wild pursuit and I stood listening,
not daring to move for fear of ditches. The sounds of leaping,
stumbling, and crashing came to me on the night air for a few minutes;
then my friends returned with the light, and with a poor little
spring-hare's lifeless and long-hind-legged body.

With this trophy I returned home, resolved never more to go hunting at
night.

LETTER ELEVEN.

ALGOA BAY--KAFIRS ON THE COAST--DIFFICULTIES REGARDING SERVANTS.

Standing on the shores of Algoa Bay, with the "Liverpool of South
Africa"--Port Elizabeth--at my back, I attempted to realise what must
have been the scene, in the memorable "1820," when the flourishing city
was yet unborn, when the whole land was a veritable wilderness, and the
sands on which the port now stands were covered with the tents of the
"settlers."

Some of the surroundings, thought I, are pretty much as they were in
those days. The shipping at anchor in the offing must resemble the
shipping that conveyed the emigrants across the sea--except, of course,
these two giant steamers of the "Donald Currie" and the "Union" lines.
The bright blue sky, too, and the fiery sun are the same, and so are
those magnificent "rollers," which, rising, one scarce can tell when or
where, out of a dead-calm sea, stand up for a few seconds like liquid
walls, and then rush up the beach with a magnificent roar.

As I gazed, the scene was rendered still more real by the approach from
seaward of a great surf-boat, similar to the surf-boats that brought the
settlers from their respective ships to the shore. Such boats are still
used at the port to land goods--and also passengers, when the breakers
are too high to admit of their being landed in small boats at the wooden
pier. The surf-boats are bulky, broad, and flat, strongly built to
stand severe hammering on the sand, and comparatively shallow at the
stern, to admit of their being backed towards the beach, or hauled off
to sea through the surf by means of a rope over the bow.

As the surf-boat neared the shore, I heard voices behind me, and,
turning round, beheld a sight which sent me completely back into the
1820 days. It was a band of gentlemen in black--black from the crowns
of their heads to the soles of their feet, with the exception of their
lips and teeth and eyes. Here was the Simon Pure in very truth. They
were so-called Red Kafirs, because of their habit of painting their
bodies and blankets with red ochre. At this t