A COCKNEY TRAVELLER. 281 



ness in the issues, I calculated that we might certainly 

 hold out, although without meat, for nearly a month 

 longer." The party were at length rescued by a detach- 

 ment landed from the Southampton frigate, who drove 

 the Boers back and eventually made terms with them. 

 The Boer gave me the whole account in detail, but it 

 might only weary the reader were I to write it. He 

 praised the courage of the English, but said that they were 

 not slim (cunning) enough for the Kaffirs and Boers. 



The Boers have generally a question to ask, or a story 

 to relate. They gave me one or two very interesting 

 accounts of the interior, and I was at last asked to tell an 

 adventure of some kind. I did not think that I was 

 likely to amuse my hearers much ; for if I related some of 

 my African adventures and experiences they would have 

 thought them as ridiculous as I did the following. When 

 returning from a rough voyage of seventy-eight days from 

 the Cape, a custom-house searcher came on board our 

 ship at Gravesend, and tried to awe us with the dangers 

 that he there met during a strong easterly wind. " Ah I" 

 said he, " when it blows hard, the sea gets rather lumpy 

 here, I can tell you !" He was a cockney, and this had 

 been the limit of his travels. 



I had, however, wonderful things to tell, and was 

 obliged to be cautious how I related them, lest my veracity 

 should be called in question : all my precautions were, 

 however, useless. A young Boer, totally illiterate, and 

 more ignorant than the generality of these people, was, 

 in his own opinion, a very clever, sharp sort of fellow, who 

 could not easily be imposed upon. 



