onfined
to the cavalry). The amusement this excited occupied them nearly long
enough, but hostile murmurs then began to be heard--"One of our chiefs
has been killed by the white men, no more shall enter our country!"
Fearing that an angry word would be fatal, Captain Gardiner asked for a
war-song, promising some tobacco at the conclusion. Accordingly they
danced madly, and shouted at the top of their voices,

"No white man shall drink our milk,
No white man shall eat our children's bread.
Ho-how! ho-how! ho-how!"

But this couplet often repeated seemed to work off their rage; they
accepted the tobacco, and sullenly said the travellers might pass, but
they were the last who should. This was in the Amakosa country, lying
between the Grahamstown settlement and Port Natal, and to the present day
unannexed, though even then there were traders' stations at intervals, so
filthy and wretched as to be little above the huts of the natives. These
Amakosa tribes were such thieves that great vigilance was needed to
prevent property being stolen; but the next tribes, the Amapondas, were
scrupulously honest and friendly to the English. Their chief was found
by Gardiner and Berken dressed in a leopard's skin, sitting in state
under a canopy of shields, trying a rain-maker, who had failed to bring
showers in consequence of not having his dues of cattle delivered to him!
The chief advised them not to proceed, as he said the Zulus were angry
people who would kill them; but they pushed on, though finding that the
journey occupied much longer than they expected, so that provisions
became a difficulty.

A full month had passed since leaving Grahamstown, and Gardiner decided
on pressing on upon horseback, leaving Mr. Berken to bring up the
waggons, and taking with him the interpreter and two natives. The
distance was 180 miles, and a terrible journey it was. A few waggon
tracks had made a sort of road, but this was not always to be
distinguished from hippopotamus paths, which led into horrible morasses,
where the horses almost entirely disappeared, and had to be scooped out
as it were by the hands; moreover, scarcely any food was to be had. In
crossing one river one of the horses was so irretrievably stuck in a
quicksand that humanity required it to be shot, and at the next, the
Umkamas, the stream was so swollen that the Captain had to devise a canoe
by sewing two cowskins together with sinews and stretching it upon
bran