Lately, two articles of dress, or rather of ornament, have been imported from Europe into Africa, and have met with great success among the chocolate-colored belles of Kaffirland. Enterprising traders in Southern Africa do not set up permanent shops as we do in England, but stock a wagon with all sorts of miscellaneous goods, and undertake journeys into the interior, where they barter their stock for elephants’ tusks and teeth, horns, skins, ostrich feathers, and similar commodities. They have a most miscellaneous assortment of goods, and act very much in the same manner as those wandering traders among ourselves who are popularly called “cheap Johns,” the chief distinction being that their stock is by no means cheap, but is sold at about 1,000 per cent. profit on the original outlay. This seems rather an excessive percentage; but it must be remembered that the old adage of high interest and bad security holds good in this as in other speculations. War may break out, the trader be speared, his wagon robbed, and his oxen confiscated. The dreaded murrain may carry off his cattle, or they may be starved for want of food, slowly killed by thirst, or drowned by a sudden rush of water, which may almost instantaneously convert a dry gully into a raging torrent that sweeps everything before it. Fashions may change, and his whole stock be valueless; or some “prophet” may take it into his head to proclaim that the sound of his wagon wheels prevents the rain from falling. Moreover, he is unmercifully fleeced by the different chiefs through whose territories he passes, and who exact an extortionate toll before they will allow him to pass to the next chief, who will serve him in much the same manner. Altogether, if the journey be a successful one, the trader will make about fifty or sixty per cent. clear profit; but, as the journey is often an utter failure, this is really no very exorbitant rate of interest on his outlay. The trader will, above all things, take plenty of tobacco--this being the key to the heart of a Kaffir, old or young, man or woman. He will take guns and ammunition for the men; also spirits of the roughest and coarsest kind, a better and purer article being quite wasted on his sable customers. Beads, of course, he carries, as well as buttons, blankets, and other luxuries; also he will have the great iron hoe blades with which the women till the ground, that he can sell for one-sixth of the price and which are twice the quality of the native-made hoe. One of these bold wagon-owners bethought himself of buying a few gross of brass curtain rings of the largest size, and was gratified by finding that they were eagerly bought up wherever he went. The natives saw at once that the brass rings were better bracelets than could be made by themselves, and they accordingly lavished their savage treasures in order to buy them.