her hands full of sugar-cane and mealies, saying,
"Take these, for you are the man who gave me
bread in your palace three years ago." Another
strange woman went to the bishop's station in
great distress. She had borrowed a pick of her
neighbour and broken it, and did not know how
to replace it. The bishop's manager gave her a
new pick, and four months after she appeared
again, with a bundle of green mealies, and laid
them at his feet: " You are my inkosi-chief—-
you gave me a pick;" for which the mealies were
her thanks put into deeds.

But the Kafirs are not all shining bright with
good and gold; they have some dark spots, full
of rust and rottenness, like the rest of us.
They own of themselves (so far understanding
the endless antagonism that goes on in the
human mind) that they have " an angry heart,"
and " a peaceful heart," and that the ugovane,
the angry or bad heart, said so and so, but the
unembeza, the peaceful heart, said so and so.
Against all the good which has been told of
them, must now be balanced the evil: the
laziness, lying, greediness, stinginess, pride, and
cruelty to animals, which are their worst faults.
When a Kafir goes out as a domestic
servant, he has much to learn and much to forego;
and on their sides the master and mistress have
much to forbear and excuse. Indeed, an
Englishwoman, fresh from the smart footmen and
tidy housemaids of the old country, must be
almost scared at the sight of a half-naked
black man (with only a loose shirt that does
not cover half his legs) wandering familiarly
about the house, and doing all sorts of domestic
jobs not usually given to men to do, yet often
hopelessly ignorant and not knowing his right
hand from his left. But with kindness, firmness,
and consideration, the poor fellow makes a
tolerable help in time, and may be depended on for
all that he has really learnt. He has to be looked
after, though, in matters of cleanliness and
personal habits. " In his native state of dignified
leisure" he bathes every morning, and indulges
plentifully in rude cosmetics, both for his body
and his ebon head-ring, but in service he has to be
watched and admonished. Only the men hire
themselves out: the women are too valuable in
their own kraals to be spared for stranger uses;
but the men do all kinds of household work
with willingness, if not with zeal or industry
They carry heavy burdens—- as post-bags and
good-sized bales—- convey money through lonely
parts and never lose or misplace a halfpenny;
and the youths and boys make the most careful
and tender nurses imaginable. They may often
be seen sitting in the verandah, feeding a little
fair Anglo-Saxon baby with pap, as cleverly as
any old nurse in England would have done. They
can be taught to iron, after some trouble, and
one Kafir was caught ironing the flounces of
his mistress's dress, when at every shake he
gave the voluminous folds he looked curiously at
them and uttered the national " Wow!" which
means everything possible to human speech.

But this half-tamed, half-taught servant soon
gets restless, and rushes off to his kraal for a
spell of native enjoyment. One night he may
have gone to bed as usual, coiled up anywhere
on his skin, with his head on a log for a pillow;
the next morning he is off to his cows and his
wives, rich in the white man's silver pennies,
to earn which he has given up part of his very
life. Generally he will return after a time—-
almost always if he has been treated kindly,
and if his master is a well-dressed gentleman
vho does nothing menial, is gentle in manner,
and liberal in dealing, who neither oppresses
hirn nor is familiar, but is every inch the inkosi,
or lord; he will seldom return if he has had a
brutal or a familiar master, who has not respected
limself, and therefore has not earned his
servant's respect. Such a master is only an inja, or
dog. For, every one is either lord or dog with
the Kafir; and, while he honours the one as his
chief, he ridicules the other unmercifully, and
manages to hit on a contemptuous yet descriptive
epithet for him.

Natal lies just outside the tropical zone,
where the palms disappear and evergreens are
plentiful, where the days are nearly equal in
length and the seasons in intensity, where, in
the midst of winter, come backward gleams of
summer with green leaves and brilliant flowers;
and where, often in the summer-time, fall shreds
and patches of the severest winter weather.
In fact, the seasons, like the ground, are
broken up and jumbled together, and different
growths crop out in all unexpected ways,
and puzzle every one to know how to class
them. The longest day is only fourteen hours,
the shortest ten; while ours is sixteen and
a half for the longest, and seven and a half for
the other. The winter in Natal begins in April
and ends in September, with an average
temperature of sixty-nine degrees; but sometimes the
thermometer ranges as high as ninety degrees.
The average highest temperature for the three
coldest months is 69.3 degrees; the average
lowest, at night, 47.7 degrees. In summer
there are tremendous storms, with the most
brilliant lightning, strangely varied both in
shape and in colour. Sometimes, like ribands
of light, quivering against the dark grey sky;
sometimes, broad flashes of flame, they blaze
upward, spreading wider and fiercer as they
go; sometimes, there is a radiating star of
flame; sometimes, a garland or wreath circling
the heavens; and all of the most exquisite
and gorgeous colours amethyst, ruby,
turquoise, and sapphire, burning fiery red and
palest rose, pearly white, and dead dull leaden
grey. Lightning in Natal is in itself worth a
journey to the colony, for nothing more beautiful
of that kind is to be found under heaven.

Natal has a sirocco. For eight or ten hours
at a time, and sometimes for eighteen, comes a
hot wind from the north-west, which dries up
the skin, cracks the ground into deep fissures,
warps and splits wood, and does every kind of
damage incidental to siroccos in their worst
moods. And hailstorms rage in the summer
months, with stones as big as pigeon's eggs,
occasionally diversified by angular lumps too