The “pigs,” as the wild swine are popularly called, always come from the bush; and when several kraals are built near a bush, the chiefs of each kraal agree to make a fence from one to the other, so as to shut out the pigs from all the cultivated land. This fence is a very useful edifice, but, at the same time, has a very ludicrous aspect to an European. The reader has already been told that the Kaffir cannot draw a straight line, much less build a straight fence; and the consequence is, that the builders continually find that the fence is assuming the form of a segment of a circle in one direction, and then try to correct the error by making a segment of a circle in the opposite direction, thus making the fence very much larger than is necessary, and giving themselves a vast amount of needless trouble. As to the winged enemies of the garden, many modes of killing them or driving them away are employed. One method for frightening birds has already been described, and is tolerably useful when the corn is young and green; but when it is ripe, the birds are much too busy to be deterred by such flimsy devices, and continue to eat the corn in spite of the shaking strings. Under such circumstances, war is declared against the birds, and a number of Kaffirs surround the enclosure, each being furnished with a number of knob-kerries. A stone is then flung into the corn for the purpose of startling the birds, and as they rise in a dense flock, a shower of kerries is rained upon them from every side. As every missile is sure to go into the flock, and as each Kaffir contrives to hurl four or five before the birds can get out of range, it may be imagined that the slaughter is very great. Tchaka, who was not above directing the minutiæ of domestic life, as well as of leading armies, subsidizing nations, and legislating for an empire, ordered that the birds should be continually attacked throughout his dominions; and, though he did not succeed in killing them all, yet he thinned their numbers so greatly, that during the latter years of his life the graminivorous birds had become scarce instead of invading the fields in vast flocks.