"The finest men in the colony. I have seen them constantly from six feet two to six feet six inches in height; broad and muscular in proportion. Their strength is immense. They are great admirers of feats of daring, strength, and activity. A mighty hunter, such as Gordon Cumming, would be welcomed with open arms by every Dutch boer in South Africa. Poor Moultrie, of the 75th, the 'lion-hunter' _par excellence_, was one of their idols. So is Bain, the 'long-haired,' who has made some half-dozen excursions into the far wilderness in search of the lord of the forest and all his subjects. They hunt far more than the English farmers, and are, as I have said, 'crack' shots, though they use a great, long, awkward, heavy, flint-locked gun, that would make Purdey or Westley Richards shudder with disgust." Frugal and industrious, these stalwart descendants of Hollanders have one great fault, almost a fatal one in a new country. They have a rooted antipathy to novelty and improvement. They use the same lumbering plough their big-breeched forefathers imported from the Low Countries some eighty years ago, although it requires twelve strong oxen to draw it. They reject steam, and pound their corn instead of grinding it. Despising flails, they completely spoil their straw by having the grain trodden out by horses or oxen. Of the English settlers, the Cockneys make the best farmers, "because, coming without any previous knowledge of the art they intend to follow, they take advice of those whom experience enables to give it, instead of trying to manage things in South Africa as they do in England." Stories are traditionally cited, of inexperienced Londoners, just landed at the Cape, purchasing a flock of sheep as breeding stock, and discovering them (too late) to be wethers; and of another who planted split pease to raise a crop ready for use; but such instances of ignorance, Mr Cole assures us, are by no means common. The present unfortunate condition of the Cape Colony, and the destructive war now raging there, give peculiar interest to that portion of Mr Cole's book which relates to the Kafirs. During the greater part of his residence at the Cape, these troublesome savages were on their good behaviour, and he was enabled to become personally acquainted with them, and especially with their powerful chief Macomo. Riding from Graham's Town to Fort Beaufort, through that immense jungle and favourite Kafir lurking-place, Fish River Bush, he paused to bait at a roadside inn, and entered into chat with his host, who, on hearing that he had never been in Kafirland, pointed out to him a distant mountain.