In South Africa Sir George had the companion-ship of Colenso, as in New Zealand he had that of Selwyn, He likened them to each other, in their simple sincerity of nature, in their devotion to the ministry, and in their elevated ideals.  They dined with those they were up-bringing in the Christian faith, sitting at the head of the table, and they were complete shepherds of the flock.  As Selwyn had been a walker, Colenso was a horseman, making a handsome figure in the saddle.  He and Sir George would cover many a mile of veldt, eager in talk upon a Scriptural subject.  It was thus when they first met, that being under the roof of Samuel Wilberforce, the famed Bishop of Oxford.  Sir George had a hunting incident of Wilberforce.  On one occasion he was having a gallop with him across, the green English country.  Turning a corner, they met a pack of hounds, which had lost the scent and were trying to recover it.

Said Wilberforce to Sir George, ’As. a bishop I have no business to go into the field, but my two boys have just donned red coats to-day, and I want to see them very much.  You must, therefore, lead me into the field, not to follow the fox, but that I may note my boys among the company.’

It may have been in return for this service, that Wilberforce handed on to Sir George a vaunted cure for sleeplessness.  The Bishop suffered, now and then, from that canker of a busy life, and some person offered to send him a sure remedy, on receipt of one sovereign, no more.  Wilberforce invested, not expecting to get much, and in that not being disappointed.  ‘He was instructed,’ Sir George bore witness, ’to imagine a flock of sheep making for a gap in a wall.  Then, as he lay sleepless on his pillow, he was to watch the leader jump the gap, and count the other sheep, one by one, as they followed.  The undertaking:  was that before the last sheep had cleared the gap, sleep should woo him.  Nothing new, you see!

’But, having paid his sovereign the Bishop fancied that he might try the notion, and he did so.  He confessed, with amusement, that the remedy had not done him any good, and enjoined that I might experiment without pre-payment.  To carry on the fun I did this, and upon my word I think the remedy helped me once or twice.  It was rather unfair to the Bishop that I should reap the harvest of his sovereign.’

There were to be sleepless nights for Sir George, arising from an event which he believed to be unique in history.  Some of the Kaffir chiefs, especially the older ones, saw a danger signal in the lamp of native progress.  To them, it denoted the rising power of the white, before whom all black men would be driven out.  These fears were magnetised into a great upheaval, at the word of a young Kaffir girl turned prophetess.  She uprose, a dark but comely Maid of Orleans, a Messiah to her people and her message swept Kaffraria like a wind.

As any maiden might have done, Nongkause went to fetch a pitcher of water.  Most maidens, when they filled the pitcher, would have seen the shadow of a sweetheart in the eddies.  Nongkause saw more.  Strange beings, such as were not then in Kaffraria, were about her, and strange sounds fell upon her ears.  The remote ancestors of the Kaffirs were revealing themselves; their spirits were consulting on the affairs of men.