What I Saw in Kaffir-land. By Sir Stephen Lakeman (Mazhar
Pacha.) (Blackwood and Sons.)—Sir S. Lakeman's recollections refer to the Kaffir war of 1847, in which he served as a volunteer, leading a regiment of some such stuff as was that which Falstaff led, and doing good service with it. Most of his readers will probably start with a prepossession that this is not the first time that things have been mismanaged in Kaffir-land, and will find this prepossession amply confirmed. The writer speaks his mind with a simplicity and directness that are quite striking. War appears in his pages in its true colours, dark and lurid enough, and never so dark as when it is carried on by a civilised against an uncivilised people. To what savagery English soldiers may be degraded, Sir S. Lakeman, who is no senti- mentalist, shows by instances which are too horrible to quote. Mean- while, we may record one utterance of his which is very appropriate just now :—"The untimely craving for excitement beyond the pale of legiti- raate hereditary succession has always been the bane of young colonies, and also, alas ! of rapidly wearing-out motherlands. A violent ex- tension of boundaries cannot easily be justified. Violence begets violence ; and nothing will rankle so much in the minds of men, from generation to generation, as the idea that they have been unjustly deprived of their forefathers' land." There is an element of senti- ment in these military recollections ; nor is any figure so striking of all that are here presented as that of Noziah, sister of Sandilli, the beautiful peace-maker, who seems to have brought the Kaffir war to an end. The writer tells us what he saw and did elsewhere than in Africa, notably bow he pitched Halil Pasha, commander of the Turkish cavalry and brother-in-law to the Sultan, into the sea, for disobeying orders. We may take leave of a very amusing book, by suggesting that he should make himself acquainted with the real history of St. Helena, mother of Constantine the Great. She was not "the daughter of a remarkable King of Essex," but a barmaid, born in Cflicia.
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