minister's guidance I should lose, at any rate for the present. I spoke to the minister of my dinner;—but he assured me that an hour would take me out to his place at Healdtown. He clearly thought,—and clearly said,—that it was my duty to go, and I acceded. He promised to convey me to the establishment in an hour,—but it was two hours and a half before we were there. He allured me by speaking of the beauty of the road,—but it was pitch dark all the way. It was eight o'clock before my wants were supplied, and by that time I hated Kafir children thoroughly.
Of Healdtown and Lovedale,—a much larger Kafir school,—I will speak in the next chapter, which shall be exclusively educational. Near to Lovedale is the little town of Alice in which I stayed two days with the hospitable doctor. He took me out for a day's hunting as it is called, which in that benighted country means shooting. I must own here to have made a little blunder. When I was asked some days previously whether I would like to have a day's hunting got up for me in the neighbourhood of Alice, I answered with alacrity in the affirmative. Hunting, which is the easiest of all sports, has ever been an allurement to me. To hunt, as we hunt at home, it is only necessary that a man should stick on to the back of a horse,—or, failing that, that he should fall off. When hunting was offered to me I thought that I could at any rate go out and see. But on my arrival at Alice I found that hunting meant—shooting, an exercise of skill in which I had never even tried to prevail. "I haven't fired off a gun," I said, "for forty
