It is a matter on which I am altogether unable to speak with any confidence. Neither at Port Elizabeth, or at the mouth of the Kowie where stands Port Alfred, or further eastwards at East London of which I must speak in a coming chapter, has Nature done much for mariners, and the energy shown to overcome obstacles at all these places has certainly been very great. The devotion of individuals to their own districts and to the chances of prosperity not for themselves so much as for their neighbours, is almost sad though it is both patriotic and generous. The rivalry between places which should act together as one whole is distressing;--but the industry of which I speak will surely have the results which industry always obtains. I decline to prophesy whether there will be within the next dozen years a railway from Port Alfred to Grahamstown,--or whether the goods to be consumed at the Diamond Fields and in the Orange Free State will ever find their way to their destinations by the mouth of the Kowie;--but I think I can foresee that the enterprise of the people concerned will lead to success. CHAPTER XI. BRITISH KAFRARIA. It is not improbable that many Englishmen who have not been altogether inattentive to the course of public affairs as affecting Great Britain may be unaware that we once possessed in South Africa a separate colony called British Kafraria, with a governor of its own, and a form of government altogether distinct from that of its big brother the Cape Colony. Such however is the fact, though the territory did not, perhaps, attract much notice at the time of its annexation. Some years after the last Kafir war which may have the year 1850 given to it as its date, and after that wonderful Kafir famine which took place in 1857,--the famine which the natives created for themselves by destroying their own cattle and their own food,--British Kafraria was made a separate colony and was placed under the rule of Colonel Maclean. The sanction from England for the arrangement had been long given, but it was not carried out till 1860. It was not intended that the country should be taken away from the Kafirs;--but only the rule over the country, and the privilege of living in accordance with their own customs. Nor was this privilege abrogated all at once, or abruptly. Gradually and piecemeal they were to be introduced to what we call civilization. Gradually and piecemeal the work is still going on,--and so progressing that there can hardly be a doubt that as far as their material condition is concerned we have done well with the Kafirs. The Kafir Chiefs may feel,--certainly do feel,--that they have been aggrieved. They have been as it were knocked about, deprived of their power, humiliated and degraded, and, as far as British Kafraria is concerned, made almost ridiculous in the eyes of their own people. But the people themselves have been relieved from the force of a grinding tyranny. They increase and multiply because they are