36 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



to eat the herds which they persist in treating as ornaments 

 rather than as made for use. 



Many of the natives work for the settlers, as cattle- 

 keepers, as ostrich-keepers, or, after a fashion, as laborers. 

 The settlers evidently much prefer to rely upon the natives 

 for unskilled labor rather than see coolies from Hindostan 

 brought into the country. At Sir Alfred Pease's ranch, as 

 at most of the other farms of the neighborhood, we found 

 little Wakamba settlements. Untold ages separated em- 

 ployers and employed; yet those that I saw seemed to get 

 on well together. The Wakamba are as yet not sufficiently 

 advanced to warrant their sharing in the smallest degree in 

 the common government; the "just consent of the governed" 

 in their case, if taken literally, would mean idleness, famine, 

 and endless internecine warfare. They cannot govern them- 

 selves from within; therefore they must be governed from 

 without; and their need is met in highest fashion by firm 

 and just control, of the kind that on the whole they are 

 now getting. At Kitanga the natives on the place some- 

 times worked about the house ; and they took care of the 

 stock. The elders looked after the mild little humped cat- 

 tle bulls, steers, and cows; and the children, often the 

 merest toddlers, took naturally to guarding the parties of 

 pretty little calves, during the day-time, when they were 

 separated from their mothers. It was an ostrich-farm, too; 

 and in the morning and evening we would meet the great 

 birds, as they went to their grazing-grounds or returned to 

 the ostrich boma, mincing along with their usual air of 

 foolish stateliness, convoyed by two or three boys, each 

 with a red blanket, a throwing stick, copper wire round his 

 legs and arms, and perhaps a feather stuck in his hair. 



