In those days civilization had not made any great progress in Southern
Africa. My father went up the country and became a missionary among the
Kaffirs, near to where the town of Cradock now stands, and here I grew
to manhood. There were a few Boer farmers in the neighbourhood, and
gradually a little settlement of whites gathered round our mission
station--a drunken Scotch blacksmith and wheelwright was about the most
interesting character, who, when he was sober, could quote the Scottish
poet Burns and the Ingoldsby Legends, then recently published, literally
by the page. It was from that I contracted a fondness for the latter
amusing writings, which has never left me. Burns I never cared for so
much, probably because of the Scottish dialect which repelled me. What
little education I got was from my father, but I never had much leaning
towards books, nor he much time to teach them to me. On the other hand,
I was always a keen observer of the ways of men and nature. By the time
that I was twenty I could speak Dutch and three or four Kaffir dialects
perfectly, and I doubt if there was anybody in South Africa who
understood native ways of thought and action more completely than I
did. Also I was really a very good shot and horseman, and I think--as,
indeed, my subsequent career proves to have been the case--a great deal
tougher than the majority of men. Though I was then, as now, light and
small, nothing seemed to tire me. I could bear any amount of exposure
and privation, and I never met the native who was my master in feats
of endurance. Of course, all that is different now, I am speaking of my
early manhood.

It may be wondered that I did not run absolutely wild in such
surroundings, but I was held back from this by my father's society. He
was one of the gentlest and most refined men that I ever met; even the
most savage Kaffir loved him, and his influence was a very good one
for me. He used to call himself one of the world's failures. Would that