coat pocket? We have none of us forgotten, I think, that little conversation by the river.»

He saw my intention now, and thanked me with a radiant look. «Here is the picture, Mrs. Daly. Whose portrait did you think it was? Surely you might have known, Kitty! This is the girl I wanted years ago, and have wanted ever since; but she belonged to another man, and the man was my friend. I tried to save that man from insulting her and dishonoring himself, because I thought she loved him. Or, if he could n't be saved, I wanted to expose him and save her. And I risked my own honor to do it, and a great fool I was for my pains. But this is the last time I shall make a fool of myself for your sake, Kitty.>>

I rose now in earnest, and I would not be stayed. In point of fact, nobody tried to stay me. Kitty was looking at her own face with eyes as dim as the little water-stained photograph she held. And Cecil was on his knees beside her, whispering: «I stole it from Micky's room at the ranch. That was no place for it, anyhow. May I not have one of my own, Kitty?»

I think he will get one-of his own Kitty.

OUR rival schemer, Mr. Norman Fleet, has arrived, and electrical transmission has shaken hands with compressed air. The millennium must be on the way, for never did two men

want so nearly the same thing, and yet agree to take each what the other does not need.

Mr. Fleet does not «want the earth,» either, nor all the waters thereof; but the most astonishing thing is, he does n't want the Snow Bank! He not only does n't want it himself, but is perfectly willing that Tom should have it. In fact, do what we will, it seems to be impossible for us to tread on the tail of that young man's coat. But having heard a little bird whisper that he is in love, and successfully so, I am not so surprised at his amiability. Neither am I altogether unprepared, if the little bird's whisper be true, for the fact that Miss Malcolm is becoming reconciled to Tom's designs upon her beloved scenery. For the sake of consistency, and that pure devotion to the Beautiful, so rare in this sordid age, I could have wished that she had not weakened so suddenly; but for Tom's sake I am very glad. She is clay in the hands of the potter, now that she knows my husband does not want « all the water,» and that his success does not mean the failure of Mr. Norman Fleet.

Harshaw will take the Snow Bank scheme when he takes Kitty back to London. If he promotes it, I tell Tom, after the fashion in which he boomed » Kitty's marriage to his cousin, we 're not likely to see either him or the Snow Bank again. But «Harshaw is all right,» Tom says; and I believe that the luck is with him.

Mary Hallock Foote.

[ITHERTO the most interesting features in the history of South Africa have been the relations to one another of the races that originally inhabited or have recently occupied it, and the most difficult problems which its future presents arise from the relations of these races. Three races are native, four are European. The cases of contact or conflict between European and aboriginal races, which have been numerous during the last four centuries, include those where the native race, though perhaps numerous, is comparatively weak, and unable to assimilate European civilization, or to thrive under European rule (a rule which has often been harsh), or even to survive in the presence of a European population occupying its coun

VOL. LII.-31.

try; those where Europeans have conquered a country already filled by a more or less civilized population, which is so numerous and so prolific as to maintain itself in their presence; and those in which the native race is numerous and strong enough to maintain itself in the face of Europeans, while, on the other hand, there is plenty of room left for a large European population to press in. This is what has happened in South Africa; the Dutch and the English settlers do not mix their blood with that of the natives. So far as can be predicted, both whites and natives will go on increasing, but not blending. We shall presently see how grave are the problems to which this fact must in the future give rise.

When the Dutch fixed their first post at Cape Town, in 1652, with no thought either of colonization or of conquest, but for the sake of having gardens which could supply fresh vegetables to the scurvy-stricken crews of their ships sailing to the East, they found three native races inhabiting the country. One of these, the Bushmen, though few in numbers, were widely scattered over the whole of South Africa. They were nomads of almost the lowest kind, with a marvelous faculty for tracking and trapping wild animals, but neither owning cattle nor tilling the soil, with scarcely even a tribal organization, no religion, and a language consisting of a succession of clicks. Unable to accustom themselves to civilized life, driven out of some districts by the settlers, and in others no longer able to find support, owing to the extinction of game, they are now almost extinct, though a few are still left in the deserts of the Kalahari and northern Bechuanaland. Before many years the only trace of their existence will be in the remarkable drawings of animals with which they delighted to cover the smooth surfaces of rocks. These drawings, which are found all the way from the Zambesi to the Cape, and from Manicaland to the Atlantic, are executed in red and yellow pigments, and are often full of spirit and character.

The second race was that which the Dutch called Hottentot. They were of a reddish or yellowish black hue, taller than the Bushmen, but with squat and seldom muscular figuresa thoughtless, cheerful, easy-going people, who roved hither and thither with their flocks and herds as they could find pasture. They were decidedly superior to the Bushmen, whom they hated, but quite unable to withstand Europeans, and their numbers rapidly declined, partly from the loss of their best grazing-grounds, but largely, also, through epidemic diseases, and especially smallpox, which ships, touching on their way from India, brought into the country. They are now, as a distinct race, almost extinct in the Colony, though a good deal of their blood has passed into the mixed black population of Cape Town and its neighborhood-a population the other elements of which are Malays and west-coast negroes, the descendants of slaves imported in the last century. Farther north, on the south side of the Orange River, and beyond it in Namagualand, small tribes cognate to the Hottentots still wander over the dreary plains.

Very different from these weak Bushmen and Hottentots was, and is, the third native

race, those who are called Bantu (a word meaning «people ») by themselves and Kafirs by Europeans. The word Kafir is Arabic, and means an infidel (literally «one who denies»). It is applied by Mussulmans not merely to these South Africans, but to other heathen; as, for instance, by the Afghans to the idolaters of Kafiristan, in the Hindu-Kush Mountains. The Portuguese probably took the name from the Arabs, whom they found already settled on the east coast. These Bantu tribes-if we may class those as Bantus who speak languages of what is called the Bantu type-fill all East Africa from the regions of the Upper Nile southward. Those who dwell south of the Zambesi are generally strong and well-made men, sometimes as black as a Gulf of Guinea negro, sometimes verging on a brown tint; and though they have the woolly hair and thick lips generally characteristic of the negro, individuals are often found among them whose cast of features suggests an admixture of Semitic blood. They are more prolific than the Hottentots, as well as physically stronger and better made, and they were further advanced in the arts of life. Some of the tribes dug out and worked iron and copper; all of them used iron. Their chief wealth lay in their cattle; horses they did not possess, but where the land was fit for tillage they cultivated it. They had no religion, except in a sort of magic, and that worship of the ghosts of ancestors which seems to be the most widely diffused of all human superstitions. Instead of a priesthood, there were wizards or medicine-men, often powerful as the denouncers of those whom the chief wished to put to death. Intellectually they were very much upon the level of the native races of West Africa. Like them, they had songs and popular tales, some of which much resembled those that have been collected among the negroes of the Southern States of America by the ingenious author of «Uncle Remus,» the hare usually taking the place of his rabbit, and outwitting the stronger beasts.1 Like them, they were organized in tribes, under chiefs, who in some cases enjoyed an almost absolute power, and in others were little more than leaders, obliged to consult and fall in with the wishes of their followers. Respect was generally paid to birth, and there existed a kind of law, consisting of customs handed down by tradition. All the tribes were accustomed to war, and,

1 Several collections of Kafir folklore exist: the latest being the interesting «Contes Populaires des Bassoutos,» of Mr. E. Jacottet, a Swiss scholar, stationed as a missionary in Basutoland.

Of the history of South Africa before the Europeans came virtually nothing is known. The recollections of savages seldom go back further than three or four generations; and these Bantu peoples know nothing of their past beyond vague traditions that they came from the North. When the Portuguese settled on the east coast they found Kafir tribes established there from Natal northward, though there is reason to believe that large tracts in the interior, such as Basutoland and the Orange Free State, now occupied by Bantu tribes, were then wandered over by Bushmen only. One gleam of light, and one only, struggles through the darkness that covers the earlier times-the times which some one has called those of prehistoric history in South Africa. It would seem that, at some far distant date, a people more civilized than any of the present Kafir tribes had penetrated into the region we now call Mashonaland, and had maintained itself there for a considerable period. Remains of gold-workings are found in many parts of that country, and even as far as the southwestern part of Matabeleland-remains which show that mining must have been carried on, by primitive methods, no doubt, but still upon a scale larger than we can well deem within the capabilities of the Kafir tribes as we now see them. There are, moreover, in these regions, and usually not far from some old gold-working, pieces of ancient building executed with a neatness and finish, as well as with an attempt at artistic effect, which are entirely absent from the rough walls, sometimes of loose stones, sometimes plastered with mud, which the Kafirs build to-day. These old buildings are, with one exception, bits of wall inclosing forts or residences. They are constructed of small blocks of the granite of the country, carefully trimmed to be of one size, and are usually ornamented with a simple pattern, such as the so-called «herringbone» pattern. The one exception is to be found in the ruins of Zimbabwe, in southern Mashonaland. Here a wall thirty feet high, and from six to twelve or fourteen feet thick, incloses a large elliptical space, filled with other buildings, some of which apparently were intended for the purposes of worship. There are no inscriptions of any kind, and few objects, except some rudely carved heads of birds, to supply any indication as to the ethnological affinities of the people who erected this building, or as to the nature of their worship. Such indications as

form of nature worship, including the worship of the sun. We know from other sources (including the Egyptian monuments and the Old Testament) that there was from very early times a trade between the Red Sea and some part of East Africa; and as we know also that the worship of natural forces and of the sun prevailed among the early Semites, the view that the builders of Zimbabwe were of Arab or some other Semitic stock, is at least highly plausible. Two things are quite clear to every one who examines the ruins, and compares them with the smaller fragments of ancient building already mentioned. Those who built Zimbabwe were a race much superior to the Bantu tribes, whose mud huts are now to be found not far from these still strong and solid walls; and those other remains scattered through the country were either the work of that same superior race, or, at any rate, were built in imitation of their style and under the influence they had left. But whether this race was driven out, or peaceably withdrew, or became by degrees absorbed and lost in the surrounding Bantu population, we have no data for conjecture. If they came from Arabia they must have come more than twelve centuries ago, before the days of Mohammed; for they were evidently not Mussulmans, and it is just as easy to suppose that they came in the days of Solomon, fifteen centuries earlier.

It is this mystery which makes the ruins of Zimbabwe, the solitary archæological curiosity of South Africa, so impressive. The ruins are not grand, nor are they beautiful. They are simple almost to rudeness. It is the loneliness of the landscape where they stand, and still more the complete darkness which surrounds their origin, their object, and their history, that gives to them their unique interest.

For us the curtain rises upon the Kafir peoples when the Dutch settlers, spreading slowly eastward from the neighborhood of the Cape, came into contact, and presently into conflict, with them. Hostilities first broke out in 1779, and in the century that followed there are reckoned no fewer than nine Kafir wars. The natives fought with a fierceness comparable to that of North American Indians; and though less skilled in the arts of ambush and surprise, they were not less swift in their movements, or less fearless in meeting death. Had the policy of the colonial government been firmer and more consistent, much fighting and suffering might have been saved; yet some of its errors were due to a desire to deal gently with the natives,

and to stop an advance of conquest which we now perceive was inevitable. The worst blunder was committed in 1879, when Sir Bartle Frere attacked a native power more formidable than any which had yet been encountered by British troops-that of the Zulus. The Zulus are a branch of the Bantu race, eminent for their courage, their physical strength, and their absolute submission to their king. Tshaka, the able and relentless chief who reigned for about twenty years, and was murdered by his brothers in 1828, had by his force of will, his military talents, and the system of strict drill and discipline which he introduced, subdued all his neighbors, and devastated vast tracts of country, slaughtering or chasing away their inhabitants. His nephew, Cetewayo, when the war broke out in 1879, was at the head of an army of 30,000 men, and inflicted a serious defeat upon the British forces before he was finally overthrown and his country brought under British sway. After his fall

The first to come were the men of Portugal, then in the fresh springtime of its power, Bartholomew Diaz discovered the Cape of Storms, as he called it, in 1486; and after Vasco da Gama, in 1497-98, had traced the southeast coast as far as Sofala (a little to the south

J. Hart J. C. K

there remained only two strong native kingdoms south of the Zambesi. One of these kingdoms, that of Lo Bengula, king of the Matabele, was conquered in 1893 by the British South African Company; and the other, that of Gungunhana, whose territories lay northeast of the Transvaal State, has within the last six months (December, 1895, and January, 1896) perished at the hands of the Portuguese. With many tribes there has been no fighting at all. Awed by the boldness of the white man, these less warlike tribes accepted the rule of the intruding settlers with scarcely a murmur, and, in many cases, looked on them as protectors. Nearly all the hard fighting in South Africa has been with the Zulus, to whom the Matabele belong ethnologically, and with the Xosa clans on the south coast, while the Bechuanas and Ba-Rolongs and the Tongas, and the tribes of Mashonaland as far as the Zambesi, have, as a rule, submitted promptly and quietly.

Let us now take up the thread of history as it affects the four European nations who have appropriated parts of South Africa, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the English, and the Germans.

of the modern port of Beira), the Portuguese established settlements at that place, and farther to the north of it, and thence carried on a considerable trade with the natives, chiefly in gold brought down from the mines of Mashonaland. However, the unhealthiness of the flat country which lies between the coast and the interior plateau checked their projects of exploration and conquest. Individual traders, and sometimes missionaries also, penetrated far into the interior, and articles which the Portuguese must have brought to Africa, such as fragments of Indian and Chinese pottery, and even, in one or two instances, small cannon, have been found many hundreds of miles from the seaboard. But, on the whole, the Portuguese exerted little influence on the country and its inhabitants. The white population remained very small, and it became degraded by intermarriage with the Kafirs; for in Africa, as well as in Brazil, the Portuguese have shown little of that contempt for the native blacks, and aversion to a mixing of their blood with the latter, which has been so generally characteristic of the Dutch and the English. During

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the colonizing force of Portugal declined with the decline of her European power. She made no further efforts to explore, and even abandoned some of her stations on the Zambesi. She remained, however, undisturbed in her possessions till a few years ago, when a question arose between her and Great Britain regarding the right to Delagoa Bay, a port the value of which, as the only deep-water harbor fit for large vessels along the whole stretch of the southeast coast south of Beira, was now generally perceived. President MacMahon, to whom as arbitrator the controversy was referred, decided in favor of Portugal. Subsequently Germany appeared as a formidable neighbor on the north, while boundary disputes arose with the British settlers who in 1890 had occupied the inland country to the west. Thus the Portuguese frontier, which had been very uncertain, has now become defined. It includes a vast area, but in that area the number of white men, or even of semi-civilized half-breeds, is so small that, although some fitful efforts have been made by the Mozambique Company, little or no progress in occupying or improving the country can be recorded. Portugal sends no emigrants to Africa. Her government, now hard pressed for money, cannot find the sums needed to develop her African territories, nor is there private capital in Portugal to supplement the weakness of the government. The Beira Railway and the Delagoa Bay Railway (of which more anon) have both been built by foreign companies. Practically Portugal may be looked on as an extinct force in South Africa. Even those who, knowing the Portuguese at home, appreciate their many fine qualities, may fear that probably their dominions, under the operation of those natural forces which, in politics, as in the animal and vegetable worlds, displace the weaker stocks, will ultimately pass to some other race and power, or be divided among contending claimants. Even to-day the trade with Portuguese East Africa is in the hands of German and British houses, and the once famous flag of Portugal floats only over some small war-vessels.

The history of the second European race that entered South Africa presents a singular contrast to that of the first. All that the Portuguese accomplished was accomplished within the century after their arrival. Thereafter their power and their spirit waned, and when, few years ago, the advent of German and English competitors roused them, neither the mother country nor the colonists proved able to rise to the emergency. The

Dutch, on the other hand, arriving on the scene a century and a half later, advanced very slowly for many years. But they grew up a hardy and enduring stock, stern, self-reliant, tenacious. When Holland was forced to abandon them their national spirit survived. Misfortunes have not extinguished it; trials have tempered it like toughened steel; it is to-day a factor of prime significance in the complicated play of political forces.

From the time of the first Dutch settlement at Cape Town, in 1652, till Holland lost the country, in 1795, Cape Colony was governed by the Dutch East India Company, which had occupied it originally only as a half-way house to India, and had never taken any keen interest in it, because it produced no revenue comparable to that drawn from Java and the Eastern trade. The usual defects of administration by a trading company had shown themselves, and the colonists had frequently murmured, sometimes protested, and once or twice nearly rebelled, against the corruption or oppression of their governors. They were free-spirited and unsubmissive by a triple right. They were the children of those Hollanders who had resisted Philip II. of Spain, and of those Huguenots who had been expelled by Louis XIV. of France. They were Presbyterians in church government and Calvinists in doctrine, apt, like the Scotch, to carry the republicanism of their church polity into civil affairs; and they lived, most of them, an isolated life on the edge of a vast wilderness, forced by their circumstances to be bold and self-reliant, and seldom brought into contact with any authority. In 1779, when there were probably only some five or six thousand adult males in the whole country, they had been so roused by the news from America of the success of the colonists there against Britain as to send delegates to Holland, to demand representation in the government of the colony; and in 1795 two communities, discontented with the administration of the then insolvent company, threw off its yoke, and without overtly renouncing their connection with Holland, established petty republics. The advent of an English force, which in the same year occupied Cape Town, suppressed these movements. England had by this time become the strongest power in India, and the possession of such a naval station as the Cape on the road to her Eastern dominions was, therefore, of the greatest consequence to her during the great war which was then raging with France. The Prince of Orange, who had been driven out of Holland by the French, authorized her to