292 Wild Kaffir Life and Wild Kaffir Intelligence. 



wattle, and bound compactly down upon it by fibres. A low 

 arched door, very much like the bee's door, is left at one point, 

 through which passage is made horizontally, either for iugress 

 or egress. The correct position is something even more abject 

 than that which is familiarly known as on all fours. This 

 doorway is closed at night by a frame of wicker-work. The 

 floor is a smooth, hard, and almost polished pavement, con- 

 structed of beaten earth and cow-dung. If the hut is of 

 large dimensions, it has four or six posts inside; but if of 

 small size, these internal supports are not used. There is a 

 saucer-like and rimmed depression in the middle of the floor, 

 to serve as a hearth in cold weather, and the smoke and air 

 permeate the grass with just sufficient freedom to secure venti- 

 lation, but not one drop of water enters from the sky. Round 

 the walls, in the interior, the scanty Lares and Penates of the 

 master, consisting principally of beer pots, milk pots, mats, 

 skins, and shields and assegais, are distributed. Upon the floor 

 with rush mats unrolled beneath them, the dusky household 

 squat to gossip by day, and lie outstretched to sleep at night. 

 Each hut affords sleeping-room for several individuals. The 

 chief, or head-man of a kraal has a principal hut for himself, 

 where his visitors come to gossip and feast with him, and also 

 a hut for each of his many wives, whose families dwell therein 

 with them until the children attain a certain age. In most 

 kraals there is also a hut set apart for the use of young men. 



The Kaffir is eminently a creature of sunshine. In cold or 

 wet weather he keeps himself close within the shelter of his 

 hut, and gossips and doses away his time. When the sunshine 

 is genial and warm he sits outside squatting upon the ground, 

 surrounded by his dogs and his children, and fashioning some 

 article for household use, for employment as a weapon, or for 

 personal adornment ; or with a small shield upon his arm, and 

 a bundle of short light assegais, and a knob-headed stick in his 

 hand, he strides off over the hills bent upon some business of 

 gossiping or feasting. The cattle are principally tended and 

 herded by the young boys, roaming free over the pastures by 

 day, and being driven into the inner enclosure of the kraal for 

 protection at night. In some convenient nook on a hill side, 

 or in a sheltered ravine near to the kraal, a space is rudely 

 fenced in as a garden, and here crops of the Indian corn, the 

 millet, the sweet potato, and occasionally of the pumpkin, a 

 wild sugar-cane (Imph.ee), and wild hemp, and tobacco for 

 smoking, are grown. The ground of the garden is broken and 

 tilled by the women, working with a curious kind of hoe, now 

 imported largely into Kaffir lands for native use. The Indian 

 corn and millet are produced in large quantities, and ordinarily 

 form the staple of a Kaffir's food. The grain is stored, after 



