CHAPTER XIV.
KRELI AND HIS KAFIRS.
At the time in which I am writing this chapter Kreli
and his sons suppose themselves to be at war with the
Queen of England. The Governor of the Gape Colony, who
has been so far troubled in his serenity as to have felt it
expedient to live away from his house for the last three or
four months near to the scene of action, supposes probably
that he has been called upon to put down a most unpleasant
Kafir disturbance. He will hardly dignify the affair with
the name of a war. When in Ireland the Fenians were put
down by the police without direct military interference we
felt that there had been a disagreeable row,—but certainly
not a civil war, because the soldiers had not been employed.
And yet we should hardly have been comfortable while the
row was going on had we not known that there were soldiers
at hand in Ireland. For some months it was much the
same with Kreli and his rebellious Kafirs. In South Africa
there was comfort in feeling that there were one or two
regiments near the Kei River,—at head quarters, with a
General and Commissaries and Colonels at King Williamstown,
where the Governor is also stationed, and that there
were soldiers also at East London, on the coast, ready for an
emergency should the emergency come. But the fighting up
