are a few of the plants forming the thick jungle which covers a very large proportion of the country. Then the shadowy dimness of the scenery on the river's banks, dark with its giant trees festooned with rope-like creepers, and the high weather-stained rocks, covered with trailing plants, and of strange fantastic forms,

"Like moonlight battlements or towers decayed by time."

But how idle a thing is description, and my description the most idle of all, who know not the names of what I saw, and have not words to speak their beauty.

Our party had halted on the Kap River, near the site of an abandoned military post, during the mid-day heat, and we were about to saddle up and proceed on our way, when my eye was struck by three white objects, sheltered and half-hid by the deep green overhanging bush. They were graves, the graves of English soldiers; and there was something highly impressive in finding them in a spot so wildly

remote, while the effect was strengthened by the fate of one of their tenants, which my companion told me as we pursued our ride. He had, with two companions, quitted the military post with letters for the principal frontier fort, at a time when a seizure of Kaffer cattle had been made, and the incensed natives. had determined to revenge themselves on the soldiers. In passing that bush, said my companion, the assegais came whizzing around them; one turned and regained the post, the two others spurred their horses forward; one had been struck, and the Kaffers raised that wild scream which they give when their game is wounded, and pursued him on that rise of the hill the wounded man fell from loss of blood, and the Kaffers came up, and with the revengeful gestures of demons, plunged their assegais into the victim. His companion saw this, and rushed on, while the screams of parties, that had been placed to waylay him, rung in his ears for a distance of thirty-five miles; but he escaped them, and reached the

fort in safety. Yet, notwithstanding this story, and others of the same nature, I do not consider the Kaffers a cruel or vindictive people. The policy adopted towards them has been severe; for, when did Europeans respect the rights of the savage? By the Dutch Border-farmers, over whom their government had little control, they are said to have been slaughtered without mercy,

to have been destroyed as they destroyed the wolf. At no period, I believe, since the English have been in possession, has wanton cruelty been committed; but the natives have at different times been driven back from boundary to boundary, and military posts have been established in the country, from which we have expelled them. Orders too have been issued, that all Kaffers appearing within the proclaimed line should be shot. Some of the old chiefs now inhabit, with their tribes, tracts a hundred and fifty miles farther back than their former lands; and when one of them, St'lamby, who occupied the country near Uitenage, was ordered to quit it, he simply and affectingly said, “that

his fathers had eaten the wild honey of those hills, and he saw not why he should leave them.” : In 1810, the Great Fish River was proclaimed the eastern limit of the colony. In 1820, Gaika, a powerful chief, whom we had aided in his wars, was obliged to evacuate a rich extent of land lying between that river and the Keiskanna. On this occasion he is said to have remarked, “that though indebted to the English for his existence as a chief, yet when he looked upon the fine country taken from him, he could not but think his benefactors oppressive."

It is not strange that the savages should be unable to see the justice of all this; that they should be troublesome neighbours to the settlers in a country of which they had been dispossessed. They were so: such instances were exaggerated, and a Commando (an inroad of military and boors) was the frequent consequence. The crimes were individual, but the punishment was general: the duty of the Commando was to destroy, to burn the habitations, and to seize the cattle; and they did their duty.

When these circumstances are considered, it cannot excite surprise that there should have been acts of sudden and cruel vengeance; though it may, that they should not have been more frequent in a country where they are so easily perpetrated; the thick jungle affording concealment to the ambush, and it being only necessary to drag the body into the bush, and to leave it for the wolves to efface all traces of the death.

I hate the policy that turns the English soldier into the cold-blooded butcher of the unresisting native: I hate it even when, by the calculator, it might be considered expedient; but here it is as stupid as it is cruel. The Kaffers are a numerous and a brave people, and were they but united, would prove a most dangerous enemy to our frontier settlements. They once, when driven to despair by a large seizure of cattle, made an attack on Graham's Town, which was obstinately continued, and nearly proved successful. But the period of oppression is now past, never, I trust, to return; for