Since penning the preceding pages, I have read a work on Natal and the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony, by the Rev. William Holden, who was living at D'Urban during my pilgrimage in the same neighbourhood. As he was an excellent Kaffir linguist, and was always spoken of by Kaffirs and white men with respect and affection, it is gratifying to find that his fifteen years of experience bring him to the same conclusions, with regard to the treatment of the Kaffirs, at which I may be considered to have jumped hastily after only three years' investigation. I will quote from page 215 of his work:-- "But let not those who are invested with a little brief authority use it in playing all sorts of fantastic tricks, or something worse. A Kaffir has a sharp sense of justice, and whilst he will respect and reverence the officer who will give him just punishment for his misdeeds, he will abhor the man who does him wanton wrong, and may be tempted to settle accounts in his own way. "The Kaffirs must be treated like children. If a man has a large family, and leaves them without restraint or control, his children become a plague to himself and a scourge to the community. The Kaffirs are children of a larger growth, and must be treated accordingly; _children_ in knowledge, ignorant of the relationships of civilised society, and strangers to many of the motives which influence the conduct of the white man. But they are _men_ in physical and mental powers; _men_ in the arts and usages of their nation, and the laws of their country; and the great difficulty in governing them is, to treat them as men-children, teaching them that to submit and to obey are essential to their own welfare as well as to that of others. "Some kind-hearted Christians will say, `This is much too severe;' but my firm conviction, after many years' experience, is, that it is not merely the best, but also the only way to save the native races from ruin and annihilation; and that, had the Kaffirs on the frontier of the old colony been treated with more apparent severity after the first war, a second outbreak would not have taken place. Who, I would ask, is their best friend, the man who would save them by apparent severity, or the man who would destroy them by mistaken kindness? I presume the former. Besides, it should not be forgotten that what appears to be severe to us is not so to them, since many of them have lived under the iron rule of cruel capricious despots, with no security for fife or property, and are consequently unable to appreciate or understand our excess of civilised kindness; being strangers to those refined feelings which operate in the breast of the Christian. The result of too mild a policy is, that in a few years they are changed from crouching, terror-stricken vassals, to bold, lawless, independent barbarians."