Kaffir Promise and Capability. 431 



and five hundred Kaffirs in his employment during a term of 

 four years. The men were the rudest and wildest specimens 

 of the race, and were sent to him under the orders of the 

 magistrate for six months' term of service. Most of them, 

 when they arrived, were entirely without a conception of a 

 shovel, a pickaxe, or a lever. Mr. Taylor found that, for rough 

 labour, one of these Kaffirs was equal to two of the very best 

 Indian coolies ; and he estimated that one Kaffir was worth 

 about a fourth part of a good English labourer, who would 

 receive four shillings a day in England for his work. These 

 Kaffir labourers required one English leader to look after a 

 gang comprising from twenty to thirty individuals. They took 

 kindly to earth-work with shovel, pick, and barrow. Some 

 made excellent sawyers, in pits with white men at the top, and 

 some became very handy as assistants to English smiths. 

 They were always free to leave after six months' service, and 

 were then replaced by new recruits. One remark made by 

 Mr. Taylor is well worth record and attention. He invariably 

 found that the men who came to him wild, raw barbarians, 

 went away at the end of their service altered beings. Their 

 countenances had become perceptibly brighter and more 

 intelligent. Regular discipline and steady industry seemed to 

 exert the most beneficial influence over their characters. 

 There can be no doubt that well-ordered and well-arranged 

 work, carrying with it the proper remuneration, and bringing 

 in its train new cravings to be satisfied by new efforts of 

 industry, would prove among these people the most certain and 

 most potent civilizer that could be employed in their behalf. 



Work on the sugar plantations is, in the main, popular 

 among the Kaffirs for two reasons. The climate is warm and 

 genial on the coast, where the sugar is grown, and treacle is a 

 thoroughly appreciated addition to the daily fare. The chief 

 drawback to the employment of Kaffirs in industrial enterprise 

 up to the present time has been the uncertainty of their 

 labour. It has been found hitherto impossible to induce them 

 to take any long term of engagement. They will work while 

 the humour is on them, but they will reserve to themselves the 

 right to start off to their kraals whenever the humour changes. 

 They are as fitful and capricious as children, and look with 

 ready jealousy and suspicion upon all attempts to impose 

 obligations and constraints upon them. On this account a 

 considerable number of Indian coolies have been introduced 

 into the colony to work upon the plantations, with fixed terms 

 of service. The mail which has just reached England from the 

 Cape brings the most welcome intelligence, that one of the 

 enterprising coast planters in Natal has recently succeeded in 

 inducing the Kaffirs to undertake to clear ground intended for 



