rainless; the whole reception churlish. Staines
detected in them an uneasy consciousness that they had descended, in
more ways than one, from a civilized race; and the superior bearing of a
European seemed to remind them what they had been, and might have been,
and were not; so, after an attempt or two, our adventurers avoided the
Boers, and tried the Kafirs. They found the savages socially superior,
though their moral character does not rank high.

The Kafir cabins they entered were caves, lighted only by the door, but
deliciously cool, and quite clean; the floors of puddled clay or ants'
nests, and very clean. On entering these cool retreats, the flies that
had tormented them shirked the cool grot, and buzzed off to the nearest
farm to batten on congenial foulness. On the fat, round, glossy babies,
not a speck of dirt, whereas the little Boers were cakes thereof. The
Kafir would meet them at the door, his clean black face all smiles and
welcome. The women and grown girls would fling a spotless handkerchief
over their shoulders in a moment, and display their snowy teeth, in
unaffected joy at sight of an Englishman.

At one of these huts, one evening, they met with something St. Paul
ranks above cleanliness even, viz., Christianity. A neighboring lion had
just eaten a Hottentot faute de mieux; and these good Kafirs wanted the
Europeans not to go on at night and be eaten for dessert. But they could
not speak a word of English, and pantomimic expression exists in theory
alone. In vain the women held our travellers by the coat-tails, and
pointed to a distant wood. In vain Kafir pere went on all-fours and
growled sore. But at last a savage youth ran to the kitchen--for they
never cook in the house--and came back with a brand, and sketched, on
the wall of the hut, a lion with a mane down to the ground, and a saucer
eye, not loving. The creature's paw rested on a hat and coat and another
fragment or two of a European. The rest was fore-shortened, or else
eaten.

The picture completed, the females looked, approved, and raised a dismal
howl.

"A lion on the road," said Christopher gravely.

Then the undaunted Falcon seized the charcoal, and drew an Englishman in
a theatrical attitude, left foot well forward, firing a gun, and a lion
rolling head over heels like a buck rabbit, and blood squirting out of a
hole in his perforated carcass.

The savages saw, and exulted. They were so off their guard as to
confound representat