Page:South Africa (1878 Volume 1).djvu/335

 as in British Kafraria, and the Zulu is cheap. He will hold your horse for you for an hour, and not express a sense of injury if he gets nothing;—but for a silver threepence he will grin at you with heartfelt gratitude. Copper I believe he will not take,—but copper is so thoroughly despised in the Colony that no one dares to shew it. At Maritzburg I found that I could always catch a Zulu at a moment's notice to do anything. At the hotel or the club, or your friend's house you signify to some one that you want a boy, and the boy is there at once. If you desired him to go a journey of 200 miles to the very boundary of the Colony, he would go instantly, and be not a whit surprised. He will travel 30 or 40 miles in the twenty-four hours for a shilling a day, and will assuredly do the business confided to him. Maritzburg is 55 miles from Durban and an acquaintance told me that he had sent down a very large wedding cake by a boy in 24 hours. "But if he had eaten it?" I asked. "His Chief would very soon have eaten him," was the reply.

But there is a drawback to all these virtues. A Zulu will sometimes cross your path with so strong an injury to your nose as almost to make you ill. I have been made absolutely sick by the entrance of a good-natured Zulu into my bedroom of a morning, when he has come near me in his anxiety about my boots or my hot water. In this respect he is more potent than any of his brethren of the negro race who have come in my way. Why it is or whence I am unable to say, or how it comes to pass that now and again there is one who will almost knock you down, while a