the wife of another inkosi, and that I wanted to see and hear how Kafirmen stated their case when anything went wrong with their affairs.  This explanation was perfectly satisfactory to all parties, and they regarded me no more, but immediately set to work on the subject in hand.  A sort of precis of each case had been previously prepared from the magistrate’s report for Mr. S——­’s information by his clerk, and these documents greatly helped me to understand what was going on.  No language can be more beautiful to listen to than either the Kafir or Zulu tongue:  it is soft and liquid as Italian, with just the same gentle accentuation on the penultimate and antepenultimate syllables.  The clicks which are made with the tongue every now and then, and are part of the language, give it a very quaint sound, and the proper names are excessively harmonious.

In the first cause which was taken the plaintiff, as I said before, was not quite satisfied with the decision of his own local magistrate, and had therefore come here to restate his case.  The story was slightly complicated by the plaintiff having two distinct names by which he had been known at different times of his life.  “Tevula,” he averred, was the name of his boyhood, and the other, “Mazumba,” the name of his manhood.  The natives have an unconquerable aversion to giving their real names, and will offer half a dozen different aliases, making it very difficult to trace them if they are “wanted,” and still more difficult to get at the rights of any story they may have to tell.  However, if they are ever frank and open to anybody, it is to their own minister, who speaks their language as well as they do themselves, and who fully understands their mode of reasoning and their habits of mind.

Tevula told his story extremely well, I must say—­quietly, but earnestly, and with, the most perfectly respectful though manly bearing.  He sometimes used graceful and natural gesticulation, but not a bit more than was needed to give emphasis to his oratory.  He was a strongly-built, tall man, about thirty-five years of age, dressed in a soldier’s great-coat—­for it was a damp and drizzling day—­had bare legs and feet, and wore nothing on his head except the curious ring into which the men weave their hair.  So soon as a youth is considered old enough to assume the duties and responsibilities of manhood he begins to weave his short crisp hair over a ring of grass which exactly fits the head, keeping the woolly hair in its place by means of wax.  In time the hair grows perfectly smooth and shining and regular over this firm foundation, and the effect is as though it were a ring of jet or polished ebony worn round the brows.  Different tribes slightly vary the size and form of the ring; and in this case it was easy to see that the defendant belonged to a different tribe, for his ring was half the size, and worn at the summit of a cone of combed-back hair which was as thick and close as a cap, and indeed looked very like a grizzled