y homestead they fell upon. Captain Gardiner thought,
and justly, that it would be better to begin by proclaiming the glad
tidings of peace to these wild and ignorant people rather than to meet
them with the strong hand of war. The colony was lamentably deficient in
clergy, and the missions that existed were chiefly to the Hottentots and
Bushmen. The Moravians, whose work we have not mentioned because it is a
history in itself, had some excellent establishments, but no one had yet
attempted to penetrate into the home of the Kaffirs themselves, the Zulu
country, to endeavour to deal with their chieftains. This was Allen
Gardiner's intention, and on his outward voyage he met with a Polish
refugee named Berken, who had intended to settle in Australia, but was
induced to become his companion in his explorations in South Africa.

They rode together from Capetown to Grahamstown, where they obtained an
interpreter named George Cyrus, and began to travel in the regular South
African fashion, namely, with waggons fitted for sleeping in, and drawn
by huge teams of oxen, and taking seven horses with them. Their first
adventure during a halt at the Buffalo river was the loss of all their
oxen, who were driven off by some natives. They applied to the chief of
the tribe, named Tzatzoe, who recovered the cattle for them, but showed
himself an insatiable beggar, even asking why, as Mr. Berken had two
shoes, he could not spare him one of them. However, he was honest
enough, when Mr. Berken chanced to leave his umbrella behind him, to send
after him to ask whether he knew that he had left his _house_.

The next anxiety was at a spot called the Yellow-wood River, where the
mid-day halt was disturbed by an assembly of natives with a hostile
appearance. Captain Gardiner sent orders to collect the oxen, and in-
span (_i.e._ harness) them as soon as possible, but without appearance of
alarm, and in the meantime he tried to keep the natives occupied. To one
he lent his penknife, and after the man had vainly tried to cut off his
own beard with it, he offered to shave him, lathered him well, and
performed the operation like a true barber, then showed him his face in a
glass. His only disappointment was that the moustache had not been
removed, and as by this time the razor was past work, Captain Gardiner
had to pacify him by assuring him that such was the appearance of many
English warriors (for these were the days when moustaches were c