"Mutla, what about the sheep-shearing? Is it all over?"
"Yes, my master," answered the Kafir.
"Well, George, I'm sorry we have missed it. Sheep-shearing days are always great days on the farm, when half a hundred Kafirs from the kraals are all working at once. They have been at it all this week. To-morrow the wool-washing and drying begins. Then follows the packing for market. At the last count, uncle's great flock of Merinos numbered six thousand; at least that is the nearest we could come to it, for there are so many that we never can be sure exactly how many the jackals have taken over night. It's fun, though, every morning to try to count them, as they follow each other just as fast as possible, leaping over the gate from the inclosure into the pasture. You ought to see clever little Shobo. Every time he spies a jackal he chases it into a porcupine's hole, only to see it speedily driven out. Suppose we go over towards the Kafir kraals, George? Shall we?"
"Oh, yes, Petrus, let's do!" exclaimed George in delight. They were riding along through the willow, wattle and wild-tobacco trees bordering the pretty little spruit of clear water, where the wool-washing would take place to-morrow.
It was George's first trip to South Africa. He had never seen a Kafir kraal. He had heard that South Africa was a "land of diamonds"; that in "every stone the gold glittered"; that vermillion flamingoes stand on the river-banks gazing down at the little fishes; that gorgeous feathered beauties flit through the African forests, glancing from branch to branch in the bright sunlight but that they had no song; that the Bushman's dogs had no bark; that the flowers were without fragrance; the skies without clouds, and the rivers often without water.
George wondered if he would ever see any of those strange wild animals with unspellable and unpronounceable names about which he had read so much in his African hunting and travel books—Koodoos, gemsbuck, wildebeestes, bushbuck, waterbuck, troops of gnus, with tails like horses, and spiral horns glittering in the sunlight, spotted hyenas, droves of blessbok, tsessebe, and a very strange animal called blaauwbok—whatever that could be.
"Petrus, I wish I could hide in the top of a very high tree and get a good look at a real Tsavo 'man-eater,' and perhaps, just as he was about to spring, a little Bushman, with nothing but his poisoned arrows, would come out and kill him."
"I can't promise you'll see any terrible 'man-eaters,' George, but you'll soon see a Bushman or two, perhaps half a hundred black Kafirs, and maybe a—"
"Zulu?" broke in George. "Petrus, I'm going home. See those black clouds coming? It will rain soon."
"Not a single Zulu! I'll promise you that, George. Uncle has not one on the place. Mutla has strict orders to keep them away. The Kafirs are perfectly harmless. They're a good-natured crowd of fellows. You will like them. They are not real savages, George. Many of them are intelligent and anxious for education. Some of the best study in the negro schools of the United States. But most of them still live with their dogs, chickens, goats and other animals all mixed up together in their kraals. The 'Red Kafirs,' off in Bondoland, and the Transkei, on the coast, still mix red clay into their hair and cover their bodies with it."