But how is it that the natives, being so vastly superior in numbers to the Boers, do not rise and annihilate them?  The people among whom they live are Bechuanas, not Caffres, though no one would ever learn that distinction from a Boer; and history does not contain one single instance in which the Bechuanas, even those of them who possess fire-arms, have attacked either the Boers or the English.  If there is such an instance, I am certain it is not generally known, either beyond or in the Cape Colony.  They have defended themselves when attacked, as in the case of Sechele, but have never engaged in offensive war with Europeans.  We have a very different tale to tell of the Caffres, and the difference has always been so evident to these border Boers that, ever since those “magnificent savages"* obtained possession of fire-arms, not one Boer has ever attempted to settle in Caffreland, or even face them as an enemy in the field.  The Boers have generally manifested a marked antipathy to any thing but “long-shot” warfare, and, sidling away in their emigrations toward the more effeminate Bechuanas, have left their quarrels with the Caffres to be settled by the English, and their wars to be paid for by English gold.

   * The “United Service Journal” so styles them.

The Bakwains at Kolobeng had the spectacle of various tribes enslaved before their eyes—­the Bakatla, the Batlokua, the Bahukeng, the Bamosetla, and two other tribes of Bakwains were all groaning under the oppression of unrequited labor.  This would not have been felt as so great an evil but that the young men of those tribes, anxious to obtain cattle, the only means of rising to respectability and importance among their own people, were in the habit of sallying forth, like our Irish and Highland reapers, to procure work in the Cape Colony.  After laboring there three or four years, in building stone dikes and dams for the Dutch farmers, they were well content if at the end of that time they could return with as many cows.  On presenting one to their chief, they ranked as respectable men in the tribe ever afterward.  These volunteers were highly esteemed among the Dutch, under the name of Mantatees.  They were paid at the rate of one shilling a day and a large loaf of bread between six of them.  Numbers of them, who had formerly seen me about twelve hundred miles inland from the Cape, recognized me with the loud laughter of joy when I was passing them at their work in the Roggefelt and Bokkefelt, within a few days of Cape Town.  I conversed with them and with elders of the Dutch Church, for whom they were working, and found that the system was thoroughly satisfactory to both parties.  I do not believe that there is one Boer, in the Cashan or Magaliesberg country, who would deny that a law was made, in consequence of this labor passing to the colony, to deprive these laborers of their hardly-earned cattle, for the very cogent reason that, “if they want to work, let them work for us their masters,”