The Sun.
London, England, 1851-12-08 00:00:00

BENTLEY.

The opening paper on " Recent Travellers in the
East" is illustrated by a portrait of Lieutenant the
lion. Frederick Walpole, R.N. ; in this paper we find
some interesting extracts, describing the manners of
the Anasyrii, together with a well-told narrative of
a visit to Layard at Nineveh. " The Correspon-
dence of Count de La Marck" is continued. The
Count gives us in this instalment some pleasant
gossip about the court and courtiers of Marie An-
toinette when that court was at its zenith. Mr.
Cole continues his valuable notes on the Cape and the
Kafirs. lle thus describes the latter :

" The Kafirs can scarcely ho said to have any religion
at all. The North American Indian has his Great
Spirit; the Negro his Fetish; the Hottentot his Grass-
hopper; but the Kepi- has literally no idea of a Supreme
Being or a future state.
" And yet it appears impossible for the human mind
to be entirely destitute of any notions of supernatural
or spiritual influences. And so the Kafir is credulous
in regard to a dozen of the absurdest superstitions. He
has his rain-makers,' his doctors,' and his prophets'
—lying impostors, in whom he puts full faith. Does a
long drought occur, which threatens to wither up his
scanty crop of meelies and Kafir corn—his hope and
trust are in the rain-maker. This solemn humbug, who
is, perhaps, some keen observer of natural phenomena,
and can guess through such observations the period
about which rain may be expected, tells the listening
booby who consults him, to perform certain ceremonies
(any absurdity ho chooses to invent), and then that he
shall have rain at such a time. If his prophecy is cor-
rect—or rather, I am wrong to call it prophecy, for the
rain-maker professes to cause the rain himself—ho is
regarded with awe and reverence. If the rain fails to
appear when ho commands it, he is clever enough to
impute it to some error or misdeed on the part of the
suppliant.
" Does disease break out among the cattle? The
doctor' is called ; and though he may often enough
effect a cure
through very natural means, ho is wise
enough to impute it to witchcraft on his own part. Does
an unfortunate Kafir lose some of his herd? The doctor
again is consulted and tells who has stolen them: not li
that he is often, if ever,[right; but his decision is final.
The man whom he pronounces guilty must reinstate the
missing number, or, in some cases, be mulcted of all the
cattle he possesses. When a Kafir, therefore, has a
great desire for his neighbour's cattle, he has only to
present. a bribe to the doctor, who will give such a
non as will hand over his herds to the briber. This is
a style of appropriation, under the semblance of justice,
constantly adopted by the chiefs themselves against their
subjects.
"Prophets are more rare—which is strange, seeing
that nothing is easier than prophesying. The language
used by these mysterious gentry, in all ages and all
countries, is so exquisitely ambiguous, so plastically
framed to meet almost any contingency, and so perfectly
uncertain in all the details of chronology and locality,
that I can scarcely imagine any prophecy to have been
ever uttered that may not have been fulfilled a dozen
times. Yet Kafir prophets aro by no means numerous.
I perceive, however, that a very ambitious one has sprung
up lately, who has made rather a bad shot for a start,
having ventured to prophesy, that when the war should
begin between the Kafirs and the English, the latter
would be turned into all sorts of vegetable and animal
productions, leaving the colony free for the Kafirs to
inhabit. This worthy man is evidently a novice in his
art, and although he has endeavoured to back out of his
mistake, by saying that the Kafirs spoilt his prophecy
by firing the first shot, I fear this ' dodge' will hardly
avail him in the eyes of his compatriots. I have no
doubt, however, that he has gained the end desired—
namely, the commencement of a war.
" I have been considerably amused by seeing it gravely
asserted in the English papers, and even in one or two
Cape ones, that the present war differs from all former
ones, in being a religious one'—as if this prophet was any-
thing more than a tool in the hands of Sandilli, or that
the latter placed one iota more of confidence in his pro-
phecies than the Archbishop of Canterbury would have
done. He only wanted an excuse and a pretext for at-
tacking the colony, and ho adopted the very lame one of
a prophecy."
He proposes to adopt strong measures for the putting
an end to the Kafir war. England, as he properly
observes, cannot submit for ever to have a set of rob-
bers on her frontier, ready to rob and murder her
sons ; and he proposes, therefore, to treat them as
robbers and murderers should be treated—to work
all Kafirs taken with arms in their hands in chain-
gangs onl the public roads, and to take possession of
Kafirland, and apportion it among British subjectsaso
as to force the Kafirs to work for their living. his
description of his adventures in the back settlements
of South Africa is very amusing. The other papers
in Bentley are above the usual magazine average.