Round all these huts,--those that is belonging to the royal family and those no doubt of other magnates,--there is a spacious courtyard enclosed by a circular fence of bamboo canes, stuck into the ground perpendicularly, standing close to each other and bound together. The way into the courtyard is open, but the circle is brought round so as to overlap the entrance and prevent the passer-by from looking in. It is not, I imagine, open to every one to run into his neighbour’s courtyard,--especially into those belonging to royalty. As we were going to the King’s Palace the King himself met us on the road surrounded by two or three of his councillors. One old councillor stuck close to him always, and was, I was told, never absent from his side. They had been children together and Maroco cannot endure to be without him. We had our interview out in the street, with a small crowd of Baralongs around us. The Chief was not attired at all like his son’s wife’s husband. He had an old skin or kaross around him, in which he continually shrugged himself as we see a beggar doing in the cold, with a pair of very old trowsers and a most iniquitous slouch hat upon his head. There was nothing to mark the King about his outward man;--and, as he was dressed, so was his councillor. But it is among the “young bloods” of a people that finery is always first to be found. Maroco shook hands with each of us twice before he began to talk, as did all his cortege. Then he told us of his bodily ailments,--how his feet were so bad that he could hardly walk, and how he never got any comfort anywhere because of his infirmity. And yet he was standing all the time. He sent word to President Brand that he would have been in to see him long ago,--only that his feet were so bad! This was probably true as Maroco, when he goes into Bloemfontein, always expects to have his food and drink found for him while there, and to have a handsome present to carry back with him. He grunted and groaned, poor old King, and then told Sapena to take us to his hut, shaking hands with us all twice again. We went to his hut, and there sitting in the spacious court we found his great wife. She was a woman about forty years of age, but still remarkably handsome, with brilliant quick eyes, of an olive rather than black colour. She wore a fur hat or cap,--somewhat like a pork-pie hat,--which became her wonderfully; and though she was squatting on the ground with her knees high and her back against the fence,--not of all attitudes the most dignified,--still there was much of dignity about her. She shook hands with us, still seated, and then bade one of the girls take us into the hut. There was nothing in this especial, except that a portion of it was screened off by furs, behind which we did not of course penetrate. All these huts are very roomy and perfectly light. They are lofty, so that a man cannot touch the roof in the centre, and clean. Into the ordinary Kafir hut the visitor has to creep,--and when