(f) The potter’s art is now being lost by the Kaffirs. The large jars are being replaced by wooden casks purchased from Europeans, and iron pots have already come into general use.
(g) The Kaffir house has only one opening, which is low and narrow, but which serves for door, window, and chimney.
(h) The fireplace is a circle in the centre of the hut. It is made by raising a ring on the hard and smooth ant-heap floor. Round it the inmates sleep, while the back of the hut, or the side opposite the entrance, is used as a store room. There the jars and other household utensils would usually be placed.
(i) Intambo, a riem, or thong of untanned oxhide.
(j) Equivalent to saying that they journeyed for three days.
(k) There are no crocodiles in the rivers of the present Amaxosa country, but the reptile and its habits are well known to the people by hearsay. According to their traditions, the tribe migrated from the north-east. It is not unlikely that the Xosa belief in a water-spirit which has power to charm people and entice them into rivers to their destruction, may have originated in the fact of their having come from a country where these destructive animals were common, as the spirit and the reptile have the same name. In this story it is seemingly a crocodile that appears, but very shortly we learn that it is really a man who has been bewitched and forced to assume that appearance.
(l) Boys “enter manhood,” or acquire the privileges of men, by a ceremony similar to the ntonjane.
(m) Up to this point there is nothing to indicate that the [[209]]girl knew he was not in reality a crocodile, but here it is evident that she was aware he was a man under the power of a charm, for she uses a proper name when speaking of him, as is indicated by the prefix U.
(n) The inference from this is that his enemies had bewitched him and made him assume the appearance of a crocodile, but that the young woman on account of her good qualities and great love for him had power to dispel the charm, and by licking his face had enabled him to resume his proper form as a man.