"A horse good enough for all ordinary purposes may be bought from £9 to £15. I once rode a journey of two hundred and thirty miles with the same set of horses, (four in number, one for my servant, one for myself, one for saddle-bags, and another for changing) in four days. The most expensive of the four cost me £12, and the cheapest £4, 10s. It is true that I fed them well on the road, but a Dutch boer would have taken them the same distance without a handful of corn all the way."
Mounted on one of these serviceable brutes, Mr Cole rambled about the colony, sleeping at inns when he found them, but much oftener profiting by the boundless hospitality of the Cape farmers, and making acquaintance with all sorts of people, from puny Cockney settlers to gigantic Dutch boers. The latter are—
"The finest men in the colony. I have seen them constantly from six feet two to six feet six inches in height; broad and muscular in proportion. Their strength is immense. They are great admirers of feats of daring, strength, and activity. A mighty hunter, such as Gordon Cumming, would be welcomed with open arms by every Dutch boer in South Africa. Poor Moultrie, of the 75th, the 'lion-hunter' par excellence, was one of their idols. So is Bain, the 'long-haired,' who has made some half-dozen excursions into the far wilderness in search of the lord of the forest and all his subjects. They hunt far more than the English farmers, and are, as I have said, 'crack' shots, though they use a great, long, awkward, heavy, flint-locked gun, that would make Purdey or Westley Richards shudder with disgust."
Frugal and industrious, these stalwart descendants of Hollanders have one great fault, almost a fatal one in a new country. They have a rooted antipathy to novelty and improvement. They use the same lumbering plough their big-breeched forefathers imported from the Low Countries some eighty years ago, although it requires twelve strong oxen to draw it. They reject steam, and pound their corn instead of grinding it. Despising flails, they completely spoil their straw by having the grain trodden out by horses or oxen. Of the English settlers, the Cockneys make the best farmers, "because, coming without any previous knowledge of the art they intend to follow, they take advice of those whom experience enables to give it, instead of trying to manage things in South Africa as they do in England." Stories are traditionally cited, of inexperienced Londoners, just landed at the Cape, purchasing a flock of sheep as breeding stock, and discovering them (too late) to be wethers; and of another who planted split pease to raise a crop ready for use; but such instances of ignorance, Mr Cole assures us, are by no means common.
The present unfortunate condition of the Cape Colony, and the destructive war now raging there, give peculiar interest to that portion of Mr Cole's book which relates to the Kafirs. During the greater part of his residence at the Cape, these troublesome savages were on their good behaviour, and he was enabled to become personally acquainted with them, and especially with their powerful chief Macomo. Riding from Graham's Town to Fort Beaufort, through that immense jungle and favourite Kafir lurking-place, Fish River Bush, he paused to bait at a roadside inn, and entered into chat with his host, who, on hearing that he had never been in Kafirland, pointed out to him a distant mountain.
"A very noted place, sir," he said, "is that mountain. It is in the territory of the Kafir chief Macomo. When that rascal wants to attack the colony, or his neighbours, the other chiefs, he lights a great fire on the top of that hill at night, and, on seeing it, every Kafir in his dominions immediately flocks to his standard, and he can collect ten thousand armed men, sir."
Mr Cole expressed a fervent hope that it would be long before Macomo lit his fire, but the innkeeper expected it would shortly blaze; and the innkeeper was right. At Fort Beaufort Mr Cole first saw the great Kafir, dressed in cast-off European clothes, but without shirt or stockings, and more than half-drunk. He won his favour by lending him sixpence, and received an invitation to visit him at his kraal, a very few miles from Fort Beaufort. Accordingly, next morning he mounted his horse, and rode into Kafirland. From Chapter X. we glean some of his first impressions.
"The Kafir is certainly a fine animal. He is tall, well-knit, clean-limbed, and graceful in his motions. It is rare to see a Kafir with any personal deformity, however trifling. I have seen some dozen races of coloured people, and I have no hesitation in pronouncing the Kafirs by far the finest of them. Their features are not negro; though some of them (especially Macomo, who is the ugliest man in his dominions) partake very much of that character. Their colour varies from almost black to a light copper hue. Amongst them I frequently met with Albinos. These are certainly the most repulsive-looking creatures I ever beheld. Their skin is dead white, not the whiteness of a delicate European skin, but the colour of a white horse—it is scaly and coarse; their eyes are pink like those of a ferret; and their hair very much the colour of a ferret's coat, though still woolly and tufted."
The Kafirs Mr Cole met upon the road scowled at him in no friendly manner, but dared not rob a visiter to their chief. Macomo received him well, regaled him on beefsteaks and coffee, tried hard to sell him horses or cattle, expressed most hypocritical affection for the English, and extracted another sixpence from him, in exchange for a stick.
"I rode back to Fort Beaufort, well pleased with my visit, but more than ever satisfied of the natural cunning, avarice, craft, and dishonesty, the low moral nature, and utter untrustworthiness of Kafirs in general, and, above all, of Macomo."