At present no doubt throughout Natal there is a cry from the farmer that the Zulu will not work. The farmer cannot plough his land and reap it because the Zulu will not come to him just when work is required. It seems hard to the farmer that, with 300,000 of a labouring class around, the 20,000 white capitalists,--capitalists in a small way,--should be short of labour. That is the way in which the Natal farmer looks at it, when he swears that the Zulu is trash, and that it would be well if he were swept from the face of the earth. It seems never to occur to a Natal farmer that if a Zulu has enough to live on without working he should be as free to enjoy himself in idleness as an English lord. The business of the Natal farmer is to teach the Zulu that he has not enough to live on, and that there are enjoyments to be obtained by working of which the idle man knows nothing. But the Zulu does work, though not so regularly as might be desirable. I was astonished to find at how much cheaper a rate he works than does the Kafir in British Kafraria or in the Cape Colony generally. The wages paid by the Natal farmer run from 10s. down to 5s. a month, and about 3 lbs. of mealies or Indian corn a day for diet. I found that on road parties,--where the labour is I am sorry to say compulsory, the men working under constraint from their Chiefs,--the rate is 5s. a month, or 4d. a day for single days. The farmer who complains of course expects to get his work cheap, and thinks that he is injuring not only himself but the community at large if he offers more than the price which has been fixed in his mind as proper. But in truth there is much of Zulu agricultural work done at a low rate of wages, and the custom of such work is increasing. As to other work, work in towns, work among stores, domestic work, carrying, carting, driving, cleaning horses, tending pigs, roadmaking, running messages, scavengering, hod bearing and the like, the stranger is not long in Natal before he finds, not only that all such work is done by Natives, but that there are hands to do it more ready and easy to find than in any other country that he has visited. CHAPTER XVIII. LANGALIBALELE. The story of Langalibalele is one which I must decline to tell with any pretence of accuracy, and as to the fate of the old Zulu,--whether he has been treated wrongly or rightly I certainly am not competent to give an opinion with that decision which a printed statement should always convey. But in writing of the Colony of Natal it is impossible to pass Langalibalele without mention. It is not too much to say that the doings of Langalibalele have altered the Constitution of the Colony; and it is probable that as years run on they will greatly affect the whole treatment of the Natives in South Africa. And yet Langalibalele was never a great man among the Zulus and must often have been surprised at his own importance.