When, after some half hour of conversation, he declared that he did not want to answer any more questions, I was not sorry to shake hands with the prominent half dozen, so as to bring the meeting to a close. But suddenly there came a grin across Siwani’s face,--the first look of good humour which I had seen,--and the interpreter informed me that the Chief wanted a little tobacco. I went back into my friend’s house and emptied his tobacco pot, but this, though accepted, did not seem to give satisfaction. I whispered to the interpreter a question, and on being told that Siwani would not be too proud to buy his own tobacco, I gave the old beggar half a crown. Then he blessed me, as an Irish beggar might have done, grinned again and went off with his followers. The Kafir boy or girl at school and the Kafir man at work are pleasing objects; but the old Kafir chief in quest of tobacco,--or brandy,--is not delightful. King Williamstown is the head quarters of the Cape mounted frontier police, of which Mr. Bowker, whose opinion respecting Kafirdom I have already quoted, was at the period of my visit the Commandant. This is a force, consisting now of about 1,200 men, maintained by the Colony itself for its own defence, and was no doubt established by the Colony with a view of putting its own foot forward in its own behalf and doing something towards the achievement of that colonial independence of which I have spoken. It has probably been thought that the frontier police might at last stand in lieu of British soldiers. The effort has been well made, and the service is of great use. The brunt of the fighting in the late disturbance has been borne by the mounted police. The men are stationed about the country in small parties,--never I think more than thirty or forty together, and often in smaller numbers. They are very much more efficacious than soldiers, as every man is mounted,--and the men themselves come from a much higher class than that from which our soldiers are enlisted. But the troop is expensive, each private costing on an average about 7s. a day. The men are paid 5s. 6d. a day as soon as they are mounted,--out of which they have to buy and keep their horses and furnish everything for themselves. “When they join the force their horses and equipments are supplied to them, but the price is stopped out of their pay. They are recruited generally, though by no means universally, in England, under the care of an emigration agent who is maintained at home. I came out myself with six or seven of them,--three of whom I knew to be sons of gentlemen, and all of whom may have been so. So terrible is the struggle at home to find employment for young men that the idea of £100 a year at once has charms, even though the receiver of it will have to keep not only himself, but a horse also, out of the money. But the prospect, if fairly seen, is not alluring. The young men when in the Colony are policemen and nothing more than policemen.