so overwhelm his opponent with a hurricane of words, that if you don't agree with him, you can't find any "raw," to which to apply the lash in opposing him. A black-eyed, square-faced, merry and impudent looking fellow is Mr. McGrady, and the moment his " Misther Chairman" is heard, every face relaxes into a smile, and every one looks for the fun that is to follow-except Pendragon, who never smiles much, and doesn't like fun, except Scotch fun, which to English notions is no fun at all.

McGrady comes out in strong force to-night. He quizzes Pendragon immensely and makes his audience roar by his imitations (pretending they are unconscious ones) of the Scotchman's style of speaking. Pendragon never heeds all that; but sits listening for a bit of real " argument "and never hears a word of it from beginning to end of the speech which lasts half an hour, and yet is delivered at railroad speed and crowded with quotations from every book that is poetical from the very Psalms of David down to Mrs. Norton's last work-as thickly as an omnibus is stuffed with ladies and babies on a wet day. Thunders of applause, and the waving of every handkerchief carried by a lady in the room, follows McGrady, as he takes his seat, and poor Filagree feels that even he has had the "shine taken out of him as a fast young hon-member whispers to his friend.

Mr. Puffy follows: and Mr. Puffy is like a pig waddling after a stag in comparison with McGrady. Puffy is slow and solemn and rather stupid; then Puffy has a habit of forgetting where he was in his sentences, and as he is strongly suspected of writing his speeches beforehand, he sometimes tags on the wrong ending to one period, and this evening he startles his audience by saying "Woman, Sir, can never, until the state of Society be greatly altered," a pause during which Puffy tries to recollect what follows, gets confused, and at last thinking he has found it says-" as a former speaker said, be properly and decently discussed in this room," which very remarkable conclusion was by no means what Mr. Puffy intended to say, but caused no little confusion among the ladies, cries of order, and shouts of laughter.

;

Several more gentlemen make several more speeches with more or less success; and then Filagree replies, but he is very nervous and some one whispering to him that his side is two to one against the others Filagree cuts his speech short, and sits down, taking care, however, to wind up with the one magnificent sentence, that he had carefully prepared and pruned days ago; for it is a fact that all young speakers compose a "wind-up," to their speeches, and whatever turn the discussion may take, they always contrive to drag it in at the end, with more or less success according to their natural tact. Do not many speakers in another Great Debating Club do likewise? Don't we often as we read-" At all events, sir, whatever may be the result of this discussion, I feel that the subject is one which will receive the deepest, and most solemn consideration of this house, as one on which the prosperity, the honour, and the glory of this great country, and her future destiny amid the nations of the earth, in no small degree shall rest." Don't we often I say, when we read this, think of the statesman at home, sitting down, composing, and polishing it off ready for the occasion, as we have so often ourselves done with our own peroration for the Debating Club? Perhaps the reader may think that we have laughed at our Club too much. Truth to say, we are by temperament disposed to look at the

humorous side of most things; but don't let him fancy that we therefore underrate the value of the things themselves. "Be merry and wise" is a venerable maxim and a good one, and we are convinced that our Club has made us wiser and certainly no less merry. And so we heartily wish that it may prosper, and all similar institutions with it. We believe that the two first steps taken by a new community to show their intellectual progress (and we speak from what we have seen at home and in the colonies) are-first to establish a newspaper-and secondly to open a Debating Club.

SOUTH AFRICAN INCIDENTS.

NO. V.-KAFIR GRATITUDE.

BY ALFRED W. COLE.

Ir is strange that Exeter Hall has lately been so silent on the subject of the cruel wrongs inflicted on their pet Kafirs, by those ruthless reprobates, the English colonists. It is not long since the Aborigines Protection Society were assuring those who knew no better that the Kafirs were a mild, peaceful, harmless, and inoffensive race, persecuted by the barbarous Dutchmen and Englishmen of South Africa, and goaded into warfare against their will.

These soi-disant philanthropists, who confine their sympathies to the possessors of black skins, and who would no more think of pitying their murdered and robbed fellow-creatures with white ones, than of weeping over the untimely fate of the lamb whose fore-quarter smokes upon their table-these advocates of every one whose acquaintance with nether garments, or any other garments, is yet to be made, must have been rather disconcerted at a few of the facts recently published in the public papers touching the conduct of their protegés towards their prisoners of war. It has been proved that the Kafirs not only put their prisoners to death, but also to the cruellest and direst tortures, such as roasting alive, and handing a man a slice of himself when he complains of hunger.

Exeter Hall, I say, is silent when these facts come to light. But would it not have been more honest and honourable in Exeter Hall to have said, "We have been deceived, and we have deceived others? Now that these horrible wretches are shown to us in their true light, we will not laud them for virtues they don't possess, nor abuse our own countrymen for seeking to defend themselves against their atrocities." But Exeter Hall says nothing of the kind, and the Aboriginal Secretary, with the unpronouncable name, writes no letters to the Times to apologize for the very great mistakes he previously made as to the character of his pets aforesaid.

Meanwhile there have been several cries of very natural and reasonable indignation launched forth in the papers against the barbarians of Caffraria, and one writer went so far as to recommend (and the Times had the boldness to print the letter) that Kafirs should be hunted down in South Africa, like wolves of old in England, and a price set on their heads, till the whole race is exterminated. I am afraid, however, that we must admit Kafirs to possess souls, in which respect they must be

pronounced superior to the wolves, though in every other point the comparison between the two animals is a decided injustice and insult to the quadruped.

Gratitude is generally supposed to be a virtue evinced by the most savage of human beings-nay, even by wild beasts themselves; but even this redeeming point is generally wanting in the Kafir character. The man whose life you spare or save to-day, will cut your throat tomorrow, if your death will benefit him to the value of a cowrie. The man who eats your bread, will burn your house on the first favourable opportunity, without the slightest compunctions of conscience-if he possess that troublesome appendage at all.

Theunis Van Zeiler was a prosperous young farmer in Oliphant's Hoek. He had a good farm, a good flock of sheep, and some of the finest cattle in South Africa. He was one of the best-hearted fellows living, hated oppression and injustice of all kind, and was ever ready with purse and hand to assist any one less prosperous than himself. He was married to a little woman well worthy of him, and had two sturdy little olive-branches for their joint comfort. His land was tolerably removed from the usual scene of Kafir depredations-so that his cattle was not purloined above two or three times a-year, in which respect he was more fortunate than many of his brother farmers, who look upon a weekly theft of some of their best cows and oxen as a matter of course, even in the times of peace, while in war they are subject to the additional inconvenience of having their houses burnt, and running the daily risk of being butchered, with all their family.

It was a lucky thing for Theunis that he was so advantageously located; for had he been a little nearer to the frontier, his fine fat oxen and jolly-looking cows, would have attracted almost daily visitors from the neighbouring nation of thieves. A Kafir has an astonishingly keen eye for sleek kine.

Among the many solemn absurdities of the treaties that were made between the Colonial government and the Kafirs was one that none of the latter nation should be permitted to enter the colony without a "pass," signed by one of our resident agents in Caffraria, and obtained at the solicitation of the chief of the tribe to which the man seeking it belonged. I will leave the reader to guess how far it was possible in a frontier of some hundreds of miles very thinly populated to prevent any Kafir that chose from passing the boundary without the required authority. No doubt, if he attempted it at the very spot where there was a "post" or military station, he would be stopped and sent back sans cérémonie; but, of course, these posts are precisely the places he would avoid, and as he did not appreciate to the full extent the luxuries of a high road, he would enter the colony by way of the bush, or the plain, or the mountain, as chance or a short cut prompted. When in the colony he was liable to be asked for his pass; but here again he could escape the ordeal by saying that he was a Fingoe-a race of men formerly in servitude to the Kafirs and exactly like them in personal appearance and released by Sir Benjamin D'Urban in a former war, and imported into the colony under British protection. If even this plea failed, he could say he had lost his pass, and if he were disbelieved his only punishment was-to be sent back again.

The farmers were naturally suspicious of travelling Kafirs, even when provided with passes-for it was a plan of these rascals to come

into the colony and obtain employment as herdsmen on some farm, and of course to take an early opportunity of walking off with all the cattle under their care. The reader may be surprised at any one giving them such employment, but he is little aware how scarce is labour of every kind in the colony, and how people run every risk rather than be left quite destitute of assistance.

One day Theunis Van Zeiler, was standing at the door of his homestead smoking his morning pipe, and watching a dark figure that was gradually approaching the house. He saw that it was a Fingo, or a Kafir-but certainly not one of his own people. The man was dressed with simply an ox-hide over his shoulders, and reaching to his knees. He carried a knobbed stick in his hand, had two large rings through his ears, several curtain rings on his arms, and a row of beads round his head, but no covering on it. He was a tall well-made fellow of a dark copper colour, and with a set of features not by any means repulsive, though he had one unsightly scar of a gash on his left cheek. Theunis addressed him in Dutch as he drew near, but the man shook his head to intimate that he did not understand, and spoke a few words of Sichuana (or the Kafir tongue). Theunis, who employed a great many Fingoes, had picked up a little of the language and asked the man who he was? "A Kafir," was the bold reply.

"Where is your pass?

"I have not got one."

"Candid at all events," thought Theunis, and he rather liked the man for his honest straightforward avowal, as he was heartily sick of the shuffling and prevarication usually employed by these gentry. However he went on thus :

"Then I must give you up to the next post and have you sent back." The Kafir answered that he would rather be killed at once. This excited Theunis's curiosity, and by dint of a great deal of trouble and circumlocution, he managed to elicit this account from the man-that he had been very rich and possessed hundreds of cattle, and that he was the intimate friend of the chief of his tribe; that he had a great enemy in a certain "rain-maker" (or professed wizard), who was constantly trying to set the chief against him and eventually succeeded in doing so; that the chief, however, under the rain-maker's advice did not come to an open rupture with him at once, but employed artifice to justify his deeds outwardly-thus, knowing that he, the relator of the story, had a daughter who was promised in marriage to a neighbour who was going to give an immense number of fine cattle for her, the chief sent to demand her for himself and for nothing; that he remonstrated, and in the mean time, let his neighbour take the girl and receive the cattle stipulated for; that immediately afterwards his cattle and everything he had, were seized by the chief, and that he only escaped with his life through the friendly aid of one of the emissaries of the chief, who intended to put him to death, by that very pleasant process invented by these barbarians of rubbing a man over with grease, chaining him to the ground, close to an ant-hill, and then breaking the hill and letting the ants out to crawl over him, and eat his flesh from his bones.

Poor Theunis was touched and horrified by the man's story, and could not resist his imploring appeal to afford him protection. He therefore counselled the man to pretend that he was a Fingo, and he took him into his service as a herdsman, on the usual wages.

Meyolo, the Kafir, behaved like a good servant, took every care of his herd, and never let any of them go astray, so that Theunis Van Zeiler congratulated himself on the result of his kindness, and almost made his little wife, to whom he confided his secret, do the same. But she had an unconquerable antipathy to a Kafir, and no amount of oaths and protestations from the lips of any one of them could quite remove the Îatent fear of treachery of which she felt conscious, when they were in question. She almost wished, indeed (though she kept the wish to herself,) that Meyolo would vanish some fine day, with two or three, or even a dozen of the cattle, and never appear again, so that they might be relieved from the sight of him. But Meyolo did no such thing. He returned home every evening from the grazing grounds, and brought his herd faithfully with him.

He had been in Theunis Van Zeiler's service about three months, when the Kafirs had become unusually "troublesome" as it is termed. Thus not content with stealing cattle, they had in one or two instances shot the herdsman also. They had committed one or two highway robberies into the bargain, and were getting more saucy every successive day. At length the Colonial Lion (sluggish brute that it is,) was beginning to be roused. Complaints of Kafir depredations on the most extensive and daring scale, poured in without cessation, till his Excellency, the Governer for the time being, found it necessary to send remonstrances, and even hints of chastisement to the thieves and murderers over the boundary. These messages were received with the usual respect that is to say, they were laughed at, and the Governor was challenged in school-boy phrase to "come on if he dared." In fine, a Kafir war was breaking out.

Our friend Meyolo expressed the greatest horror of this event, and hoped that the Kafirs would not venture into his part of the country. He requested his master to give him plenty of ammunition, and a gun, and he promised to fight bravely for his charge in case of an attack. Theunis was more pleased than ever, and trusted him implicitly.

Mrs. Van Zeiler removed her children to a friend's house further from the frontier on the general ground of danger, though in her heart she knew that she distrusted Meyolo as much as she did the rest of the Kafir nation. Theunis enrolled himself in a volunteer corps for the defence of his part of the country, and even enlisted Meyolo for the same purpose.

Oliphant's Hoek had hitherto escaped more than a few thefts, though it was not to be supposed that the Kafirs would long remain away from one of the most fertile parts of the colony, and where perhaps the best cattle were to be found. Rumours, in fact, at last began to circulate of stray Kafirs being occasionally seen skulking about; but the bush which is very dense in some parts of the district always enabled them to escape.

One day Meyolo came in haste to his master, to inform him of a discovery he had made. He had seen a Kafir skulking about in the neighbourhood of his farm, and he had followed him unseen by literally creeping along on his stomach. He said that he had seen him joined by another Kafir, and had then overheard their conversation. It was about a plan they had formed with six others of surprising Van Zeiler's homestead, murdering the inhabitants, and carrying off all the cattle. They were to do this that very evening at sunset, when the cattle would be all together, and the people on the farm least prepared for a hostile