No one wants to banish the Kafirs. Situated as the country is and will be, it cannot exist without Kafirs, because the Kafirs are the only possible labourers. To utilize the Kafir and not to expel him must be the object of the white man. Speaking broadly it may be said of the Colony, or at any rate of the Eastern district, that it has no white labourers for agricultural purposes. The Kafir is as necessary to the Grahamstown farmer as is his brother negro to the Jamaica sugar grower. But, for the sake both of the Kafir and of the white man, some further assurance of security is needed. I am inclined to think that more evil is done both to one and the other by ill defined fear than by actual danger. Along the coast of the Colony there are various sea ports, none of which are very excellent as to their natural advantages, but each of which seems to have a claim to consider itself the best. There is Capetown of course with its completed docks, and Simon’s Bay on the other side of the Cape promontory which is kept exclusively for our men of war. Then the first port, eastwards, at which the steamers call is Mossel Bay. These are the chief harbours of the Western Province. On the coast of the Eastern Province there are three ports between which a considerable jealousy is maintained, Port Elizabeth, Port Alfred, and East London. And as there is rivalry between the West and East Provinces, so is there between these three harbours. Port Elizabeth I had seen before I came up to Grahamstown. From Grahamstown I travelled to Port Alfred, taken thither by two patriotic hospitable and well-instructed gentlemen who thoroughly believed that the commerce of the world was to flow into Grahamstown via Port Alfred, and that the overflowing produce of South Africa will, at some not far distant happy time, be dispensed to the various nations from the same favoured harbour. “Statio bene fida carinis,” was what I heard all the way down,--or rather promises of coming security and marine fruitfulness which are to be results of the works now going on. It was all explained to me,--how ships which now could not get over the bar would ride up the quiet little river in perfect safety, and take in and discharge their cargoes on comfortable wharves at a very minimum of expense. And then, when this should have been completed, the railway from the Kowie’s mouth up to Grahamstown would be a certainty, even though existing governments had been so shortsighted as to make a railway from Port Elizabeth to Grahamstown--carrying goods and passengers ever so far out of their proper course.