beer-drinking orgies, other medicaments so powerful that whole families, both black and white, have been carried off by their felonious administration; but their useful medicines are so mixed up with useless adulterations that in most cases it would be better for the patient to “throw physic to the dogs.” It used to be the case of “no cure, no pay;” for, according to their law, if the patients died, or did not recover until another medical man had been called in, the doctor got no payment; but in Natal, now, on first attendance the doctor requires a preliminary fee of ten shillings, nominally to buy medicine, but at the same time he stipulates for receiving a bullock in case of a cure being effected. As a rule they administer harmless drugs, thinking it safest to believe in the motto of “vis medicatrix naturæ,” for there is no doubt the majority are the most arrant quacks ever known. Some, who rank high in the profession, travel from place to place, and as the result of their skill and knowledge of human nature, return home after an absence of months, or it may be years, rich in the possession of large herds of cattle. The doctor of medicine is also often a witch doctor, and so combines in one a knowledge of the two branches of the profession. A case[10] occurred toward the end of 1866, in which I was engaged as government surgeon, which at the time created an immense sensation in Natal. It elucidates what I have just said of witch and medicine doctoring being often combined. I think the story of the tragedy will not be uninteresting to my readers.