connected with it by ferries, is the township of Panmure. The terminus of the railway is at Panmure and not at East London. And at Panmure there has gathered itself together an unpromising assemblage of stores and houses which declares of itself that it means to snuff East London altogether out. East London and Panmure together are strong against all the coast of South Africa to the right and left; but between the two places themselves there is as keen a rivalry as between any two towns on the continent. At East London I was assured that Panmure was merely

upstart; "—but a Panmurite had his revenge by whispering to me that East London was a nest of musquitoes. As to the musquitoes I can speak from personal experience.

And yet I ought to say a good word of East London for I was there but three days and was invited to three picnics. I went to two of them, and enjoyed myself thoroughly, seeing some beautiful scenery up the river, and some charming spots along the coast. I was, however, very glad to get on board the steamer, having always had before my eyes the terrible prospect of a return journey to Fort Elizabeth before I could embark for Natal.

CHAPTER XII.

KAFIR SCHOOLS.

THE question of Kafir education is perhaps the most important that has to be solved in South Africa,-and certainly it is the one as to which there exists the most violent difference of opinion among those who have lived in South Africa. A traveller in the land by associating exclusively with one set of persons would be taught to think that here was to be found a certain and quick panacea for all the ills and dangers to which the country is subjected. Here lies the way by which within an age or two the population of the country may be made to drop its savagery and Kafirdom and blanket loving vagabondism and become a people as fit to say their prayers and vote for members of parliament as at any rate the ordinary English Christian constituent. "Let the Kafir be caught young and subjected to religious education, and he will soon become so good a man and so docile a citizen that it will be almost a matter of regret that more of us were not born Kafirs." That is the view of the question which prevails with those who have devoted themselves to Kafir education, and of them it must be acknowledged that their efforts are continuous and

energetic. I found it impossible not to be moved to enthusiasm by what I saw at Kafir schools.

Another traveller falling into another and a different set will be told by his South African associates that the Kafir is a very good fellow, and may be a very good servant, till he has been taught to sing psalms and to take pride in his rapidly acquired book learning; but that then he becomes sly, a liar and a thief, whom it is impossible to trust and dangerous to have about the place. "He is a Kafir still," a gentleman said to me, "but a Kafir with the addition of European cunning without a touch of European conscience." As far as I could observe, the merchants and shopkeepers who employ Kafirs about their stores, and persons who have Kafirs about their houses, do eschew the school Kafir. The individual Kafir when taken young and raw out of his blanket, put into breeches and subjected to the general dominion of a white master, is wonderfully honest, and, as far as he can speak at all, he speaks the truth. There can I think be no question about his virtues. You may leave your money about with perfect safety, though he knows well what money will do for him; you may leave food, and even drink in his way and they will be safe. "Is there any housebreaking or shoplifting?" I asked a tradesman in King Williamstown. He declared that there was nothing of the kind known,-unless it might be occasionally in reference to a horse and saddle. A Kafir would sometimes be unable to resist the temptation of riding back into Kafirdom, the happy possessor of a steed. But let a lad have passed three or four years at a Kafir school, and

then he would have become a being very much altered for the worse and not at all fit to be trusted among loose property. The saints in Kafirland will say that I have heard all this exclusively among the sinners. If so I can only say that the men of business are all sinners.

For myself I found it very hard to form an opinion between the two. I do believe most firmly in education. I should cease to believe in any thing if I did not believe that education if continued will at least civilize. I can conceive no way of ultimately overcoming and dispelling what I must call the savagery of the Kafirs, but by education. And when I see the smiling, oily, good humoured, docile, naturally intelligent but still wholly uneducated black man trying to make himself useful and agreeable to his white employers, I still recognise the Savage. With all his good humour and spasmodic efforts at industry he is no better than a Savage. And the white man in many cases does not want him to be better. He is no more anxious that his Kafir should reason than he is that his horse should talk. It requires an effort of genuine philanthropy even to desire that those beneath us should become more nearly equal to us. The man who makes his money by employing Kafir labour is apt to regard the commercial rather than the philanthropic side of the question. I refuse therefore to adopt his view of the matter. A certain instinct of independence, which in the eyes of the employer of labour always takes the form of rebellion, is one of the first and finest effects of education. The Kafir who can argue a question of wages with his master has already become an objectionable animal,

But again the education of the educated Kafir is very apt to "fall off." So much I have not only heard asserted generally by those who are antikafir-educational in their sympathies, but admitted also by many of those who have been themselves long exercised in Kafir education. And, in regard to religious teaching, we all know that the singing of psalms is easier than the keeping of the ten commandments. When we find much psalm-singing and at the same time a very conspicuous breach of what has to us been a very sacred commandment, we are apt to regard the delinquent as a hypocrite. And the Kafir at school no doubt learns something of that doctrine,-which in his savage state was wholly unknown to him, but with which the white man is generally more or less conversant,—that speech has been given to men to enable them to conceal their thoughts. In learning to talk most of us learn to lie before we learn to speak the truth. While dropping something of his ignorance the Savage drops something also of his simplicity. I can understand therefore why the employer of labour should prefer the unsophisticated Kafir, and am by no means sure that if I were looking out for black labour in order that I might make money out of it I should not eschew the Kafir from the schools.

The difficulty arises probably from our impatience. Nothing will satisfy us unless we find a bath in which we may at once wash the blackamoor white, or a mill and oven in which a Kafir may be ground and baked instantly into a Christian. That much should be lost,-should "fall off" as they say,-of the education imparted to them is natural.