If the gods of Nongkause had excited a less perfect trust, there might have been a rush on Cape Colony. As it was, the belief lived long enough in the Kaffirs to defeat its own purpose. Their suffering grew acute, nature asserted itself over superstition, and their one cry was 'Give us to eat.' They dug up roots, and they strove for the supplies which the Governor threw into the country, when famine drove Nongkause's nostrum out. Desperate crowds of the hungry surged over hill and plain, while strength lasted, and then lay down to die. No question remained of keeping a mad Kaffraria at bay. The whole effort was to rescue, as far as was possible, the Kaffirs from death by want. Civilisation drove forward in a mortuary cart; but it was civilisation. The spirit of Kaffraria had been quenched; it was a last wild stand. Sir George Grey meditated on the means, so unexpected, so beyond man's control, which had enhanced the securities for peace in South Africa. He could do that, believing Providence to be an all-wise, if often inscrutable ruler, and at the same time declare: 'There was a heroic element in the action of the Kaffirs, for we see what they were willing to endure at the bidding, as they believed, of their ancestors, and in the interests of themselves as a people.' It was in Sir George's mind that Nongkause, by a queer irony, was the one member of her family who survived the visitation. XIV A SAVIOUR OF INDIA It touches the imagination to have a dark Africa put forward as light for a Bible scene; namely, that where Jacob, instructed by Rebekah, obtains the blessing which the blind Isaac thinks himself to be conferring on his eldest son Esau. 'This scene,' said Sir George Grey, 'did not live wholly to me, until I met with an incident while hunting in South Africa. Coming upon a young spring-buck, which had been exhausted by the pursuit, I lifted it into the saddle before me, and carried it home. All the way, the velvety skin of the little fellow was brushing against my clothes. 'These were not worn again for some time, and when I did take them out, I was struck by their delicious smell of herbs and grasses. The scent had been communicated by the spring-buck, accustomed to make its home among the sweet growths of nature. It was the hunter's fragrant smell which, in part, caused Isaac to mistake Jacob for Esau.'