelve strong oxen to draw it. They reject steam, and pound their corn instead of grinding it. Despising flails, they completely spoil their straw by having the grain trodden out by horses or oxen. Of the English settlers, the Cockneys make the best farmers, "because, coming without any previous knowledge of the art they intend to follow, they take advice of those whom experience enables to give it, instead of trying to manage things in South Africa as they do in England." Stories are traditionally cited, of inexperienced Londoners, just landed at the Cape, purchasing a flock of sheep as breeding stock, and discovering them (too late) to be wethers; and of another who planted split pease to raise a crop ready for use; but such instances of ignorance, Mr Cole assures us, are by no means common.

The present unfortunate condition of the Cape Colony, and the destructive war now raging there, give peculiar interest to that portion of Mr Cole's book which relates to the Kafirs. During the greater part of his residence at the Cape, these troublesome savages were on their good behaviour, and he was enabled to become personally acquainted with them, and especially with their powerful chief Macomo. Riding from Graham's Town to Fort Beaufort, through that immense jungle and favourite Kafir lurking-place, Fish River Bush, he paused to bait at a roadside inn, and entered into chat with his host, who, on hearing that he had never been in Kafirland, pointed out to him a distant mountain.

"A very noted place, sir," he said, "is that mountain. It is in the territory of the Kafir chief Macomo. When that rascal wants to attack the colony, or his neighbours, the other chiefs, he lights a great fire on the top of that hill at night, and, on seeing it, every Kafir in his dominions immediately flocks to his standard, and he can collect ten thousand armed men, sir."

Mr Cole expressed a fervent hope that it would be long before Macomo lit his fire, but the innkeeper expected it would shortly blaze; and the innkeeper was right. At Fort Beaufort Mr Cole first saw the great Kafir, dressed in cast-off European clothes, but without shirt or stockings, and more than half-drunk. He won his favour by lending him sixpence, and received an invitation to visit him at his kraal, a very few miles from Fort Beaufort. Accordingly, next morning he mounted his horse, and rode into Kafirland. From Chapter X. we glean some of his first impressions.

"The Kafir is certainly a fine animal. He is tall, well-knit, clean-limbed, and graceful in his motions. It is rare to see a Kafir with any personal deformity, however trifling. I have seen some dozen races of coloured people, and I have no hesitation in pronouncing the Kafirs by far the finest of them. Their features are not negro; though some of them (especially Macomo, who is the ugliest man in his dominions) partake very much of that character. Their colour varies from almost black to a light copper hue. Amongst them I frequently met with Albinos. These are certainly the most repulsive-looking creatures I ever beheld. Their skin is dead white, not the whiteness of a delicate European skin, but the colour of a white horse—it is scaly and coarse; their eyes are pink like those of a ferret; and their hair very much the colour of a ferret's coat, though still woolly and tufted."

The Kafirs Mr Cole met upon the road scowled at him in no friendly manner, but dared not rob a visiter to their chief. Macomo received him well, regaled him on beefsteaks and coffee, tried hard to sell him horses or cattle, expressed most hypocritical affection for the English, and extracted another sixpence from him, in exchange for a stick.

"I rode back to Fort Beaufort, well pleased with my visit, but more than ever satisfied of the natural cunning, avarice, craft, and dishonesty, the low moral nature, and utter untrustworthiness of Kafirs in general, and, above all, of Macomo."

Mr Cole makes some sensible suggestions for averting future wars with the Kafirs, and securing the tranquillity of the colony. Whilst justly disapproving certain points of the constitution tardily granted to the Cape, he admits it to be a great improvement upon the present state of things.

"When the Cape colonists," he says, "commence self-government, doubtless one of their first acts will be to embody a militia throughout the land. Every man in the country, between certain ages, will be a soldier, and the most fit and effectual soldier to contend with the savage enemies across the boundary. This will be, in effect, a revival of the old Dutch Commando system—a system, with all its faults, the most efficient in repressing the rapine and murder of the Kafirs, and under which no such war as the present could have originated."

The abolition of this system, which allowed the Dutch boers, when aggrieved or plundered by the Kafirs, to muster in bodies, recover their cattle by the strong hand, and chastise the robbers, has always been a subject of bitter complaint and discontent with the frontier farmers. They fear not the Kafirs, if they are but allowed to defend themselves and their property, and to retaliate with the strong hand. Give them thus much licence, and, says Mr Cole, "I have no hesitation in saying that the colonists of the border would very soon settle the Kafir question." Let it be clearly understood what the Cape "bush" is. It is a dense thicket studded with thorns, and impenetrable to persons in ordinary European garb. The Hottentots and colonists wear leather "crackers"—as breeches are called at the Cape—which in some degree protect them; and the Kafirs, naked and with their bodies greased all over—blest, besides, with thick skins—crawl through it on their bellies. Speaking of Fish River Bush, Mr Cole says:—

"One of the greatest benefits that could be conferred on the colony would be its entire destruction by fire. But I fear it will not burn; and so it will continue to harbour wild beasts in peace, and Kafirs in war time. All the Kafir nation could hide in it, and be out of sight and out of reach of English eyes and English bullets. At the first symptom of an impending attack on the colony, the report always flies like wild-fire, 'The Fish River Bush is full of Kafirs.'"

Then are sent out against these lithe and dusky savages, who can writhe like snakes through the underwood, and whose brown hide is scarce distinguishable from the tints of the rocks and branches, and aloe-stems amongst which they lurk, a party of red-coated Englishmen, to be shot down by invisible foes.

"A splendid target that same scarlet coat," exclaims Mr Cole. "Even when those bushes intervene, though you see not the man—neither his face, nor his shako, nor his trousers—yet there is the piece of scarlet cloth glaring through the boughs; take steady aim at that, for a soldier's heart beats behind it, and a bullet sent through the gaudy garment hurls one more shilling target to the dust."

Nearly six years ago, when the subject of military punishments was before Parliament, we proposed and urged certain reforms and ameliorations in the equipment of the army, some of which are now in process of adoption, whilst others, we have little doubt, will ere long be forced upon the authorities by public opinion and their manifest necessity. We then denounced scarlet, "first, because it is tawdry, and, secondly, as rendering the soldier an easier mark than a less glaring colour. Blue coats and grey trousers are the colours we should like to see adopted in our service, preserving always the green for the rifles, who ought to be ten times as numerous as they are, as we shall discover whenever we come to a brush with the Yankees, or with our old and gallant opponents, the French."[3]

Our troops, it is understood, are about to get the rifles; of the scarlet we hope soon to see them get rid. A very inferior foe to either American or Frenchman has sufficed to show the necessity of marching with the century, at least in matters military. The long guns of the naked Kafirs outshoot our regulation muskets; and earnest and unanswerable representations—amongst which must prominently be reckoned the able letters of that practical and experienced soldier, Sir Charles Shaw—have opened official eyes to the advantages of grooved barrels over smooth bores. Soon we hope to see scarlet replaced by a more rational and less brilliant colour, knapsacks lightened, and pipe-clayed belts abolished. We advocated blue for the soldier's dress, because tailors, professional and amateur, have still so potential a voice in our military councils, that we scarcely dare hope the adoption of less becoming tints; otherwise, grey, green, or brown mixtures, although not showy on parade, will be admitted by all military men who have seen service—especially skirmishing service in bush, mountains, or forest—to constitute by far the least visible uniform, and worst mark. In time, perhaps, these sober but service-like colours may be introduced. Perhaps, too, in time, the Horse Guards will discern the wisdom of keeping heavy cavalry for home parades, or European wars—should the latter unfortunately occur—and of sending the lightest and most lightly-equipped of their dragoons in pursuit of nimble savages, in colonies too distant to ship horses to, and where chargers, up to the weight of the men, are unobtainable.

"When the 7th Dragoon Guards came out to the Cape, they had considerable difficulty in horsing the regiment, though they took as low a standard as fifteen hands for their chargers. Even at this standard, the men in full dress, with their brass helmets, carbines and accoutrements, looked rather absurdly mounted, and reminded one forcibly of the hobby-horse figures in a Christmas pantomime."[4]

When we picture to ourselves these bravo "heavies"—so formidable if opposed to French or German dragoons—inefficiently floundering, on overweighted horses, through bush and brushwood, after the agile barbarians of South Africa, and when we contrast them with the really "light-horse" we have seen shipped from ProvenÇal ports for service in Algeria, we cannot but admit, however unwillingly, that these things are better managed in France than on our side of the Channel. May it soon be otherwise!