Most of the European houses in Basutoland are built of brick, and are by no means substantial; but there are some very good stone buildings, and the country is certainly not lacking in suitable rock from which to build. In some instances raw brick is used and plaistered inside and out and afterwards whitewashed. Our first home at Mafeteng was a little whitewashed thatched cottage, with mud floors and calico ceiling, the calico merely being caught up and tacked here and there to a beam in the roof. In the rainy season the water used to pour in at the back door (the house was built on the slope of a hill), and if not promptly directed into a more desirable course would speedily threaten to drive us out of house and home. As a rule the houses are small, except those of the Assistant Commissioners, and of course the Residency and Government Secretary's houses at Maseru. One or two of the more wealthy traders are now beginning to build better houses and shops; but when we first entered the country, the majority of the buildings were very poor specimens of the builder's art. At Leribe there is a funny little fort built inside the prison enclosure at the time of the "Gun War," and which stands sturdily facing all weathers to the present day, though it is the roughest of workmanship. Every spring the grass is burnt through the length and breath of Basutoland, which makes it very rank and coarse, and what is called "sour veldt." No wonder there are few wild flowers to be seen, save in the kloofs of the mountains. There are not many ferns, but the maidenhair grows in glorious profusion. The only wild fruits to be found are a small, very inferior blackberry, the wild raspberry, and the dwarf cape gooseberry. The Basuto ponies are supposed to be descendants of some Shetland ponies which were imported into the Eastern Province of Cape Colony about the year 1840, and were soon after lost sight of in the Stormberg Mountains, and are supposed to have wandered into Basutoland. Certainly some of them are even now small enough to be "Shelties," and are not unlike them in shape. CHAPTER VI. MARRIAGE CUSTOMS--DEATH CUSTOMS.