said my companion, "and would not come unless I had a hold upon him; "-meaning that the Zulu would surely come to redeem his assegai and knobkirrie.

Then I enquired into this practice, and perhaps expostulated a little. "What would you have done," I asked, "if the man had refused to give up his property?" "Such a thing has never yet occurred to me," said the gentleman in authority. "When it does I will tell you." But again I remonstrated. "The things were his own, and why should they have been taken away from him?" The gentleman in authority smiled, but another of our party remarked that the weapons were illegal, and that the confiscation of them was decidedly proper. But the knobkirrie on the mountain side was not illegal, and even the assegai was to be restored when the man shewed himself at the appointed place. They were not taken because they were illegal, but as surety for the man's return. I did not press the question, but I fear that I was held to have enquired too curiously on a matter which did not concern me. I thought that it concerned me much, for it told me plainer than could any spoken description how a savage race is ruled by white men.

The reader is not to suppose that I think that the assegai and knobkirrie should not have been taken from the man. On the other hand I think that my companion knew very well what he was about, and that the Zulu generally is lucky to have such men in the land. I say again that we must have resort to such practices, or that we must leave the country. But I have told the tale because it exemplifies what I say as to the manner in which savage races are ruled by us. We

were all shocked the other day because an Indian servant was struck by a white master, and died from the effects of the blow. The man's death was an unfortunate accident which probably caused extreme anguish to the striker, but cannot be said to have increased at all the criminality of his act. The question is how far a white master is justified in striking a native servant. The idea of so doing is to us at home abominable;-but I fear that we must believe that it is too common in India to create disgust. It is much the same in Zulu-land. Something is done occasionally which should not be done, but the rule generally is beneficent.

Of all the towns in South Africa Pieter Maritzburg is the one in which the native element is the most predominant. It is not only that the stranger there sees more black men and women in the streets than elsewhere, but that the black men and women whom he sees are more noticeable. While I was writing of "The Colony," as the Cape Colony is usually called in South Africa, I spoke of Kafirs. Now I am speaking of Zulus, a comparatively modern race of savages as I have already said. I have seen a pedigree of Chaka their king, but his acknowledged ancestors do not go back far. Chaka became a great man, and the Zulus swallowed all the remainder of the conquered tribes, and became so dominant that they have given their name to the natives of this part of the continent.

The Zulus as seen in Maritzburg are certainly a peculiar people, and very picturesque. I have said of the Kafir that he is always dressed when seen in town, but that

he is dressed like an Irish beggar. I should have added, however, that he always wears his rags with a grace. The Zulu rags are perhaps about equal to the Kafir rags in raggedness, but the Zulu grace is much more excellent than the Kafir grace. Whatever it be that the Zulu wears he always looks as though he had chosen that peculiar costume, quite regardless of expense, as being the one mode of dress most suitable to his own figure and complexion. The rags are there, but it seems as though the rags have been chosen with as much solicitude as any dandy in Europe gives to the fit and colour of his raiment. When you see him you are inclined to think, not that his clothes are tattered, but "curiously cut,"-like Catherine's gown. One fellow will walk erect with an old soldier's red coat on him and nothing else, another will have a pair of knee breeches and a flannel shirt hanging over it. A very popular costume is an ordinary sack, inverted, with a big hole for the head, and smaller holes for the arms, and which comes down below the wearer's knees. This is serviceable and decent, and has an air of fashion about it too as long as it is fairly clean. Old grey great coats with brass buttons, wherever they may come from, are in request, and though common always seem to confer dignity. A shirt and trowsers worn threadbare, so ragged as to seem to defy any wearer to find his way into them, will assume a peculiar look of easy comfort on the back and legs of a Zulu. An ordinary flannel shirt, with nothing else, is quite sufficient to make you feel that the black boy who is attending you, is as fit to be brought into any company as a powdered footman. And then it is so

and that

cheap a livery! and over and above their dress they always wear ornaments. The ornaments are peculiar, and might be called poor, but they never seem amiss. We all know at home the detestable appearance of the vulgar cad who makes himself odious with chains and pins, the Tittlebat Titmarch from the counter. But when you see a Zulu with his ornaments you confess to yourself that he has a right to them. As with a pretty woman at home, whose attire might be called fantastic were it not fashionable, of whom we feel that as she was born to be beautiful, graceful, and idle, she has a right to be a butterfly, she becomes and justifies the quaint trappings which she selects, so of the Zulu do we acknowledge that he is warranted by the condition of his existence in adorning his person as he pleases. Load him with bangle, armlet, ear-ring and head-dress to any extent, and he never looks like a hog in armour. He inserts into the lobes of his ears trinkets of all sorts, boxes for the conveyance of his snuff and little delights, and other pendants as though his ears had been given to him for purposes of carriage. Round his limbs he wears round shining ornaments of various material, brass, ivory, wood and beads. I once took from off a man's arm a section of an elephant's tooth which he had hollowed, and the remaining rim of which was an inch and a half thick. This he wore, loosely slipping up and down and was apparently in no way inconvenienced by it. Round their heads they tie ribbons and bandelets. They curl their crisp hair into wonderful shapes. I have seen many as to whom I would at first have sworn that they had supplied

themselves with miraculous wigs made by miraculous barbers. They stick quills and bones and bits of wood into their hair, always having an eye to some peculiar effect. They will fasten feathers to their back hair which go waving in the wind. I have seen a man trundling a barrow with a beautiful green wreath on his brow, and have been convinced at once that for the proper trundling of a barrow a man ought to wear a green wreath. A Zulu will get an old hat, what at home we call a slouch hat, some hat probably which came from the corner of Bond Street and Piccadilly three or four years ago, and will knead it into such shapes that all the establishments of all the Christys could not have done the like. The Zulu is often slow, often idle, sometimes perhaps hopelessly useless, but he is never awkward. The wonderfully pummelled hat sits upon him like a helmet upon Minerva or a furred pork pie upon a darling in Hyde Park in January. But the Zulu at home in his own country always wears on his head the "isicoco," or head ring, a shining black coronet made hard with beaten earth and pigments,-earth taken from the singular ant hills of the country, which is the mark of his rank and virility and to remove which would be a stain.

I liked the Zulu of the Natal capital very thoroughly. You have no cabs there, and once when in green ignorance I had myself carried from one end of the town to another in a vehicle, I had to pay 10s. 6d. for the accommodation. But the Zulu, ornamented and graceful as he is, will carry your portmanteau on his head all the way for sixpence. Hitherto money has not become common in Natal