I have heard and seen many horrible things, but this I must say, that the most atrocious villains, and the most lovable beings on the face of God’s earth, are to be found among the white men. A more kind-hearted soul than Sergeant Shelley could never be conceived; and another man in my corps used to carry about, concealed under his jacket, a broken reaping-hook, to cut the throats of the women and children we had taken prisoners on our night expeditions. As another proof of what men may become in time of warfare, Dix one morning came to inform me that I could not have my usual bath in the small copper vat in which I had been accustomed to take my matutinal tubbing. Upon further inquiries I found that it had been used for a purpose which I will attempt to describe. Doctor A---- of the 60th had asked my men to procure him a few native skulls of both sexes. This was a task easily accomplished. One morning they brought back to camp about two dozen heads of various ages. As these were not supposed to be in a presentable state for the doctor’s acceptance, the next night they turned my vat into a caldron for the removal of superfluous flesh. And there these men sat, gravely smoking their pipes during the live-long night, and stirring round and round the heads in that seething boiler, as though they were cooking black-apple dumplings. One morning two Kaffir boys, that had been found by the men marauding on the outskirts of our camp, were brought to me, and by the offer I made of blankets and beads, were led to promise they would guide us to where the rest of the tribe lay concealed in a deep glen between the stony ridges that ribbed off from the Water-kloof heights. In furtherance of this object I started with a small detachment of forty men under Lieutenant Charlton. The summit of the kloof was wrapped in heavy clouds, and in passing through the hoary woods which fringed the foot of the hill, grave doubts came over me as to whether I was justified (now that the war was ebbing to a close, and had taken a decided turn in our favour) in thus tempting children to betray their parents; and as these boys were cautiously feeling their way to the front, like mute slot-hounds picking up an uncertain trail, it appeared to me that we were more like revengeful pursuers hunting down poor fugitive slaves, than man going to meet man and fight out our disputed rights in fair play. God’s will be done! but the task assigned to the white man is often a difficult one. At one time he appears as a sort of legal hangman in the name of Nature’s undefined laws; at another, simply a murderer; at a third time, as I hardly know which of the two. Nevertheless, one conviction always comes back with a desolating pertinacity amidst all my doubts, and that is--we never can be equals, in peace or in war; _one_ of the two must give way; and as neither will do so while life lasts, Death can be the only arbitrator to settle the dispute.