The Kaffir uses his cattle for various purposes. Whenever he can afford such a luxury, which is very seldom, he feasts upon its flesh, and contrives to consume a quantity that seems almost too much for human digestion to undertake. But the chief diet is the milk of the cows, generally mixed with meal, so as to form a kind of porridge. The milk is never eaten in its fresh state, the Kaffirs thinking it to be very indigestible. Indeed, they look upon fresh milk much as a beer-drinker looks upon sweet-wort, and have an equal objection to drinking the liquid in its crude state. When a cow has been milked, the Kaffir empties the pail into a large store basket, such as is seen on the right-hand of the engraving “Kaffirs at Home,” page 57. This basket already contains milk in the second stage, and is never completely emptied. Soon after the milk has been placed in the basket, a sort of fermentation takes place, and in a short time the whole of the liquid is converted into a semi-solid mass, and a watery fluid something like whey. The latter is drawn off, and used as a drink, or given to the children; and the remainder is a thick, clotted substance, about the consistency of Devonshire cream. This is called “amasi,” and is the staff of life to a Kaffir. Europeans who have lived in Kaffirland generally dislike amasi exceedingly at first, but soon come to prefer it to milk in any other form. Some persons have compared the amasi to curds after the whey has been drawn off; but this is not a fair comparison. The amasi is not in lumps or in curd, but a thick, creamy mass, more like our clotted cream than any other substance. It has a slightly acid flavor. Children, whether black or white, are always very fond of amasi, and there can be no better food for them. Should the Kaffir be obliged to use a new vessel for the purpose of making this clotted milk, he always takes some amasi ready prepared, and places it in the vessel together with the fresh milk, where it acts like yeast in liquid fermentation, and soon reduces the entire mass to its own consistency. The oxen are also used for riding purposes, and as beasts of burden. Europeans employ them largely as draught oxen, and use a great number to draw a single wagon; but the wagon is an European invention, and therefore without the scope of the present work. The native contrives to ride the oxen without the use of a saddle, balancing himself ingeniously on the sharply ridged back, and guiding his horned steed by means of a stick through its nostrils, with a cord tied to each end of it. He is not at all a graceful rider, but jogs along with his arms extended, and his elbows jerking up and down with every movement of the beast. Still, the ox answers his purpose; and, as it never goes beyond a walking pace, no great harm is done by a fall.