He became equally hot in debate now, declaring to us that everything was going to the dogs because the Kafirs were not made to work. I liked his politics less than his leg of mutton,--which had been excellent. The drive through the Stormberg is very fine;--but the mountains are without timber or water. It is the bleak wildness of the place which gives it its sublimity. Between the Stormberg and the Catberg lies Queenstown,--a picturesque little town with two or three hotels. The one at which the coach stopped was very good. It was a marvel to me that the Inns should be so good, as the traffic is small. We sat down to a table d’hôte dinner, at which the host with all his family joined us, that would have done credit to a first class Swiss hotel. I don’t know that a Swiss hotel could produce such a turkey. When the landlord told his youngest child, who had modestly asked for boiled beef, that she might have turkey in spite of the number at table, I don’t know whether I admired most, the kind father, the abstemious daughter, or the capacious turkey. I think that South Africa generally is prouder of the road over the Catberg than of any other detail among its grand scenery. I had been told so often that whatever I did I must go over the Catberg! I did go over the Catberg, walking up the bleak side from the North, and travelling down in the coach, or Cape cart which we had got there, among the wooded ravines to the South. It certainly is very fine,--but not nearly so grand in my opinion as Montague Pass or Southey’s Pass in the Western Province. From the foot of the Catberg we ran into Fort Beaufort, to which town I carried my reader in a previous chapter. It was over this road that I had poured into my ears the political harangue of that late member of the Legislature. He belonged to a school of politicians which is common in South Africa, but which became very distasteful to me. The professors of it are to be found chiefly in the Eastern Province of the Cape Colony, in which I was then travelling, though the West is by no means without them. Their grand doctrine is that the Kafirs should be “ruled with a rod of iron.” That phrase of the rod of iron had become odious to me before I left the country. “Thieves!” such a professor will say. “They are all thieves. Their only idea is to steal cattle.” Such an one never can be made to understand that as we who are not Savages have taken the land, it is hardly unnatural that men who are Savages should think themselves entitled to help themselves to the cattle we have put on the land we have taken from them. The stealing of cattle must of course be stopped, and there are laws for the purpose; but this appealing to a “rod of iron” because men do just that which is to be expected from men so placed was always received by me as an ebullition of impotent and useless anger. A farmer who has cattle in a Kafir country, on land which has perhaps cost him 10s.