The architecture of these tribes is very simple, and, although slightly variable in different localities, is marked throughout by similar characteristics. On looking at any specimen of Kaffir architecture, the spectator is at once struck with one peculiarity, namely, that all his buildings are circular. It is a remarkable fact that the Kaffir does not seem to be capable of marking out a straight line, and whether he builds a hut, or erects a fence, he takes the circle as his guide. A Kaffir’s attempts to erect a square enclosure, or even to build a fence in a straight line, are ludicrous failures. With Europeans the case is different. A settler who desires to build a fence wherein to enclose his garden, or a stockade within which his house and property can remain in safety, invariably builds on the rectilinear principle, and makes the fence in the form of a square. He would feel himself quite fettered if he were forced to build a circular enclosure, whereas the Kaffir would be as much at a loss if he were obliged to build a square edifice. Indeed, though the European could, at the cost of some trouble, build a circular house, and would make his circle true, the Kaffir would utterly fail in attempting to make a building of a square or an oblong form. One of my friends, who has travelled much among the Kaffir tribes, and gone among villages whose inhabitants had never seen an European building, told me that it was hardly possible to make the natives comprehend the structure of an European house. The very shape of it puzzled them, and the gable ends and the ridged roof seemed so strange to them as to be scarcely credible. As to the various stories in a house, several rooms on a story, and staircases which lead from one to the other, they flatly declined to believe that anything of the kind could exist, and thought that their guest was trying to amuse himself at the expense of their credulity. They did believe in the possibility of St. Paul’s cathedral, on account of its domed roof, but they could not be induced to believe in its size. They defended their position by argument, not merely contenting themselves with assertions. Their chief argument was derived from the impossibility of such a building sustaining its own weight. The only building materials of which they had any experience were the posts and sticks of which their own houses were made, and the reeds wherewith they were thatched. Sometimes a very luxurious house-owner would plaster the interior with mud, producing that peculiar style of architecture which is popularly called “wattle-and-daub.” They could not comprehend in the least that stone could be used in building dwelling-houses; and the whole system of cutting stone into rectangular pieces, and the use of bricks, was equally beyond their comprehension. Mortar also was an inexplicable mystery, so that on the whole they decided on discrediting the tales told them by the white man. [Illustration: KAFFIRS AT HOME. (See page 70.)]