I had gained quite an insight into Hottentot onslaught by these few hours’ experience, and could perfectly understand how engrossing must be the excitement which they yield to savage minds. Compared with these, shooting lions and rhinoceroses must be poor sport to them. The last brings simply into play the faculties of a sportsman, and is an occupation dangerous enough to be disagreeable, but negroes are the woodcocks of Africa, the beau ideal of the game tribe, and they are pursued not with that personal indifference every one must feel towards quadrupeds, but with revenge, hatred, and cupidity. The Hottentot runs to the raid boiling with passion and hungry for spoils. He is matched with an equal in sight, hearing, speed, and ingenuity; the attack and the pursuit call forth the whole of his intelligence. If the negro has a perfect knowledge of the country on his side to aid his escape, the Hottentot has had time for forethought and preparation in the attack to match that advantage. The struggle is equal until the closing scene when the deadly gun confronts the assegai. Then come the tears and supplication and prayers for mercy, which must be music to the ears of the Hottentot, as he revels in his victory and pauses before he consummates it. I have a pretty fixed idea that if English justice were administered throughout these parts of Africa, a small part only of the population would remain unhung. But we must not be too hard upon the negro and Hottentot morale on that account, for we little know what fearful passions exist in our own European minds until they are thoroughly roused. A young terrier or kitten seems the most harmless and mildest of creatures until he has been brought into contact with rats and learnt the luxury and taste of blood, and many an instance may be found along the distant coasts of this wide world where a year or two has converted the Saxon youth, who left his mother all innocence and trust, into as diabolical and reckless a character as ever stabbed with a bowie-knife.