72 A Breath from the Veldt 



but treat him as a friend and an equal, and he will simply laugh at you, as a 

 fool with whom he can take all sorts of liberties. In fact, so far as my small 

 experience goes, the black man is by no means the equal of the white, and in 

 contact with European races he is happy only when in the position of a well- 

 treated servant. The sense of smell, too, prevents any intimate association 

 between the two races. It is a big shock — though one has to stand it now 

 and then — to find yourself on the lee side of a darkie, and equally true it is 

 that we ourselves, when hot and excited, are similarly objectionable to the 

 nose of a Kaffir. It is for that reason that many Zulus refuse to enter a white 

 man's dwelling. Office and Gentleman are two fine specimens of their race, 

 which is properly that of Gungunani's Shangans, now settled north-east of the 

 Lundi River in Eastern Mashonaland. 



Piet has come back just as I feared, having been more successful in the 

 good-bye business with his best girl than in the capture of Prince, who had 

 gone away to a Hottentot wedding with intent to get genteelly drunk. So 

 Teenie is now off on one of my ponies, with another in the string, to catch the 

 roysterer and bring him in, his master graciously consenting to his being 

 kidnapped. 



And now, after two days' absence, the two return together, Teenie and his 

 captive, the latter with much sign of jollification about him — a Bacchanalian 

 smile on his face, and two big bottles of gin protruding from his pockets. Let 

 me describe him. He is of the ordinary Hottentot type, age twenty-seven, 

 short and thickset, with large spreading nostrils, beautiful teeth, and yellow 

 skin. Like all " Totties," as they are called, he is a great lover of animals and 

 a fair cook. His chief distinction is his remarkable skill as a waggon-driver, 

 and here I may say how much I was indebted to it in later days. He made 

 every ox in the team do its fair share of the work, simply by calling out its 

 name and cracking his great ox-whip ; and when I say that we accomplished 

 our long journey without losing an ox or even oflf-loading our waggon, it will 

 be understood, I think, that he thoroughly justified his reputation. In 

 temperament gay as a lark, even under the teetotal discipline to which he was 

 perforce subjected during, our march, there was yet in his smile an element of 

 cunning characteristic of his race ; and dear to his heart was the chance of 

 making mischief out of any words he happened to overhear between myself 

 and any Englishman I happened to meet. At times, too, on a moonlight 

 night, he was as queer as a wild cat. Climbing up on the waggon, he would 

 pour forth a series of melancholy Dutch waltzes with monotonous and sickly 



