Page:South Africa (1878 Volume 2).djvu/90

This page needs to be proofread.

the family coming out to the Transvaal remember,—to whom he will pay perhaps 10s. a month and whom he will feed upon mealies. The "boy's" wages and diet will cost perhaps £12 per annum. But indeed they will not cost him so much, for the "boy" will go away, and he will not be able to get another just when he wants one. These boys he will find to be useful, good humoured, and trustworthy,—if only he could keep them. They will nurse his baby, cook his dinner, look after his house, make his bed, and dig his garden. That is they will half do all these things,—with the exception of nursing the baby, whom the Kafir is never known to neglect or injure. The baby perhaps may serve to keep him a whole twelvemonth, for he is very fond of a white baby. The wife of the British gentleman who thus settles himself at Pretoria will, at first, be struck with horror at the appearance of the Kafir, who will probably wear an old soldier's jacket with a ragged shirt under it and no other article of clothing; and she will not at first suffer the Savage to touch her darling. But she will soon become reconciled to her inmate and the darling will take as naturally to the Kafir man as though he were some tendered, best instructed old English nurse out of a thoroughly well-to-do British family. And very soon she will only regret the reckless departure of the jet black dependant who had struck her at first with unmingled disgust.

Gradually I suppose these people will learn to cling to their work with some better constancy. I, as a stranger, was tempted to say that better diet, better usage, and better wages would allure them. But I was assured that I was