HUSBAND AND WIFE. 235 



night, and then lies in his hut smoking dakka, a very 

 intoxicating root, something between tobacco and opium. 

 Thus, an investment in wives is a very common custom 

 amongst rich Kaffirs. I made a great mistake on one 

 occasion when I intended to give the Kaffir Monyosi a 

 reproof. On going to his kraal, on a warm beautiful day, 

 to ask him to come out and shoot, he told me that he was 

 very lazy, and wanted to stay in his hut and smoke. I 

 told him to come out and shoot, and show himself to be a 

 man, and not stop in his hut all day like a woman (think- 

 ing of our English customs) . He gave a knowing sort 

 of grin, and said, " The men stop in all day ; the women 

 go out and work ! " A Kaffir's riches consist in either 

 wives or cattle, some of the great chiefs having a hundred 

 wives, and many thousand head of cattle. 



Travellers vary in their accounts of the nature of the 

 South- African savage. Each should speak according to 

 his experience, but at the same time he should judge 

 fairly, and with all due allowance for the ignorant state of 

 these people. 



The frontier Kaffirs, I have before said, are confirmed 

 rascals ; but I doubt whether we have not made them so 

 ourselves ; and we are pursuing a plan to form the Natal 

 Kaffirs on the same model. Let us see whether other 

 writers differ from me in their conclusions with regard to 

 the savages. Captain Harris, in his " Wild Sports of 

 Southern Africa," says : " How truly it has been remarked 

 by Captain Owen, that the state of those countries which 

 have had little or no intercourse with civilized nations is 

 a direct refutation of the theory of poets and philosophers, 



