as in British Kafraria, and the Zulu is cheap. He will hold your horse for you for an hour, and not express a sense of injury if he gets nothing;--but for a silver threepence he will grin at you with heartfelt gratitude. Copper I believe he will not take,-but copper is so thoroughly despised in the Colony that no one dares to shew it. At Maritzburg I found that I could always catch a Zulu at a moment's notice to do anything. At the hotel or the club, or your friend's house you signify to some one that you want a boy, and the boy is there at once. If you desired him to go a journey of 200 miles to the very boundary of the Colony, he would go instantly, and be not a whit surprised. He will travel 30 or 40 miles in the twenty-four hours for a shilling a day, and will assuredly do the business confided to him. Maritzburg is 55 miles from Durban and an acquaintance told me that he had sent down a very large wedding cake by a boy in 24 hours. "But if he had eaten it?" I asked. "His Chief would

him," was the reply.

very soon have eaten

But there is a drawback to all these virtues. A Zulu will sometimes cross your path with so strong an injury to your nose as almost to make you ill. I have been made absolutely sick by the entrance of a good-natured Zulu into my bedroom of a morning, when he has come near me in his. anxiety about my boots or my hot water. In this respect he is more potent than any of his brethren of the negro. race who have come in my way. Why it is or whence I am unable to say, or how it comes to pass that now and again there is one who will almost knock you down, while a

dozen others shall cross you leaving no more than a mere flavour of Zuluism on your nasal organs. I do not think that dirt has anything to do with it. They are a specially clean people, washing themselves often and using soap with a bountiful liberality unknown among many white men. As the fox who leaves to the hounds the best scent is always the fox in the strongest health, so I fancy is it with the Zulu, whereas dirt is always unhealthy. But there is the fact; and any coming visitor to Natal had better remember it, and be on his guard.

Almost all domestic service is done by the Zulu or Kafir race in Natal. Here and there may be found a European servant, a head waiter at an hotel, or a nurse in a lady's family, or a butler in the establishment of some great man. But all menial work is as a rule done by the natives and is done with fidelity. I cannot say that they are good servants at all points. They are slow, often forgetful, and not often impressed with any sense of awe as to their master, who cannot eat them up or kill them as a black master might do. But they are good-humoured, anxious to oblige, offended at nothing, and extremely honest. Their honesty is so remarkable that the white man falls unconsciously into the habit of regarding them in reference to theft as he would a dog. A dog, unless very well mannered, would take a bit of meat, and a Zulu boy might help himself to your brandy if it was left open within his reach. But your money, your rings, your silver forks, and your wife's jewels,—if you have a wife and she have jewels,-are as safe with a Zulu servant as with a dog. The feeling that it is so comes even

to the stranger after a short sojourn in the land. I was travelling through the country by a mail cart, and had to stay at a miserable wayside hut which called itself an hotel, with eight or ten other passengers. Close at hand, not a hundred yards from the door, were pitched the tents of a detachment of soldiers, who were being marched up to the border between Natal and the Transvaal. Everybody immediately began to warn his neighbour as to his property because of the contiguity of the British soldier. But no one ever warns you to beware of a Zulu thief though the Zulus swarm round the places at which you stop. I found myself getting into a habit of trusting a Zulu just as I would trust a dog.

I have already said something of Zulu labour when speaking of the sugar districts round Durban. It is the question upon which the prosperity of South Africa and the civilization of the black races much depend. If a man can be taught to want, really to desire and to covet the good things of the world, then he will work for them and by working he will be civilized. If, when they are presented to his notice, he still despises them,-if when clothes and houses and regular meals and education come in his way, he will still go naked, and sleep beneath the sky, and eat grass or garbage and then starve, and remain in his ignorance though the schoolmaster be abroad, then he will be a Savage to the end of the chapter. It is often very hard to find out whether the good things have been properly proffered to the Savage, and whether the man's neglect of them has come from his own intellectual inability to appreciate them or from the ill

manner in which they have been tendered to him. The aboriginal of Australia has utterly rejected them, as I fear we must say the North American Indian has done also,either from his own fault or from ours. The Maori of New Zealand seemed to be in the way of accepting them when it was found out that the reception of them was killing him. He is certainly dying whether from that or other causes. The Chinaman and the Indian Coolie are fully alive to the advantages of earning money, and are consequently not to be classed among Savages. The South Sea Islander has as yet had but few chances of working; but when he is employed he works well and saves his wages. With the Negro as imported into the West Indies the good things of the world have, I fear, made but little way. He despises work and has not even yet learned to value the advantages which work will procure for him. The Negro in the United States, who in spite of his prolonged slavery has been brought up in a better school, gives more promise; but even with him the result to be desired, the consciousness that by work only can he raise himself to an equality with the white man,

-seems to be far distant. I cannot say that it is near with the Kafir or the Zulu;-but to the Kafir and the Zulu the money market has been opened comparatively but for a short time. They certainly do not die out under the yoke, and they are not indifferent to the material comforts of life. Therefore I think there is a fair hope that they will become a laborious and an educated people.

At present no doubt throughout Natal there is a cry from the farmer that the Zulu will not work. The farmer can

not plough his land and reap it because the Zulu will not come to him just when work is required. It seems hard to the farmer that, with 300,000 of a labouring class around, the 20,000 white capitalists,-capitalists in a small way,--should be short of labour. That is the way in which the Natal farmer looks at it, when he swears that the Zulu is trash, and that it would be well if he were swept from the face of the earth. It seems never to occur to a Natal farmer that if a Zulu has enough to live on without working he should be as free to enjoy himself in idleness as an English lord. The business of the Natal farmer is to teach the Zulu that he has not enough to live on, and that there are enjoyments to be obtained by working of which the idle man knows nothing.

But the Zulu does work, though not so regularly as might be desirable. I was astonished to find at how much cheaper a rate he works than does the Kafir in British Kafraria or in the Cape Colony generally. The wages paid by the Natal farmer run from 10s. down to 5s. a month, and about 3 lbs. of mealies or Indian corn a day for diet. I found that on road parties,-where the labour is I am sorry to say compulsory, the men working under constraint from their Chiefs, the rate is 5s. a month, or 4d. a day for single days. The farmer who complains of course expects to get his work cheap, and thinks that he is injuring not only himself but the community at large if he offers more than the price which has been fixed in his mind as proper. But in truth there is much of Zulu agricultural work done at a low rate of wages, and the custom of such work is increasing.