HAMILTON SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION 35 



The Kaffir is a handsome man. They use largely as a 

 food a kind of corn. It is simply our Indian corn which was 

 introduced there. This lady has boiled the corn, and now she 

 is griding it in order to make cakes. I suppose you have 

 wondered why it was that the Kaffir wants two wives. It 

 keeps one of them nearly all day making the bread for the 

 family, and it keeps her busy most of the time just to feed 

 them. I suppose you sympathize with the poor Kaffir who 

 doesn't happen to have a second wife. This represents the 

 bee-hive shaped house. The door is three or four feet high 

 and there is no chimney. Consequently there is a fine deposit 

 of soot over everything, and the inhabitants have red eyes 

 from the smoke. Here the lady is grinding corn once more, 

 but the baby has to be attended to just the same. 



One of the records of the way that rather impressed me 



was the house of General L,~ . We came to the place 



first at night, and it was so black we thought nothing of the 

 two mile avenue we passed through before reaching the 

 house. Coming back we saw it however. It is a most 

 beautiful and interesting place, but the General was so dis- 

 gusted at the burning of his house that he never want back. 

 The two-mile avenue leads to a ruin. 



In that region we have vegetation of a sort so different 

 from the rest of Africa that I thought I would show you a 

 picture of it. One of the trees that is very characteristic in 

 that part of Africa is the Uforbia, something like our cactus. 

 It is not a cactus however. It has no leaves but a green stock 

 thirty or forty feet high. The bloom is very different from 

 the cactus bloom. They have imitated the methods of the 

 cactus but they have a different type of growth. 



We passed Majuba Hill by a deal of climbing within the 

 flanks of the mountain. It was on top of that hill that a 

 small army of British soldiers was cut off by the Boers and a 

 great number of them killed and the rest taken prisoners. 

 They retreated to the hill and there they had no water. The 

 Boers just had to wait. The ragged top of the hill which 

 you can just see dimly here, gave them little protection from 



