tread upon us, mighty chief,'—plying him lustily meanwhile with their spears, and raising a tremendous shout the instant the animal falls. The tusks are the prize sought for. One of them falls to the lot of him who first pierces the game with his weapon, and the other to the chief of the party.

an ox,

The Caffer does not however subsist wholly on vegetable food. The issue of the very elephant hunts just described, is usually celebrated by the feasting of the whole company upon which the successful hunter must furnish: and on other occasions a rhinoceros is despatched and devoured with as much goût, and as little ceremony or cookery, as if he were no better or bigger than a cabbage-head. Plain animal food, without salt, seasoning, or vegetable, is the greatest luxury the Caffer desires, and whenever any one kills a cow, it is an invariable custom throughout the country for all around to flock to the feast. Even this custom, however, rather indicates the infrequency of the use of such food, and on the whole it may doubtless be asserted safely, that it enters in a very small proportion into their regular subsistence. They are substantially a milk-fed nation; and if the physiologists, philosophers, or physicians have any theories to form or confirm in respect to the influence of such aliment on the character of the people with whom it prevails, they will probably find few cases where the data are more conveniently set before them.

We may properly take this occasion to remark, without discussing a question which we are not prepared to decide, that, whatever the cause may be, the Caffers are generally admitted to be favorably distinguished from most barbarous nations by their mildness of disposition,-a position, which is .not much contradicted by the existence of many harsh and cruel customs among them, rather appertinent to condition than character, and chiefly the immediate result of excessive superstition. Not only Mr. Kay, but travellers generally, and especially missionaries, when known to be such, have always been treated with signal civility. The treatment we met with from the natives on this journey,' says the former, was far better than we had anticipated, as the clans living along the base of the mountain are celebrated thieves and robbers.'† Again. their habits of life induce a firmness of carriage, and an open manly demeanor, altogether free from that apparent † P. 101.

* P. 97.

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6

fear and suspicion, characteristic of uncivilized nations.'* In another instance he describes the commencement of a mission among the Amatembu, under the charge of himself and another clergyman. The inhabitants received them, at the first villages, rather coolly,' although the chief had granted them permission to make the attempt; but on learning who the strangers were, we are told they assumed an entirely different character. They kindled their fires for them, and, having finished their day's labor among the herds, assembled for divine service, and listened attentively to a hymn and a sermon from the missionaries, perfect silence reigning in the desert around, and the moon shining delightfully bright above, while they led this sable group to the contemplation of divine things.' After the services, the chief gave them a fat cow for slaughter,

for which, however, he expected an equivalent, such reciprocity of friendly tokens being the customary mode of forming attachments.'

This estimate of the Caffer character is confirmed by Barrow, Lichenstein, Alberti, General Janssens, and other travellers. Vasco de Gama originally named them boa gente,—' good people; and, to come nearer home for authority, we have the testimony of the American Captain Stout, of the ship Hercules, who, in his narrative of the shipwreck of his vessel on this coast some twenty years since, acknowledges that he found in the natives a hospitality, and received from them a protection, which on many of the shores of the polished nations of Europe he might have looked for in vain. They made a fire to dry us, slaughtered a bullock, conducted us to a spring of water, &c. Such was the conduct of a people. described as possessing no other semblance of the human character, than what they derive from their formation.' The reputation of the Caffers, for what this gentleman calls the compassionate feelings which adorn humanity,' may, on the whole, be considered as sufficiently established.

Their reputation for honesty does not perhaps rest on so good a foundation. In 1828, when Mr. Kay visited Gaika, a cele

* P. 247.

This narrative is cited in an article in the London Quarterly Review for 1820, the writer of which states that he saw with his own eyes the wreck of the Captain's vessel on the shore mentioned in the narrative.

brated and principal chief, with the view of obtaining permission to establish a missionary station in his country, (in which he succeeded) one of that potentate's wives contrived to steal a silk handkerchief from the pocket of a gentleman in the company, while he was engaged in negotiation with the husband. Whether the latter acted as accessary in the business does not appear: the missionary remarks only, that this royal mendicant,' whom he describes otherwise as a sordid, avaricious, and beggarly wretch,' was in the mean time endeavoring to extort additional presents from him by complaining of his niggardliness, in regard to what he had already bestowed. This kind of gratitude might certainly be considered, as Captain Church says of four and sixpence a day, premium for an Indian's head,

scanty encouragement and poor reward.' But however this might be, no doubt King Gaika and his wife, had they read Dr. Combe's 'System,' would at least dignify their accumulative propensity, if they could not deny it, by reference to the example set forth by that illustrious King of the Sicilies, who is reported to have been so inveterate a pickpocket, that he laid hands upon every portable article of value which came in

his way.

His majesty, whose character is pourtrayed in the flattering terms borrowed above from Mr. Kay, by no means stands so preeminent in the fashionable accomplishment alluded to, as his station, and the value of his example, might seem to require. When our traveller went into Cafferland a second time, during the year last named, on the same errand as before, he gives a graphic description of an interview with the natives, which took place under the spreading branches of a thorn-tree, on the banks of a solitary stream. The news of his arrival collected great crowds of visitors the next morning; and their deportment was indeed friendly,' says Mr. Kay, but circumstances soon convinced us, that they would consider it no evil to pick and steal whenever opportunity enabled them to do It is remarkable that a remedy was found in this instance by hiring one of the depredators, for the consideration of a few beads, to guard the exposed property of the tent. This he did to the perfect satisfaction of his employers, and the missionary embraces with evident pleasure this occasion of stating, as an offset to the vice before charged upon the Caffer, that he never knew a single instance of his betraying his trust in any thing which was fairly and fully committed to his

so.'

charge. Do this,' he adds, and the utmost confidence may. in general be placed in him.'

Dr. Combe would perhaps consider this apparent inconsistency the result of a ruling propensity being counteracted by setting in operation an opposite motive. Whether the stealing disposition is constitutional or casual, it would be presumptuous. in us to endeavor to decide, when doctors disagree. It may however be remarked, that the habit in question is to some extent an almost universal trait of savage character. If the Caf fer carries it farther than some others, by stealing, whenever he can conveniently, as Mr. Kay somewhere states, from even his best friends of his own tribe, and by inculcating this Spartan doctrine systematically, in early life, upon the minds of his children, perhaps this preeminence may be fairly attributed in a great measure to the nature of the intercourse he has held for a century and a half with his profligate European neighbors, and especially to the depredations and other injuries he has suffered at their hands. Unprincipled war has degenerated into rapine on a smaller scale, rapine into robbery, robbery into larceny, and the habit thus acquired, particularly if deemed honorable, could not fail of being finally exercised with considerably less discrimination as to subjects, than might have been the honest intention in the outset. The African tribes generally, it may be noticed, have credit among travellers for no small share of this disordered acquisitiveness, and it is no where so rife as with those nations which have suffered most from the slave-trade. Crime, like disease, is contagious.

The government of the Caffers resembles that of the North American natives, and indeed that of most of the African tribes. It is ostensibly democratic, and substantially despotic, respectively in the highest degree; the personal superiority of the chiefs, and the advantage they derive from traditionary authority, being for the most part sufficient to enable them to treat their subjects with the most unqualified, though only customary, severity of discipline or imposition, as the case may be. By personal superiority, we mean simply such qualifications as create personal influence among such barbarians as the Caffers. The principal ones are energy and cunning. Such must have been the recommendations of his majesty, the beggarly wretch,' above described. It is stated also of another, named S'Lhambi, who visited Wesleyville with a train of thirty or forty counsellors,-persons corresponding to the same class

among our natives, that notwithstanding his advanced age, lust, avarice and lying were by far the most prominent traits of his character;' a description which recalls to mind the accounts given by American historians of the celebrated Uncas. Yet the reverence evinced for this exemplary character by his attendants, was unbounded. Hinza was another great man among the Caffers, and the dignity of this worthy may be inferred from the circumstance, that while his slaves were literally trembling in his presence, 'lest he should cast envious eyes on their earnings,' he attempted to extort a basket of corn from Mr. Kay, by ingeniously contracting his body in such a manner as to represent the effects of a severe famine. How far the advice of the counsellors aforesaid, and the custom of conducting trials and councils in the palaver-houses (that is, the cattlefold) contribute to check his absolute authority, may be easily conjectured, when it is understood that the chiefs are, in all cases,' as Thompson remarks, 'both legislators and judges;' and that, in the language of Mr. Kay, although Hinza would not seize the property of his subjects with force and arms, yet 'such is his power and their thraldom, that whatever he might request they would scarcely dare to refuse.'

The degradation of the female sex is considered by Dr. Robertson the characteristic of the savage in all countries. If the degree of it fairly indicate that of the grossness of his barbarism, the Caffers must be low indeed in the human scale. No where are women, as such, such perfect slaves; no where are they so much used as mere chattels. Even the building devolves on them, as well as the digging, sowing, planting and reaping. The common price of a bride is from five to ten head of cattle, though one of high birth, as the term is, much as in civilized countries we speak of the descendant of a famous horse,-will bring five or six times that amount. After marriage comes endless drudgery, till the woman is fortunate enough either to be worn out with her slavery, or to be left a widow. Indeed, the tyranny of custom follows her even beyond that of her husband, for not only is she compelled, on his decease, to retire alone into the wilderness for a considerable time, under pretext of mourning,-whatever the season or her condition may be,-but, the only dowry allotted her from his property being a new garment from the hide of one of his oxen, she thenceforth sinks under an intolVOL. XXXIX.-NO. 85. 49