The list of particular guests occupied four days of anxious thought and much re-arrangement, with the result that room for two additional places had to be made at the table. Even when all this was done, they had not quite made up their minds who were really the most intimate friends of the Family. (_To be continued._) THE ‘KITCHEN KAFFIR.’ Fortune, for good or ill, has cast my lot in the little Crown colony of Natal. Let me at once say that I have no intention of going over ground already but too well trodden. What with wars and rumours of wars upon its borders, Natal has lately been ‘written up’ to a considerable extent by enterprising travellers and newspaper correspondents. Minerva has been treading closely on the heels of Mars, and at the first blush, there would seem but little more to tell. However, the hasty grasp at things made by dashing ‘specials’ and travellers may have left some grains of information that will perhaps prove interesting. It is only necessary to my subject to state, by way of introduction, that Natal has a population of about thirty thousand whites and three hundred thousand blacks—the latter, as will be seen, in a proportion of ten to one. These are, of course, round numbers. The city of Pietermaritzburg, the capital of the colony—where my afore-mentioned lot is cast—contains between six and seven thousand Europeans, a large number of Indian coolies, and a much larger number of natives. A considerable proportion of the last-named fall to be spoken of under the heading of this article—the ‘Kitchen Kaffir.’ Most of the domestic work of the colony is performed by the natives. They come into the town from the surrounding country from distances of twenty, fifty, or a hundred miles, sometimes farther. The Kaffirs, thanks to the indulgence of our paternal government, are allowed to settle and thrive on the available Crown lands of the colony, and their kraals form a frequent feature of the up-country landscape. Though these natives enjoy the protection of the British government, polygamy is allowed under the Native Law. Wives have to be bought with bullocks. The young natives, ambitious to wed, leave the ancestral kraal, and work for wages in the town until they have saved enough money to buy the requisite oxen. Hence the Kitchen Kaffir.