The chiefs who possess many oxen are very fastidious about them, and have an odd fancy of assembling them in herds, in which every animal is of the same color. The oxen also undergo a sort of training, as was remarked by Retief, who was killed in battle with Dingan, the Zulu king. He paid a visit to that treacherous despot, and was entertained by dances in which the cattle had been trained to assist. “In one dance,” he says, “the people were intermixed with one hundred and seventy-six oxen, all without horns, and of one color. They have long strips of skin hanging pendent from the forehead, cheeks, shoulders, and under the throat; these strips being cut from the hide when the animals are calves. These oxen are divided into two and three among the whole army, which then dance in companies, each with its attendant oxen. In this way they all in turn approach the king, the oxen turning off into a kraal, and then manœuvring in a line from the king. It is surprising that the oxen should be so well trained; for, notwithstanding all the startling and yelling which accompany the dance, they never move faster than a slow walking pace. Dingan showed me, as he said, his smallest herd of oxen, all alike, and with white backs. He allowed two of my people to count them, and the enumeration amounted to two thousand four hundred and twenty-four. I am informed that his herds of red and black oxen consist of three to four thousand each.” I may here mention casually, that the same fashion of keeping animals of similar colors in separate herds is in force in South America, among the owners of the vast herds of horses which thrive so well in that country. The Kaffirs manage their cattle with wonderful skill, and the animals perfectly understand the meaning of the cries with which they are assailed. Consequently, it is almost as difficult for an Englishman to drive his cows as to milk them, and assistance has to be sought from the natives. This noisy method of cattle driving is the source of much difficulty to the soldiers, when they have been sent to recover cattle stolen by those inveterate thieves, the Kaffir tribes, who look upon the cattle of the white man as their legitimate prize, and are constantly on the look-out for them. Indeed, they enact at the present day that extinct phase of Scottish life when the inhabitants of the Highlands stole the cattle of the Lowlanders, and euphemistically described the operation as “lifting;” themselves not being by any means thieves, but “gentleman drovers,” very punctilious in point of honor, and thinking themselves as good gentlemen as any in the land.