A KAFFIR CATTLE-STEALER. 21 



forty yards in diameter. Sentries were placed round this 

 inclosure, in spite of whom, for two nights, the bushes 

 had been removed and two or three oxen taken away. 

 There had been a slight disturbance amongst the cattle 

 each night, but upon inspection everything seemed right. 

 To prevent a third robbery, a number of Hottentots were 

 placed round the kraal and ordered to lie down under 

 the bushes, and to keep quiet. They remained nearly half 

 the night without seeing anything, when one wily fellow 

 noticed a small black object on the ground at a short 

 distance from him, which he thought he had not observed 

 before. Keeping his eyes fixed upon it, he saw a 

 movement when a sentry walked away from it, and a 

 stillness as he approached. The Hottentot remained 

 perfectly quiet until the black object was a few yards 

 from him, when he called out in Kaffir that he was going 

 to shoot. The black object jumped on its feet, whirling 

 an assagy, but only in time to receive a heavy charge 

 of buckshot in the breast, followed up by a bullet, which 

 terminated the career of a Kaffir well known for his 

 daring and cattle-stealing propensities. 



That the frontier Kaffir is, in nearly every case, a 

 rogue, a thief, and a liar, no one will, I believe, deny; 

 there is a great deal, however, to be said in excuse for 

 him. He is a savage, uneducated, and misled by the bad 

 example of his forefathers, and he is gradually encroached 

 upon by the white men, who, after a war, most uncere- 

 moniously appropriate a certain number of square miles 

 of territory, and tell the original owner that he must either 

 move on, or that he is only a squatter on sufferance. 



