"Petrus, I wish I could hide in the top of a very high tree and get a good look at a real Tsavo 'man-eater,' and perhaps, just as he was about to spring, a little Bushman, with nothing but his poisoned arrows, would come out and kill him."
"I can't promise you'll see any terrible 'man-eaters,' George, but you'll soon see a Bushman or two, perhaps half a hundred black Kafirs, and maybe a--"
"Zulu?" broke in George. "Petrus, I'm going home. See those black clouds coming? It will rain soon."
"Not a single Zulu! I'll promise you that, George. Uncle has not one on the place. Mutla has strict orders to keep them away. The Kafirs are perfectly harmless. They're a good-natured crowd of fellows. You will like them. They are not real savages, George. Many of them are intelligent and anxious for education. Some of the best study in the negro schools of the United States. But most of them still live with their dogs, chickens, goats and other animals all mixed up together in their kraals. The 'Red Kafirs,' off in Bondoland, and the Transkei, on the coast, still mix red clay into their hair and cover their bodies with it."
"I'd rather face all the Kafirs in Kaffraria than one Zulu, Petrus!" protested George. "I'm never afraid of Mutla."
"Wait until you see some of the happy-faced, laughing Zulus of Natal--the Durban 'ginrickshaw' Zulu boys for instance. You will never be afraid of them. Zulus are not all dangerous--like Dirk. Many of them make good, honest house-servants, and are to be trusted. Kafirs work better in the fields. Fine specimens as many of them are, yet the best of them are not the equals of the magnificent big Zulus of Natal and Zululand--splendidly built, coal-black giants like Dirk."
"Petrus, here come two Kafirs now!" whispered George.
"Those are Hottentots, George," laughed Petrus. "Don't you see their tufty hair--all little wiry balls with open spaces between, just like the Bushman's. Both are little yellow-brown, flat-faced people who click, click, when they try to talk. The word 'Hottentot' means a 'Stammerer' or 'Jabberer.' We cannot understand their jargon, and Uncle Abraham and I have to talk to them by signs. The Kafirs scorn the Hottentots, and the Hottentots hate the pigmy Bushmen. They won't work together. There goes a little Bushman, now. They have no lobes to their ears. Many of them sleep out in the open--winter and summer. On cold nights they sometimes lie so close to the fire that they blister their bodies until the skin peels off. But they are great little hunters. They always know where to find water. They will watch the flight of the birds, or spoor some animal to his drinking-place, and when on the hunt they'll eat the flesh of anything, from an elephant to a mouse."
