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Updated: May 5, 2025
Here was a place where she might lie till she died, for no one ever came there, except now and again some wandering Kafir herd. On she sprang, from rock to rock, a wild and eerie figure, well in keeping with the solemn and titanic sadness of the place. Twice she fell, once right into the stream, but she took no heed, she did not even seem to feel it.
When I was eighteen I had a conversation with a Kafir woman still in her untouched primitive condition, a conversation which made a more profound impression on my mind than any but one other incident connected with the position of woman has ever done. She was a woman whom I cannot think of otherwise than as a person of genius.
Then Macomo began hostilities by robbing and murdering some farmers on the lower part of the Kat River, and two days afterwards the Kafir hordes, variously estimated at from eight to fifteen thousand men, burst across the whole frontier, wrapped the eastern colony in the smoke and flames of burning homesteads, scattered the unprepared settlers, demolished the works of fourteen years' labour, penetrated to within twenty miles of Algoa Bay, and drove thousands of sheep and cattle back in triumph to Kafirland.
Amongst them, a wife of the ordinary class costs eight head of cattle, but the price of a young lady of the higher ranks runs as high as twenty cows. When a Kafir is suspected of a crime, his tongue is touched seven times with hot iron, and if it is not burnt he is declared innocent." "I am afraid," said Jack, "if they were all subjected to that test, they would be found to be a very bad lot.
I remember whilst we were riding mutely along, listening to the creaking and jolting of the waggons, and wondering whether we were going to get through, or what the alternative would be if we did not, we suddenly saw someone deliberately strike a match and light his pipe. "Who struck that match?" came from the front. Then the delinquent himself spoke up "It's this confounded Kafir of mine.
The Bushreen complied with the request; and in order, as he pretended, to render the saphies more efficacious, enjoined the young man to avoid any nuptial intercourse with his bride for the space of six weeks. Severe as the injunction was, the Kafir strictly obeyed; and without telling his wife the real cause, absented himself from her company.
That the Volksraad should have thought it necessary to enact such a law in order that the farmers should obtain a supply of Kafir labour in a territory that had nearly a million of native inhabitants, who, unlike the Zulus, are willing to work if only they meet with decent treatment, is in itself an instructive commentary on the feelings existing between the Boer master and Kafir servant.
Grosvenor, with the confidence of the inexperienced, was quite prepared unhesitatingly to plunge into the very heart of darkest Africa with no other companions than Dick, and a few Kafir or Hottentot "boys" as servants; but Dick, although the younger of the two, had discretion enough to understand that this would be a very unwise thing to do, and that it would be altogether more prudent in every way to secure the services of some white man, well acquainted with the country, and the ways and language of the natives, to act as a sort of general overseer and factotum, and this view Grosvenor at length somewhat unwillingly accepted.
On one side of Staines were two swells, who lay on their backs and talked opera half the day, but seldom condescended to work without finding a diamond of some sort. After a week's deplorable luck, his Kafir boy struck work on account of a sore in his leg; the sore was due to a very common cause, the burning sand had got into a scratch, and festered.
It is to be hoped it did not, for even under the old law natives were shamefully treated by the Boers, who would pretend that they were authorised by the Government to collect the tax; the result being that the unfortunate Kafir was frequently obliged to pay twice over.
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