17 
once in a way a mountain of meat, in a desert without water, by 
taking a two-horned rhinoceros in a pit-fall, to the Zulu regiments 
of King Moselikatse going forth with cow-hide shield and stabbing 
assegai to exterminate some neighbouring tribe ; or the poor of his 
kingdom, with famine girdles braced tightly round their loins, 
following in the track of lions, in hopes of partaking of some of 
their leavings : they were all on those faithful sheets of paper. 
While, so keen was C. D. Bell’s appreciation of the ridiculous, that 
if there was any young fop among the nearly naked Bechuana or 
Malokolo, who wore his dress of a few jackals’ tails and some glass 
beads with a particular twist of his own invention, and thought he 
looked so handsome in it that all the women must be falling in love 
with him, this native-born dandy was sure to figure in some one or 
other of Mr. Bell’s drawings ; for he drew as much, or more, from 
memory in the silent watches of the night, as by sketching direct 
from nature through the day. 
That that brilliant collection of pieces of graphical information 
never saw the light again until, after twenty years, a few of them 
straggled out to illustrate later travellers’ books, — was no fault of 
Mr. Bell’s. For he had necessarily to give them up to his chief ; 
and he, a very learned naturalist, and taken up far more with curio- 
sities in the way of undescribed snakes, — was allowed by the 
Association to carry out. a scheme of his own for obtaining renewed 
funds for more expeditions, by exhibiting all his natural history 
treasures in that focus of wealth and Government patronage, Lon- 
don ; but with a result which totally failed to pay its own expenses. 
Meanwhile Mr. Bell quietly re-entered the Audit Office of the 
Colonial Government, where he was raised from his former junior 
position to be chief clerk ; and not long after that received the 
acting clerkship to the Legislative Council, holding that honourable 
position during a two years’ absence of the proper officer. 
But mere pen-work within four walls was not enough to satisfy 
C. I). Bell’s aspirations, or assure his conscience that he was thereby 
turning to the utmost account all the varied talents committed to 
him by his Creator. In 1838, therefore, he began to turn his 
attention to surveying, and became soon after, one of the sworn land 
surveyors of the colony; — a colony twice the size of Great Britain, 
but with a population of half the city of Edinburgh. A colony of 
b 
