Taking the portrait properly is a matter of extreme difficulty. The Kaffirs _will_ rub themselves with grease, and the more they shine the better they are dressed. Now, as every photographer knows, nothing is more perplexing than a rounded and polished surface in the full rays of the sunbeams; and if it were only possible to rub the grease from the dark bodies, and deprive them of their gloss, the photographer would have a better chance of success. But the Kaffir ladies, old and young alike, think it a point of honor to be dressed in their very best when their portraits are taken, and will insist upon bedizening themselves exactly in the way which is most destructive to photography. They take fresh grease, and rub their bodies until they shine like a well-polished boot; they indue every necklace, girdle, bracelet, or other ornament that they can muster, and not until they are satisfied with their personal appearance will they present themselves to the artist. Even when they have done so, they are restless, inquisitive, and rather nervous, and in all probability will move their heads just as the cap of the lens is removed, or will take fright and run away altogether. In the case of the two girls represented in the illustration, on page 25, the photographer has been singularly fortunate. Both the girls belonged to the tribe commanded by the well-known chief Goza, whose portrait will be given on a subsequent page. The girls are clad in their ordinary costume of every-day life, and in fact, when their portraits were taken, were acting as housemaids in the house of an European settler. Unfortunately, this singular beauty of form is very transient; and when a girl has attained to the age at which an English girl is in her full perfection, the Kaffir girl has begun to age, and her firm, lithe, and graceful form has become flabby and shapeless. In the series of portraits which has been mentioned, this gradual deterioration of form is curiously evident; and in one example, which represents a row of girls sitting under the shade of a hut, young girls just twenty years of age look like women of forty. [Illustration: (1.) UNMARRIED KAFFIR GIRLS. (See page 21.)] [Illustration: (2.) OLD KAFFIR WOMEN. (See page 27.)]