440 K a ffi r Promise and Capability. 



shall be registered, and apprenticed to English masters for a 

 term of three years. The English rule is already more popular 

 with the great majority of the wild Zulu people beyond the 

 border than their own government. The smile of Queen 

 Yictoria has more power on the banks of the white and black 

 TJmfolusi in Zulu land than the frown of the shade of Chaka. Mr. 

 Shep stone, the Secretary for Native Affairs in Natal, is of opinion 

 that the instant the two restrictions alluded to above are 

 relaxed, or withdrawn, the remaining fragments of the Empire 

 of Chaka and barbarous Zuludom will crumble into pieces. 

 Within the last few months, since the writer of these pages has 

 left the land that he is speaking of, the Basuto chief Moshesh, 

 beyond the north-western frontier, has sent a special messenger 

 to the British High Commissioner to say how ardently he 

 desires that his people, another division of the great Kaffir 

 family, should be enrolled among the black children of the 

 British Queen. The race that is concerned in these move- 

 ments of contemporaneous history combines in itself the 

 docility of the negro, with certain mental qualities that are of 

 a higher order than those of the negro. Therefore, no theory 

 that can be shown to affect the true negro, and no experience 

 that has been reaped from the true negro, can be relied upon 

 in reasoning upon its future destinies. The final issue of the 

 Natal experiment is yet in the obscurity of time. But this 

 much at least is known — so far as the British territory is con- 

 cerned this interesting aboriginal people must either be 

 converted into an industrious and civilized community, serving 

 the interests and co-operating in the objects of their white and 

 more highly gifted brethren, or their places on colonial ground 

 must become vacant. Civilization and barbarism cannot long 

 stand side by side, or face to face. In such a state of affairs 

 the few notes that have been placed on record in these pages 

 cannot be held to be without deep interest, both as indications 

 and as suggestions — as indications of what may fairly be 

 hoped for, and as suggestions of what may possibly be done. 



