We may now turn back to pursue the story of the fortunes of the emigrant

Boers who had remained on the landward or northerly side of the

Quathlamba Range, or had returned thither from Natal. In 1843 they

numbered not more than 15,000 persons all told, possibly less; for,

though after 1838 fresh emigrants from the Colony had joined them, many

had perished in the native wars. Subsequently, down to the end of 1847,

these numbers were increased by others, who returned from Natal,

displeased at the land settlement made there; and while these Natalians

settled, some to the south-west, round Winburg, others farther north,

in the region between Pretoria and the Vaal River, the earlier Boer

occupants of the latter region moved off still farther north, some to

Lydenburg, some to the Zoutpansberg and the country sloping to the

Limpopo River. Thus the emigrant Dutch were now scattered over an area

seven hundred miles long and three hundred miles wide, an area bounded

on the south-east by the Quathlamba mountain-chain, but on the north and

west divided by no natural limit from the great plain which stretches

west to the Atlantic and north to the Zambesi. They were practically

independent, for the colonial government did not attempt to interfere

with their internal affairs. But Britain still claimed that they were,

in strict intendment of law, British subjects,[21] and she gave no

recognition to the governments they set up. To have established any kind

of administration over so wide a territory would have been in any case

difficult for so small a body of people, probably about four thousand

adult males; but the characteristics which had enabled them to carry out

their exodus from Cape Colony and their campaigns of conquest against

the natives with so much success made the task of organization still

more difficult. They had in an eminent degree "the defects of their

qualities." They were self-reliant and individualistic to excess; they

loved not only independence, but isolation; they were resolved to make

their government absolutely popular, and little disposed to brook the

control even of the authorities they had themselves created. They had,

in fact, a genius for disobedience; their ideal, if one can attribute

any ideals to them, was that of Israel in the days when every man did

that which was right in his own eyes. It was only for warlike

expeditions, which they had come to enjoy not only for the sake of the

excitement, but also because they were able to enrich themselves by the

capture of cattle, that they could be brought together, and only to

their leaders in war that they would yield obedience. Very few had taken

to agriculture, for which, indeed, the dry soil was seldom fitted, and

the half-nomadic life of stock-farmers, each pasturing his cattle over

great tracts of country, confirmed their dissociative instincts.

However, the necessities of defence against the natives, and a common

spirit of hostility to the claims of sovereignty which the British

government had never renounced, kept them loosely together. Thus several

small republican communities grew up. Each would have preferred to

manage its affairs by a general meeting of the citizens, and sometimes

tried to do so. But as the citizens dispersed themselves over the

country, this became impossible, so authority, such slight authority as

they could be induced to grant, was in each vested in a small elective

assembly called the Volksraad or Council of the People.

These tiny republics were held together by a sort of faintly federative

tie, which rested rather in a common understanding than upon any legal

instrument, and whose observance was always subject to the passion of

the moment. The communities which dwelt to the north-east, beyond the

Vaal River, while distracted by internal feuds chiefly arising from

personal or family enmities, were left undisturbed by the colonial

government. They lived hundreds of miles from the nearest British

outpost, and their wars with the Kafirs scarcely affected those tribes

with whom the British authorities came in contact. Those authorities, as

I have already observed, were in those days, under orders received from

home, anxious rather to contract than to extend the sphere of imperial

influence, and cared little for what happened far out in the wilderness,

except whenever the action of the Boers induced troubles among the

natives.

It was otherwise with the emigrants who lived to the south-west, between

the Vaal River and the frontier of Cape Colony, which was then at the

village of Colesberg, between what is now De Aar Junction and the upper

course of the Orange River. Here there were endless bickerings between

the Boers, the rapidly growing native tribe of the Basutos, and the

half-breeds called Griquas, hunting clans sprung from Dutch fathers and

Hottentot women, who, intermixed with white people, and to some extent

civilized by the missionaries, were scattered over the country from

where the town of Kimberley now stands southward to the junction of the

Orange and Caledon rivers. These quarrels, with the perpetual risk of a

serious native war arising from them, distressed a succession of

governors at Cape Town and a succession of colonial secretaries in

Downing Street. Britain did not wish (if I may use a commercial term not

unsuited to her state of mind) "to increase her holding" in South

Africa. She regarded the Cape as the least prosperous and promising of

her colonies, with an arid soil, a population largely alien, and an

apparently endless series of costly Kafir wars. She desired to avoid all

further annexations of territory, because each annexation brought fresh

responsibilities, and fresh responsibilities involved increased

expenditure. At last a plan was proposed by Dr. Philip, a prominent

missionary who had acquired influence with the government. The

missionaries were the only responsible persons who knew much about the

wild interior, and they were often called on to discharge functions

similar to those which the bishops performed for the barbarian kings in

western Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries of our era. The

societies which they represented commanded some influence in Parliament;

and this fact also disposed the Colonial Office to consult them. Dr.

Philip suggested the creation along the north-eastern border of a line

of native states which should sever the Colony from the unsettled

districts, and should isolate the more turbulent emigrant Boers from

those who had remained quietly in the Colony. This plan was adopted.

Treaties were made in 1843 with Moshesh, the Basuto chief, and with Adam

Kok, a Griqua captain living on the Orange River, as a treaty had been

made nine years before with another Griqua leader named Waterboer, who

lived farther north (near the present site of Kimberley); and these

three states, all recognized by Britain, were intended to cover the

Colony on the side where troubles were most feared. But the arrangement

soon broke down, for the whites would not recognize a Griqua captain,

while the whole troubles between them and the natives continued.

Accordingly, a forward step was taken in 1846 by placing a few British

troops under a military resident at Bloemfontein, half-way between the

Orange and Vaal rivers, to keep order there. And in 1848 the whole

region from the Orange to the Vaal was formally annexed under the name

of the Orange River Sovereignty. The country had been without any

government, for the emigrants who dwelt in it had no organization of

their own, and did not recognize the republics beyond the Vaal.

This formal assertion of British authority provoked an outbreak among

those of the emigrants, all, or nearly all, of Boer stock, who clung to

their independence. Roused and reinforced by their Boer brethren from

beyond the Vaal, who were commanded by Andries Pretorius, the most

energetic and capable of the emigrant leaders, and the same who had

besieged the British troops at Port Natal, they attacked Bloemfontein,

obliged the Resident's small force to capitulate, and advanced south to

the Orange River. Sir Harry Smith, then Governor of the Cape, promptly

moved forward a small force, defeated the Boers in a sharp skirmish at

Boomplats (August 29, 1848), and re-established British authority over

the Sovereignty, which was not, however, incorporated with Cape Colony.

The Boers beyond the Vaal were left to themselves.

Peace, however, was not yet assured. Fresh quarrels broke out among the

native tribes, ending in a war between the Basutos and the British

Resident. Unsupported by a large section of the local farmers, who

remained disaffected to the government, and preferred to make their own

terms with the Basutos, and having only a trifling armed force at his

command, the Resident fared ill; and his position became worse when

Pretorius, still powerful beyond the Vaal, threatened to move in and

side with the Basutos. Cape Colony was at that moment involved in a

serious war with the Kafirs of the south coast, and could spare no

troops for these northern troubles. So when Pretorius intimated that he

and the northern Boers wished to make some permanent and pacific

arrangement with Britain, which, though it did not claim their

territory, still claimed their allegiance, commissioners were sent to

negotiate with him and those of the northern or Transvaal group of

emigrants who recognized his leadership, for there were other factions

who stood apart by themselves. Thus in 1852 a convention was concluded

at Sand River with "the commandant and delegates of the Boers living

beyond the Vaal," by which the British government "guaranteed to the

emigrant farmers beyond the Vaal River the right to manage their own

affairs, and to govern themselves according to their own laws without

any interference on the part of the British government," with provisions

"disclaiming all alliances with any of the coloured nations north of the

Vaal River," permitting the emigrants to purchase ammunition in the

British colonies, and declaring that "no slavery is or shall be

permitted or practised by the farmers in the country north of the Vaal

River."

From this Sand River convention the South African Republic, afterward

slowly formed out of the small communities which then divided the

country, dates its independence; and by the same instrument it

practically severed itself from the Boer emigrants who were left in the

Orange River Sovereignty south of the Vaal, conduct which the republican

party among these emigrants deemed a betrayal. That Sovereignty remained

British, and probably would have so continued but for an unexpected

incident. It was still vexed by the war with the Basutos, and when

General Cathcart, who had now come out as Governor of the Cape, attacked

Moshesh with a considerable force of British regulars, he was drawn into

a sort of ambush in their difficult country, suffered a serious reverse,

and would have been compelled to invade Basutoland afresh with a larger

army had not Moshesh prudently asked for peace. Peace was concluded. But

the British government was weary of these petty and apparently unending

native wars, and soon after the news of the battle with Moshesh reached

London, the Duke of Newcastle, and Lord Aberdeen's government, in which

he was colonial secretary, resolved to abandon the Sovereignty

altogether.

To those who look back on 1853 with the eyes of 1899 this seems a

strange determination, for the British crown had ruled the country for

eight years and recently given it a regular new constitution. Moreover,

whereas the farmers beyond the Vaal were nearly all of pure Boer stock,

those in the Orange River Sovereignty were mixed with English settlers,

and from their proximity to the Colony were much less averse to the

British connection. In fact, a large part of them--though it is not now

easy to discover the exact proportion--warmly resisted the proposal of

the British government to retire, and independence had to be forced on

them against their will. In Cape Colony, too, and among the

missionaries, there was a strong repugnance to the policy of withdrawal.

The authorities of the Colony and the Colonial Office at home were,

however, inexorable. They saw no use in keeping territories which were

costly because they had to be defended against native raids, and from

which little benefit was then expected. Hardly any notice had been taken

in Britain of the Sand River convention, which the Conservative ministry

of that day had approved, and when, at the instance of delegates sent

home by those who, in the Orange River territory, desired to remain

subject to the British crown, a motion was made in the House of Commons

asking the Queen to reconsider the renunciation of her sovereignty over

that territory, the motion found no support and had to be withdrawn.

Parliament, indeed, went so far as to vote forty-eight thousand pounds

by way of compensation, in order to get rid of this large territory and

a great number of attached subjects. So little did Englishmen then care

for that South African dominion which they have subsequently become so

eager to develop and extend.

By the convention signed at Bloemfontein on February 23, 1854, the

British government "guaranteed the future independence of the country

and its government," and its inhabitants were "declared, to all intents

and purposes, a free and independent people." No slavery or trade in

slaves was to be permitted north of the Orange River. The Orange River

government was to be free to purchase ammunition in the British

colonies, and liberal privileges in connection with import duties were

to be granted to it.

These two conventions of 1852 and 1854 are epochs of supreme importance

in South African history, for they mark the first establishment of

non-British independent states, whose relations with the British

colonies were thereafter to constitute the central thread in the annals

of the country. As that of 1852 recognised the Transvaal State, so from

that of 1854, which is a more explicit and complete declaration of

independence than had been accorded to the Transvaal people two years

before, dates the beginning of the second Boer republic, the Orange

Free State, which, subsequently increased by the conquest from the

Basutos of a strip of fertile territory in the south, has ever since

remained perfectly independent and at peace with the British colonies.

Its only serious troubles have arisen from native wars, and these have

long ago come to an end. In 1854 an assembly of delegates enacted for it

the republican constitution under which it has ever since been quietly

and peaceably governed. It had the good fortune to elect, as its

president, in 1865, a lawyer from Cape Colony, of Dutch extraction, Mr.

(afterwards Sir) John Brand, who guided its course with great tact and

wisdom for twenty-four years, and whose favourite expression, "All shall

come right," now inscribed on his tombstone at Bloemfontein, has become

throughout South Africa a proverbial phrase of encouragement in moments

of difficulty.[22]

Beyond the Vaal river things have gone very differently. The farmers of

that region were more scattered, more rude and uneducated, and more

prone to factious dissensions than those of the Free State proved to be

after 1854; and while the latter were compressed within definite

boundaries on three sides, the Transvaal Boers were scattered over a

practically limitless area. During the next twenty-five years the

Transvaal people had very little to do with the British government. But

they were distracted by internal feuds, and involved in almost incessant

strife with the natives. These two sources of trouble brought their

government, in 1877, to a condition of virtual collapse. But that

collapse and the annexation which followed it belong to a later phase of

South African history, and we must now turn from them to trace the

progress of events in other parts of the country between 1852 and 1877.

[Footnote 16: The best recent account of the doings of the Portuguese is

to be found in Dr. Theal's book, _The Portuguese in South Africa_,

published in 1896.]

[Footnote 17: I have heard from Lord Wolseley that in his expedition

against Sikukuni, a Kafir chief in the north-east of the Transvaal, he

was told by a German trader who acted as guide that the natives had

shown to him (the trader) fragments of ancient European armour which

were preserved in a cave among the mountains. The natives said that this

armour had been worn by white men who had come up from the sea many,

many years ago, and whom their own ancestors had killed.]

[Footnote 18: Maceo, the well-known leader of the Cuban insurgents who

was killed in 1896, was a half-breed, in whose band there were plenty of

pure whites. In no Southern State of North America would white men have

followed a mulatto.]

[Footnote 19: The word Boer means farmer or peasant (German _Bauer_).]

[Footnote 20: A clear and spirited account of these events may be found

in Mr. R. Russell's book, _Natal, the Land and its Story_, published in

1894.]

[Footnote 21: Sir P. Maitland's proclamation of August 21, 1845,

expressly reserved the rights of the crown to consider those who had

gone beyond Natal as being still its subjects, notwithstanding the

establishment of a settled government in that Colony. (See Bird's

_Annals of Natal_, vol. ii., p. 468.)]

[Footnote 22: Some further account of the Orange Free State will be

found in Chapter XIX.]

CHAPTER XII

THE EUROPEANS IN SOUTH AFRICA, 1854-95

Between the years 1852 and 1856 the history of Anglo-Dutch South Africa

breaks up into four distinct streams. The Transvaal and South African

Republic pursues its own course from 1852 onward, the Orange Free State

from 1854, and Natal from 1856, in which year that district was

separated from the Cape and constituted as a distinct colony. Between

1876 and 1880 the South African Republic and Natal are again brought

into close relations with the march of events in Cape Colony. But before

we trace the three last mentioned streams in their several courses it is

well to return to the Cape, by far the largest and most populous of the

four communities, and sketch in outline the chief events that mark the

development of that Colony down to the memorable epoch of 1877-81.

These events group themselves into three divisions--the material

progress of Cape Colony, the changes in the form of its government, and

those wars with the Kafir tribes which, while they retarded its growth

in population, steadily increased its area.

The departure of some eight or ten thousand Boers, the most discontented

part of the population, in the years following 1835, not only removed an

element which, excellent in other respects, was politically at once

unrestful and old-fashioned, but left plenty of vacant space to be

occupied by new immigrants from Europe. New immigrants, however, came

slowly, because at that time the tide of British emigration was setting

mainly to America, while German emigration had hardly begun. The Kafir

wars had, moreover, given South Africa a bad name, and the settlers of

1820 (see above, p. 111) had suffered several years of hardship before

prosperity came to them. However, between 1845 and 1850 four or five

thousand British immigrants were brought in, with the aid of the

government, and a little later a number of Germans who had served

England in the German Legion during the Crimean War. Again, in 1858,

more than two thousand German peasants were settled on the south coast

in lands which had been previously held by Kafirs. These people made

good colonists, and have now become merged in the British population,

which began to predominate in the eastern province as the Dutch still

does in the western. As the country filled there was a steady, though

slow, progress in farming and in export trade. The merino sheep had been

introduced in 1812 and 1820, and its wool had now become a source of

wealth; so, too, had ostrich farming, which began about 1865 and

developed rapidly after the introduction of artificial incubation in

1869. The finances, which had been in disorder, were set right, roads

began to be made, churches and schools were established, and though the

Kafir raids caused much loss of life and of cattle on the eastern

border, the cost of these native wars, being chiefly borne by the home

government, did not burden the colonial revenue. In 1859 the first

railway was constructed, and by 1883 more than one thousand miles of

railway were open for traffic. There were, however, no industries except

stock-keeping and tillage until 1869-70, when the discovery of diamonds

(of which more anon) brought a sudden rush of immigrants from Europe,

stimulated trade so powerfully that the revenue of the Colony doubled

within five years, and began that surprising development of mineral

resources which has been the most striking feature of recent years.

With the growth of population, which had risen under British rule from

about 26,000 Europeans in 1805 to 182,000 in 1865 and 237,000 in 1875,

there came also changes in the form of government. At first the Governor

was an autocrat, except so far as he was controlled by the fear that the

colonists might appeal to the Colonial Office in London against him: and

the administration was therefore wise or foolish, liberal or severe,

according to the qualities of the individual Governor. Some serious

mistakes were committed, and one Governor, Lord Charles Somerset, has

left the reputation of arbitrary rule; but the officials sent out seem,

on the whole, to have pursued a more judicious policy and shown more

respect to local opinion than the representatives of the Dutch East

India Company had (with one or two brilliant exceptions) done in the

previous century. The blunders which preceded the Great Trek of 1836

were attributable rather to the home government than to its agents on

the spot, and in the years that followed colonial feeling complained

more often of Downing-street than it did of Government House at Cape

Town. The irritation which from time to time broke out sprang chiefly

from questions connected with the natives. Like all Europeans dwelling

among inferior races, the mass of the colonists, English as well as

Dutch, looked upon the native population as existing for their benefit,

and resented the efforts which the home government made to secure for

the blacks equal civil rights and adequate protection. Their wrath was

specially kindled by the vehemence with which a few among the

missionaries denounced any wrongs deemed to have been suffered by the

natives within the Colony, and argued the case of the Kafir tribes who

were from time to time in revolt. I do not attempt to apportion the

blame in these disputes; but any one who has watched the relations of

superior and inferior races in America or India or the Pacific islands

will think it probable that many harsh and unjust things were done by

the colonists, as every one who knows how zeal tends to mislead the

judgment of well-intentioned men will think it no less probable that

there was some exaggeration on the part of the philanthropic friends of

the blacks, and that some groundless charges were brought against the

colonists. The missionaries, especially those of the London Society, had

a certain influence with the Colonial Office, and were supposed to have

much more than they had. Thus from 1820 to about 1860 there was a

perpetual struggle between the colonists and the missionaries, in which

struggle the Governor tended to side with the colonists, whose public

opinion he felt round him, while the Colonial Office leaned to the

philanthropists, who could bring political pressure to bear through the

House of Commons. Unfortunate as these bickerings were, they had at

least the result of tending to unite the Dutch and English elements in

the population, for on native questions there was little difference of

attitude between those elements.

In 1834 a Legislative Council was created, consisting, however, of

officials and of members nominated by the Governor, and not, as the

colonists had petitioned, chosen by election. Twenty years later, when

the population had greatly increased and the demand for representative

institutions could no longer be resisted, a regular two-chambered

legislature was set up, consisting of a Legislative Council and a House

of Assembly, both elected on a wide franchise, with no distinction of

race or colour, though of course the coloured voters were comparatively

few, because the tribal Kafirs living under their chiefs were excluded,

while of other blacks there was only a small proportion who held

property even to the limited extent required for the suffrage. This

legislature met for the first time in 1854. Four years previously an

event had occurred which showed how desirable it was that

constitutional means should be provided for the expression of the

people's wishes. The home government had sent out a vessel carrying a

number of convicts to be landed and kept in the Colony, where no

convicts had been seen since the days of the Dutch Company. A strong and

unanimous feeling arose at once against this scheme, which was regarded

as likely to prove even more harmful in South Africa than it had proved

in Australia, because there was at the Cape a large native population,

among whom the escaped or released convict, possessing the knowledge and

capacity of a white man, but unrestrained by any responsibility or sense

of a character to lose, would be able to work untold mischief. The

inhabitants of Cape Town and its neighbourhood held meetings of protest,

sent remonstrances to England, and mutually pledged themselves to supply

no food to the convict ship. This pledge they carried out, and during

the five months that the convict ship lay in Simon's Bay, it was from

the naval squadron there that she had to receive provisions. The

Colonial Office at last yielded; and the people, while rejoiced at the

success they had achieved, and at the heartiness with which Dutch and

English had co-operated for a common object, were more than ever

disposed to desire some control over their own affairs.

Although after 1854 the sole power of legislation was vested in the

colonial Parliament, subject to the right of the British crown to

disallow an act,--a right which is of course very rarely used,--the

executive power still remained with the Governor and his council, who

were appointed by the home government, and not responsible to the Cape

legislature. It has, however, become a settled principle of British

colonial policy to grant to each and every colony not only legislative

power, but responsible executive government so soon as the white

population of the Colony has become relatively large enough and settled

enough to enable that kind of constitution to be properly worked. In

1872 the whites of Cape Colony had come to exceed 200,000, and the need

for a change had been emphasized shortly before by a conflict of opinion

between the Governor and the legislature as to the best means of setting

right the finances of the Colony. Parliament having been dissolved, the

new houses declared for responsible government, and the home government

wisely assented to their wish. Accordingly, the "cabinet system" of

Britain was established, the Governor's executive council being turned

into a ministry responsible to the legislature, and the Governor himself

becoming a sort of local constitutional sovereign on the model of the

British crown, that is to say a sovereign who reigns but does not

govern, the executive acts done in his name being done by the advice and

on the responsibility of the ministry, who hold office at the pleasure

of the legislature. Thus from 1872 onward the Colony has enjoyed

complete self-government, and has prospered under it despite the

antagonism which has frequently shown itself between the eastern and

western provinces, an antagonism due partly to economic causes, partly

to the predominance of the English element in the former and of the

Dutch in the latter region. The working of the cabinet system has been

even smoother than in most of the other British colonies; but while

setting this to the credit of the good sense and moderation of the

people, it must also be noted that the most exciting crises which have

arisen in South Africa have lain outside the scope of the colonial

ministry and legislature, being matters which have touched the two Dutch

republics or the relations of British territories to foreign Powers.

These matters, being international, belong to the British crown, and to

its local representative, the Governor, in his capacity of High

Commissioner for South Africa; and in that capacity he is not required

to consult the Cape ministry and legislature, but acts under the

directions of the Colonial Office in London.

The grant of cabinet government tended to stimulate political life among

the Dutch farmers, hitherto the more backward part of the population,

and in 1882 their wishes secured a reversal of the ordinance made sixty

years before for the exclusive use of English in official documents and

legal proceedings. Dutch was now placed on a level with English as an

official language in Parliament and the law courts. But this assertion

of Dutch sentiment was due to causes which will be better understood

when we come to the events of 1880 and 1881.

Most of the peaceful growth which has been described would have been

more rapid but for the frequent vexation of native wars. Twice under the

rule of the Dutch Company and seven times under the British crown have

there been sanguinary conflicts with the fierce Kafir tribes of the Kosa

group, who dwell in the east of the Colony. On the north there had been

only Hottentots, a weak nomad race, who soon vanished under the attacks

of smallpox and the pressure of the whites. On the north-east the

deserts of the Karroo lay between the colonists and the Kafirs who

inhabited the plains of the Upper Orange and Vaal rivers. But on the

east the country was comparatively well watered, and supported a large

Kafir population full of courage and fighting spirit. Collisions between

them and the whites were inevitable. The country they occupied was

mostly rugged, and covered with a dense low wood, or rather scrub,

traversed by narrow and winding tracks, which were of course familiar to

them, and difficult for white troops. They had always the advantage in

point of numbers, and though they were usually beaten and compelled to

sue for peace, the obvious anxiety of the colonial government to

conclude a peace emboldened them to fresh outbreaks. To civilized men,

who know the enormous superiority of discipline and of firearms, it

seems strange that these natives, who in the earlier wars had no

firearms, should have so often renewed what we can see was a hopeless

struggle. But it must be remembered that the natives, who saw only small

white forces brought against them, and knew that the whole number of

whites in the Colony was small, have never realized, and do not realize

even to-day, the enormous reserve of the white population in Europe.

Their minds cannot take in large numbers, cannot look far forward,

cannot grasp large issues, and are swayed by sudden gusts of feeling

which overcome all calculation of results. Accordingly, the Kafirs

returned over and over again to the contest, while the colonial

government, not wishing to extend its frontiers, and hating the expense

of this unprofitable strife, never grappled with the problem in a large

way, but tried on each occasion to do just enough to restore order for

the time being. It would probably have been better to have spent once

for all a large sum in a thorough conquest of the Kosas, planting strong

forts here and there through their country, and organizing a regular

gendarmerie. But until the annexation of Natal in 1843 placed British

power on the other side of these turbulent tribes, the process of

conquest might well seem interminable, for it was plain that as soon as

one clan had been brought to submission troubles would break out with

the next that lay beyond it, and fresh wars have to be undertaken to

reduce each of these in its turn. Some allowance must therefore be made

for the tendency of the government to take short views and do no more

than was needed for the moment, especially as nearly every new war

brought upon the Governor for the time being the displeasure of the

Colonial Office, and brought upon the Colonial Office the censure of

economists and philanthropists at home.

The theatre of these wars was the country along the south coast between

Algoa Bay and the Kei River, and an important step forward was made

when, after the wars of 1846-47 and 1851-53, the province of British

Kaffraria, extending to the Kei River, was created, placed under

imperial officials, and garrisoned by British regiments. Four years

afterwards, in 1857, the Kafirs of this province, at the bidding of

their chiefs, prompted by a wizard who professed to have received

messages from the world of spirits, destroyed their cattle and their

stores of grain, in the belief that the dead ancestors of the tribe

would reappear and join them in driving out the white men, while herds

of cattle would issue from the ground and crops would suddenly spring up

and cover the soil. Many of the clans were already on the verge of

famine when the promised day arrived, and when it had passed starvation

began, and within a few months, despite the efforts of the colonial

authorities to supply food, some 30,000 Kafirs perished of hunger or

disease. This frightful catastrophe, which carried many thousands

westward into Cape Colony in search of work, and left large tracts

vacant, led to the establishment in those tracts of white settlers, and

ultimately, in 1865, to the union of British Kaffraria with the Colony.

It also so much weakened the Kosas that for the unprecedentedly long

period of twenty years there was no Kafir war. In 1877 and 1880 some

risings occurred which were suppressed with no great difficulty; and in

1894 the boundaries of the Colony, which had been advancing by a series

of small annexations, were finally rounded off on the eastern side by

the addition of the territory of the Pondos, which made it conterminous

in that direction with the Colony of Natal.

To complete the chronicle of native wars, we ought now to turn to Natal,

on whose borders there arose, in 1879, a conflict with the greatest

native power--that of the Zulus--which the British had yet encountered.

Before that year, however, a momentous change in British colonial policy

had occurred, and I must go a little way back to describe the events

which gave rise to it.

The reader will recollect that in 1852 and 1854 Britain had abjured all

purpose of extending the boundaries of her dominion towards the interior

by recognizing the independence of the two Dutch republics, which date

their legal rise from the two conventions concluded in those years. She

had done so quite honestly, desiring to avoid the expense and

responsibility which further advances must entail, and with the wish of

leaving the two new republics to work out their own salvation in their

own way. For some years nothing occurred to create fresh difficulties.

But in 1858 a war broke out between the Orange Free State and the Basuto

chief Moshesh, who claimed land which the Free State farmers had

occupied. The Free State commandos attacked him, and had penetrated

Basutoland as far as the stronghold of Thaba Bosiyo, when they were

obliged to return to protect their own farms from the roving bands of

horsemen which Moshesh had skilfully detached to operate in their rear.

Being hard pressed they appealed to the Governor of Cape Colony to

mediate between them and Moshesh. Moshesh agreed, and a new frontier was

settled by the Governor. However, in 1865 fresh troubles broke out, and

there was again war between Moshesh and the Free State. The Governor of

Cape Colony was again invoked, but his decision was not respected by the

Basutos, whom Moshesh could not always control,--for they are much less

submissive to their chiefs than are the Zulus,--and hostilities having

recommenced after a brief interval of peace, the Free State made a

supreme effort, and in 1868 was on the point of destroying the Basuto

power, though it had never been able to capture Thaba Bosiyo, when

Moshesh appealed to the High Commissioner to extend British protection

to his people. Unwilling to see Basutoland annexed by the Free State,

and fearing injury to the Colony from the dispersion of Basuto fugitives

through it, the High Commissioner consented, and declared the Basutos

British subjects. The Free State was suffered to retain a large tract

of fertile land along the north bank of the Caledon River, which it had

conquered; but it was mortified by seeing British authority established

to the south of it, all the way from Natal to the borders of Cape

Colony, and by the final extinction of the hopes which it had cherished

of extending its territories to the sea and acquiring a harbour at the

mouth of the St. John's River.

These events, which befell in 1869, mark the recommencement of British

advance toward the interior. Still more momentous was another occurrence

which belongs to the same year. In 1869 and 1870 a sudden rush began

from all parts of South Africa to a small district between the Modder

and the Vaal rivers (where the town of Kimberley now stands), in which

diamonds had been discovered. Within a few months thousands of diggers

from Europe and America, as well as from the surrounding countries, were

at work here, and the region, hitherto neglected, became a prize of

inestimable value. A question at once arose as to its ownership. The

Orange Free State claimed it, but it was also claimed by a Griqua

(half-breed) captain, named Nicholas Waterboer, son of old Andries

Waterboer, and by a native Batlapin chief, while parts were claimed by

the Transvaal Republic. The claims of the last-named state were disposed

of by the decision of the Governor of Natal, who had been recognized as

arbitrator by the Griquas, the Batlapin, and the President of the

Republic. He awarded the tract in dispute to Waterboer, including in his

award the part claimed by the Free State, which had refused arbitration

so far as regarded the district lying south of the Vaal, holding that

district to have been indubitably part of the old Orange River

sovereignty, which was in 1854 turned into the Orange Free State. As

Waterboer had before the award offered his territory to the British

government, the country was forthwith erected into a Crown Colony under

the name of Griqualand West. This was in 1871. The Free State, whose

case had not been stated, much less argued, before the umpire,

protested, and was after a time able to appeal to a judgment delivered

by a British court, which found that Waterboer had never enjoyed any

right to the territory. However, the new Colony had by this time been

set up and the British flag displayed. The British government, without

either admitting or denying the Free State title, declared that a

district in which it was difficult to keep order amid a turbulent and

shifting population ought to be under the control of a strong power, and

offered the Free State a sum of ninety thousand pounds in settlement of

whatever claim it might possess. The acceptance by the Free State in

1876 of this sum closed the controversy, though a sense of injustice

continued to rankle in the breasts of some of the citizens of the

Republic. Amicable relations have subsisted ever since between it and

Cape Colony, and the control of the British government over the Basutos

has secured for it peace in the quarter which was formerly most

disturbed.

These two cases show how various are the causes and how mixed the

motives which press a great power forward even against the wishes of its

statesmen. The Basutos were declared British subjects partly out of a

sympathetic wish to rescue and protect them, partly because policy

required the acquisition of a country naturally strong and holding an

important strategical position. Griqualand West, taken in the belief

that Waterboer had a good title to it, was retained after this belief

had been dispelled, partly perhaps because a population had crowded into

it which consisted mainly of British subjects, and was not easily

controllable by a small state, but mainly because colonial feeling

refused to part with a region of such exceptional mineral wealth. And

the retention of Griqualand West caused, before long, the acquisition of

Bechuanaland, which in its turn naturally led to that northward

extension of British influence which has carried the Union Jack to the

shores of Lake Tanganyika. The wish to restrict responsibility, which

had been so strong twenty years before, had now died out of the British

public at home, and had grown feebler even in the minds of the statesmen

whose business it was to find the money needed for these increasing

charges on the imperial treasury; while the philanthropic interest in

the native races, stimulated by the discoveries of Livingstone, now took

the form not of proposing to leave them to themselves, but of desiring

to protect them against the adventurers, whether of Boer or of English

blood, whom it was found impossible to prevent from pressing forward

into the wilderness.

It is remarkable that the change, as yet only an incipient change, in

the public opinion of the English people, who now began to feel the

desire not merely to retain but to expand their colonial dominion,

should have become apparent just at the time when there occurred that

discovery of diamonds which showed that this hitherto least progressive

of the larger Colonies possessed unsuspected stores of wealth. The

discovery brought a new stream of enterprising and ambitious men into

the country, and fixed the attention of the world upon it. It was a

turning point in South African history.

That change in the views of the British Government on which I have been

commenting found at this moment a fresh expression in another quarter.

In 1869 the Portuguese Government concluded a commercial treaty with the

South African Republic, under which it seemed probable that a

considerable trade might spring up between the Portuguese coast of the

Indian Ocean and the interior. This called attention to the port of

Lourenco Marques, on the shore of Delagoa Bay, the best haven upon that

coast. Great Britain claimed it under a cession which had been obtained

from a native chief of the country by a British naval exploring

expedition in 1822. Portugal, however, resisted the claim. In 1872 it

was referred to the arbitration of Marshal MacMahon, then President of

the French Republic, and in 1875 he awarded the territory in dispute to

Portugal. Both cases were weak, and it is not easy to say which was the

weaker, for, although the Portuguese had undoubtedly been first on the

ground, their occupation, often disturbed by the native tribes, had been

extremely precarious. The decision was a serious blow to British hopes,

and has become increasingly serious with the further development of the

country. Yet it was mitigated by a provision contained in the agreement

for arbitration that the Power against whom the decision might go should

have thereafter from the successful Power a right of preemption as

against any other state desiring to purchase the territory.[23] This

provision is momentous as giving Britain the right to prevent not only

the South African Republic, but any European power, from acquiring a

point of the utmost importance both commercial and strategical. Rumours

have often been circulated that Britain would gladly acquire by purchase

the harbour of Delagoa Bay, but the sensitive patriotism of the

Portuguese people is at present so strongly opposed to any sale of

territory that no Portuguese ministry is likely to propose it.[24]

At the very time when the attempt to acquire Delagoa Bay revealed the

new purposes which had begun to animate Great Britain, another scheme

was suggested to the Colonial Office by the success which had lately

attended its efforts in Canada. In 1867 the passing of the British North

America Act drew the theretofore isolated provinces of the Dominion

into a confederation, relieving the home government of some grave

responsibilities, and giving to the whole country the advantages of

common administration and legislation in matters of common concern. Lord

Carnarvon, then colonial secretary, threw himself into the idea of

similarly uniting the different Colonies and States of South Africa. It

had been advocated by Sir George Grey, when Governor in 1858, and had

even received the support of the Orange Free State, whose Volksraad

passed a resolution favouring it in that year. Many considerations of

practical convenience suggested this scheme, chief among them the

desirability of having both a uniform policy in native affairs (the

absence of which had recently caused trouble) and a common commercial

policy and tariff system. Accordingly, in 1875 Lord Carnarvon addressed

a despatch to the Governor of Cape Colony, recommending such a scheme as

fit to be adopted by that Colony, which three years before had received

responsible government, and Mr. J.A. Froude was sent out to press it

upon the people. The choice did not prove a fortunate one, but even a

more skilful emissary would probably have failed, for the moment was

inopportune. The Cape people were not ready for so large and

far-reaching a proposal. The Orange Free State was exasperated at the

loss of Griqualand West. The Transvaal people, though, as we shall see

presently, their republic was in sore straits, were averse to anything

that could affect their independence. However, Sir Bartle Frere, the

next Governor of the Cape, who went out in 1877, entered heartily into

Lord Carnarvon's plan, which continued to be pressed till 1880, when it

was rejected by the Cape Parliament, largely at the instance of envoys

from the Transvaal Boers, who urged the Cape Dutch not to accept it

until the Transvaal (which, as shall be presently set forth, had been

annexed in 1877) should have regained its independence. This failure of

the proposals of the home government seriously damaged the prospects of

future federation schemes, and is only one of several instances in South

African history that show how much harm impatience may do, even when the

object is itself laudable.

The next step in the forward march of British rule took place far to the

south-west, on the borders of Natal. That territory had, in 1856, become

a separate Colony, distinct from the Cape, and with a legislative

council three-fourths of whose members were elective. It had still a

relatively small white population, for many of the Boer immigrants had

quitted it between 1843 and 1848, and though a body of English settlers

arrived soon after the latter year, there were in 1878 only some 25,000

white residents, while the natives numbered fully 300,000. The Zulu

kingdom, which adjoined it on the east, had passed (in 1872) from the

sluggish Panda to his more energetic son Cetewayo (pronounced

"Ketshwayo"), whose ambitious spirit had revived the military

organization and traditions of his uncle Tshaka. Cetewayo had been

installed as king by a British official, and had lived ever since at

peace with the Colony; but the powerful army which he possessed roused

disquiet among the Natalians, and alarmed the then Governor of the Cape

and High Commissioner for South Africa, Sir Bartle Frere. Differences

had arisen between him and Cetewayo, and when the latter refused to

submit to the demands which the High Commissioner addressed to him,

including a requirement that he should disband his regiments and receive

a British resident, war was declared against him. This act was justified

at the time on the ground that the Zulu military power constituted a

standing menace to Natal and to South Africa in general, and that the

vast majority of the natives living in Natal itself might join the Zulu

king were he to invade the colony. Whether this risk was sufficiently

imminent to warrant such a step was then, and has been since, warmly

debated in England. Most of those who have given impartial study to the

subject, and have studied also the character and earlier career of the

High Commissioner, are disposed to think that war might have been and

ought to have been avoided, and that Sir Bartle Frere, in declaring it,

committed a grave error; but it is right to add that there are persons

in South Africa who still defend his action. The invasion of Zululand

which followed began with a disaster--the surprise at Isandhlwana

(January, 1879) of a British force, which was almost annihilated by a

vastly superior native army. Ultimately, however, Cetewayo was defeated

and made prisoner. Zululand was divided among thirteen petty chiefs

under a British resident, and subsequently, in 1887, annexed to the

British crown as a dependency, to be administered by the Governor of

Natal. Except for some disturbances in 1888, its people have since

remained peaceful, prosperous, and to all appearance contented. It has

now (1897) been decided to annex Zululand to Natal.

We may now return to follow the fortunes of the emigrant Boers of the

far north-eastern interior whose republic, recognized by the Imperial

Government in 1852, was at length, after twenty-five years, to be

brought into a closer connection than ever with the British Colonies by

events which are still fresh in men's memories, and which are exerting a

potent influence on the politics of our own time. The scale of these

events was small, but the circumstances are full of instruction, and

many years may yet elapse before their consequences have been fully

worked out.

The Dutch farmers who had settled beyond the Vaal River were more rude

and uneducated than those of the Free State, had no admixture of English

blood, and remained unaffected by intercourse with the more civilized

people of Cape Colony. Their love of independence was accompanied by a

tendency to discord. Their warlike spirit had produced a readiness to

take up arms on slight occasions, and had degenerated into a fondness

for predatory expeditions. They were, moreover, always desirous of

enlarging the area of their stock farms by the annexation of fresh

territory to the north and west, and thus were constantly brought into

collision with the native occupants of the country. Scattered thinly

over a wide area of pasture land, they were practically exempt from the

control of law courts or magistrates, while at the same time the

smallness of their numbers, and the family ties which linked them into

jealous and mutually distrustful groups, gave rise to personal rivalries

among the leaders and bitter feuds among the adherents of each faction,

resembling those which used to distract a city republic in ancient

Greece or medieval Italy. The absence of any effective government had

attracted many adventurers from various parts of South Africa, who

wandered as traders or hunters through the wilder parts of the country

and along its borders, men often violent and reckless, who ill-treated

the natives, and constituted not only a public scandal, but, by the

provocations which they gave to the Kafir chiefs, a danger to the peace

of the adjoining British territories, as well as to that of the

Transvaal itself.

From their first settlement beyond the Vaal in the years immediately

following the Great Trek of 1836, the farmers, though considering

themselves to form one people, had been grouped in several small

communities. In 1852 there were four such, those of Potchefstroom,

Utrecht, Lydenburg, and Zoutpansberg, each having its Volksraad

(people's council) and president or executive head, while a sort of

loosely federative tie linked them together for the purposes, not of

internal administration, but of defence against common foes.

In 1857 the Potchefstroom people tried to conquer the Orange Free State,

then in the third year of its life, but desisted on finding that the

infant Republic was prepared to defend itself. A single Volksraad for

all the communities beyond the Vaal had been chosen as far back as 1849;

but respect for authority grew very slowly, and for a time it could not

be said to represent more than a party. In 1852, however, it ratified

the Sand River Convention, and in 1855 it appointed a commission to

draft a complete body of law. Finally, in 1858, an instrument called the

"Grondwet," or Fundamental Law, was drawn up by a body of delegates

named (by a "Krygsraad," or War Council) for that purpose. This

instrument was revised and adopted by the Volksraad, and presently

received the adhesion of two of the semi-independent communities, those

of Potchestroom and Zoutpansberg, and in 1860 also of those at Lydenburg

and Utrecht, which had by that time united. It has been since several

times modified, and the question whether it is to be deemed a truly

rigid constitution, like that of the United States or that of the Swiss

Confederation, has given rise to much controversy.[25] A civil war broke

out in 1862, and the country can hardly be said to have reached one

united government till 1864, when the then president, Mr. M. W.

Pretorius (son of the old antagonist of the English), was recognized by

all the communities and factions as their executive head.

Even in 1864 the white population of the South African Republic was very

small, probably not more than 30,000 all told, giving an average of less

than one person to three square miles. There were, however, hundreds of

thousands of natives, a few of whom were living as servants, under a

system of enforced labour which was sometimes hardly distinguishable

from slavery, while the vast majority were ruled by their own chiefs,

some as tributaries of the Republic, some practically independent of it.

With the latter wars were frequently raging--wars in which shocking

cruelties were perpetrated on both sides, the Kafirs massacring the

white families whom they surprised, the Boer commandos taking a savage

vengeance upon the tribes when they captured a kraal or mountain

stronghold. It was the sight of these wars which drove Dr. Livingstone

to begin his famous explorations to the north. The farmers were too few

to reduce the natives to submission, though always able to defeat them

in the field, and while they relished an expedition, they had an

invincible dislike to any protracted operations which cost money. Taxes

they would not pay. They lived in a sort of rude plenty among their

sheep and cattle, but they had hardly any coined money, conducting their

transactions by barter, and they were too rude to value the benefits

which government secures to a civilized people. Accordingly the treasury

remained almost empty, the paper money which was issued fell till in

1870 it was worth only one-fourth of its face value, no public

improvements were made, no proper administration existed, and every man

did what was right in his own eyes. In 1872 Mr. M. W. Pretorius was

obliged to resign the presidency, owing to the unpopularity he had

incurred by accepting the arbitration mentioned above (p. 144), which

declared the piece of territory where diamonds had been found not to

belong to the Republic, and which the Volksraad thereupon repudiated.

His successor was Mr. Burgers, a Cape Dutchman who had formerly been a

clergyman of the Dutch Reformed Church and afterwards an advocate at the

Cape, a man of energy, integrity, and eloquence, but deficient in

practical judgment, and who soon became distrusted on account of his

theological opinions. It used to be jestingly said that the Boers

disliked him because he denied that the devil possessed that tail which

is shown in the pictures that adorn the old Dutch Bibles; but his

deviations from orthodoxy went much further than this, and were deemed

by the people to be the cause of the misfortunes they experienced under

his guidance. He formed large plans for the development of the country

and the extension of Boer power over South Africa, plans which his

citizens were unable to appreciate and the resources at his disposal

were quite unfit to accomplish. Disorganization, aggravated by intestine

faction, grew worse and worse. The State was practically bankrupt; trade

had ceased, money could not be raised. In 1876, in a war which had

broken out with Sikukuni, a Kafir chief who lived in the mountains of

the north-east, the Boers were repulsed, and ultimately returned in

confusion to their homes. On the south, Cetewayo, then in the zenith of

his power, was unfriendly, and seemed likely to pour in his Zulu hordes.

The weakness and disorders of the Republic had become a danger not only

to the British subjects who had begun to settle in it, especially at the

Lydenburg gold mines, but also to the neighbouring British territories,

and especially to Natal; so a British commissioner was sent to examine

into the condition of the country, with secret instructions empowering

him to proclaim, if he should deem it necessary, and if he was satisfied

that the majority of the inhabitants would approve, its annexation to

the British crown. After three months' inquiry the commissioner, Sir

Theophilus Shepstone, exercised this power upon April 12, 1877, and his

act was approved by the High Commissioner at the Cape and by the

Colonial Secretary in England. President Burgers had endeavoured to

rouse his people by pointing out that only through reforms could they

preserve their independence. They agreed to the reforms, but would not

help him to carry them out, and obstinately refused to pay taxes. He was

helpless, for while the more rigidly Calvinistic section of the

population supported Paul Kruger, his opponent in the approaching

presidential election, others (especially the English who had settled in

the spots where a little gold had been found) favoured annexation to

Great Britain, and most of the Boers had been repelled by his unorthodox

opinions. Accordingly, after entering a protest against the annexation,

he returned to Cape Colony, and received a pension, his private means

having been entirely spent in the service of his country.[26] The

Vice-President (Mr. Kruger) and the executive council of the Republic

also protested, and sent delegates to London to remonstrate. By the mass

of the Boer people--for the few English, of course, approved--little

displeasure was shown and no resistance made. Had a popular vote been

taken it would doubtless have been adverse to annexation, for a memorial

circulated shortly afterwards, praying for a reversal of Sir T.

Shepstone's act, received the signatures of a large majority of the Boer

citizens.[27] But while they regretted their independence, they had been

so much depressed by their disasters, and were so much relieved to know

that the strong arm of Britain would now repel any Kafir invasion, as to

take the change more quietly than any one who remembered their earlier

history would have expected.

On the English public, which knew little and cared less about South

African affairs, the news that their empire had been extended by a

territory nearly as large as the United Kingdom, though it came as a

complete surprise, produced little impression. They were then excited

over the outbreak of the war between Russia and the Turks, and absorbed

in the keen party struggles which Lord Beaconsfield's apparent desire to

help the Turks had caused in England, so that scant attention was given

to a distant colonial question. A motion condemning the annexation which

was brought forward in the House of Commons received no support. Nearly

all of those few persons who cared about South Africa had been alienated

from the Boers by their treatment of the natives. Scarcely any one

foresaw the long series of troubles, not yet ended, to which the

annexation was destined to give rise. Neither did it arouse any serious

opposition in Cape Colony, though the Dutch element there regarded with

misgivings the withdrawal of independence from their emigrant kinsfolk.

To those who now look back at the act, in the light of the events which

followed, it seems a high-handed proceeding to extinguish a Republic

which had been formally recognized twenty-five years before, and to do

this without giving the people an opportunity of declaring their wishes.

Yet the act was not done in a spirit of rapacity. Neither the British

government nor the British people had the least idea of the wealth that

lay hidden beneath the barren and desolate ridges of the Witwatersrand.

No one in England talked (though the notion had crossed a few ambitious

minds) of pushing British dominion up to the Zambesi. The Transvaal

Republic was bankrupt and helpless, distracted by internal quarrels,

unable to collect any taxes, apparently unable to defend itself against

its Kafir enemies, and likely to be the cause of native troubles which

might probably spread till they affected all Europeans in South Africa.

There was some reason to believe that the citizens, though they had not

been consulted, would soon acquiesce in the change, especially when they

found, as they soon did find, that the value of property rose with the

prospect of security and of the carrying out of internal improvements by

a strong and wealthy power. Such was certainly the belief of Sir T.

Shepstone and of Lord Carnarvon, and it seemed to be confirmed by the

apparent tranquillity which the Boers exhibited.

So, indeed, they might have acquiesced notwithstanding their strenuous

love of independence, had they been wisely dealt with. But the British

government proceeded forthwith to commit three capital blunders.

The first of these, and the least excusable, was the failure to grant

that local autonomy which Sir T. Shepstone had announced when he

proclaimed annexation. The Volksraad which the people were promised was

never convoked; the constitution under which they were to enjoy

self-government was never promulgated. There was no intention to break

these promises, but merely a delay, culpable, indeed, but due to

ignorance of the popular Boer sentiment, and to the desire of the

Colonial Office to carry out its pet scheme of South African

confederation before conceding to the Transvaal such a representative

assembly as would have had the power to reject, on behalf of the people,

the scheme when tendered to them. Nor were matters mended when at last a

legislature was granted, to consist of some officials, and of six

members nominated by the Governor, for this made the people fear that a

genuine freely elected Volksraad would never be conceded at all.

The second blunder was the selection of the person who was to administer

the country. Sir T. Shepstone, who knew it well and was liked by the

Boers, was replaced by a military officer who had shown vigour in

dealing with local disturbances in Griqualand West, but was totally

unfit for delicate political work. As representative government had not

yet been introduced, his administration was necessarily autocratic in

form, and became autocratic in spirit also. He was described to me by

some who knew him as stiff in mind and arrogant in temper, incapable of

making allowances for the homely manners of the Boers and of adapting

himself to the social equality which prevailed among them. A trifling

cause aggravated their dislike. His complexion was swarthy, and they

suspected that this might be due to some tinge of negro blood. He

refused to listen to their complaints, levied taxes strictly, causing

even the beloved ox-waggon to be seized when money was not forthcoming,

and soon turned their smouldering discontent into active disaffection.

Finally, the British government removed the two native dangers which the

Boers had feared. In 1879 Sir Bartle Frere's war with Cetewayo destroyed

the Zulu power, the dread of which might have induced the Boers to

resign themselves to British supremacy, and an expedition under Sir

Garnet Wolseley reduced Sikukuni's strongholds and established peace in

the north-east. It was probably necessary to deal with Sikukuni, though

the British government seems to have forgotten its former doubts as to

the right of the Boers to the territory of that chief; but in

extinguishing the Zulu kingdom the High Commissioner overlooked the fact

that he was also extinguishing the strongest motive which the

republicans had for remaining British subjects. The British government

were doubly unfortunate. It was the annexation of the Transvaal in 1877

that had alarmed Cetewayo and helped to precipitate the war of 1879. It

was now the overthrow of Cetewayo, their formidable enemy, that helped

to precipitate a revolt of the Boers.

At this time, however, everybody in British South Africa, and nearly

everybody in England, supposed the annexation to be irrevocable. Leading

members of the parliamentary Opposition had condemned it. But when that

Opposition, victorious in the general election of 1880, took office in

April of that year, the officials in South Africa, whose guidance they

sought, made light of Boer discontent, and declared that it would be

impossible now to undo what had been done in 1877. Thus misled, the new

Cabinet refused to reverse the annexation, saying by the mouth of the

Under Secretary for the Colonies, "_Fieri non debuit, factum valet_."

This decision of the British government, which came as a surprise upon

the recalcitrant republicans in the Transvaal, precipitated an outbreak.

In December, 1880, a mass-meeting of the Boers was held at a place

called Paardekraal (now Krugersdorp). It was resolved to rise in arms;

and a triumvirate was elected, consisting of Messrs. M.W. Pretorius,

Kruger and Joubert, which proclaimed the re-establishment of the South

African Republic, and hoisted the national flag on Dingaan's day,

December 16.[28] The Boers, nearly every man of whom was accustomed to

fighting, now rose _en masse_ and attacked the small detachments of

British troops scattered through the country, some of which were cut

off, while the rest were obliged to retire to posts which they

fortified. The Governor of Natal, General Sir George Colley, raised what

troops he could in that Colony, and marched northward; but before he

could reach the Transvaal border a strong force of Boers, commanded by

Commandant-General Joubert, crossed it and took up a position at Laing's

Nek, a steep ridge close to the watershed between the upper waters of

the Klip River, a tributary of the Vaal, and those of the Buffalo River,

which joins the Tugela and flows into the Indian Ocean. Here the British

general, on January 28, 1881, attacked the Boers, but was repulsed with

heavy loss, for the ridge behind which they were posted protected them

from his artillery, while their accurate rifle fire cut down his column

as it mounted the slope. A second engagement, eleven days later, on the

Ingogo heights, caused severe loss to the British troops. Finally, on

the night of February 26, General Colley, with a small detachment,

seized by night Majuba Hill, a mountain which rises about 1500 feet

above Laing's Nek, and completely commands that pass.[29] Unfortunately

he omitted to direct the main force, which he had left behind at his

camp, four miles south of the Nek, to advance against the Boers and

occupy their attention; so the latter, finding no movement made against

them in front, and receiving no artillery fire from Majuba Hill above

them, checked the first impulse to retire, which the sight of British

troops on the hilltop had produced, and sent out a volunteer party to

scale the hill. Protected by the steep declivities from the fire of the

soldiers above them, they made their way up, shooting down those whom

they saw against the sky-line, and finally routed the British force,

killing General Colley, with ninety-one others, and taking fifty-nine

prisoners. By this time fresh troops were beginning to arrive in Natal,

and before long the British general who had succeeded to the command had

at his disposal a force which the Boers could not possibly have

resisted. The home government, however, had ordered an armistice to be

concluded (March 5), and on March 23 terms were agreed to by which the

"Transvaal State" (as it was called) was again recognized as a

quasi-independent political community, to enjoy complete self-government

under the suzerainty of the British crown. These terms were developed in

a more formal convention, signed at Pretoria in August, 1881, which

recognized the Transvaal as autonomous, subject, however, to the

suzerainty of the Queen, to British control in matters of foreign

policy, to the obligation to allow British troops to pass through the

Republic in time of war, and to guarantees for the protection of the

natives.[30] The position in which the Transvaal thus found itself

placed was a peculiar one, and something between that of a

self-governing Colony and an absolutely independent State. The nearest

legal parallel is to be found in the position of some of the great

feudatories of the British crown in India, but the actual circumstances

were of course too unlike those of India to make the parallel

instructive.

Few public acts of our time have been the subjects of more prolonged and

acrimonious controversy than this reversal in 1881 of the annexation of

1877. The British government were at the time accused, both by the

English element in the South African Colonies, and by their political

opponents at home, of an ignominious surrender. They had, so it was

urged, given way to rebellion. They had allowed three defeats to remain

unavenged. They had weakly yielded to force what they had repeatedly and

solemnly refused to peaceful petitions. They had disregarded the pledges

given both to Englishmen and to natives in the Transvaal. They had done

all this for a race of men who had been uniformly harsh and unjust to

the Kafirs, who had brought their own Republic to bankruptcy and chaos

by misgovernment, who were and would remain foes of the British empire,

who were incapable of appreciating magnanimity, and would construe

forbearance as cowardice. They had destroyed the prestige of British

power in Africa among whites and blacks, and thereby sowed for

themselves and their successors a crop of future difficulties.

To these arguments it was replied that the annexation had been made, and

the earlier refusals to reverse it pronounced, under a complete

misapprehension as to the facts. The representatives of the Colonial

Office in South Africa had reported, partly through insufficient

knowledge, partly because their views were influenced by their feelings,

that there was no such passion for independence among the Boers as

events had shown to exist.[31] Once the true facts were known, did it

not become not merely unjust to deprive the Transvaal people of the

freedom they prized so highly, but also impolitic to retain by force

those who would have been disaffected and troublesome subjects? A free

nation which professes to be everywhere the friend of freedom is

bound--so it was argued--to recognize the principles it maintains even

when they work against itself; and if these considerations went to show

that the retrocession of the Transvaal was a proper course, was it

either wise or humane to prolong the war and crush the Boer resistance

at the cost of much slaughter, merely in order to avenge defeats and

vindicate a military superiority which the immensely greater forces of

Britain made self-evident? A great country is strong enough to be

magnanimous, and shows her greatness better by justice and lenity than

by a sanguinary revenge. These moral arguments, which affect different

minds differently, were reinforced by a strong ground of policy. The

Boers of the Orange Free State had sympathised warmly with their

kinsfolk in the Transvaal, and were with difficulty kept from crossing

the border to join them. The President of the Free State, a sagacious

man, anxious to secure peace, had made himself prominent as a mediator,

but it was not certain that his citizens might not, even against his

advice, join in the fighting. Among the Africander Dutch of Cape Colony

and Natal the feeling for the Transvaal Boers was hardly less strong,

and the accentuation of Dutch sentiment, caused by the events of 1880

and 1881, has ever since been a main factor in the politics of Cape

Colony. The British government were advised from the Cape that the

invasion of the Transvaal might probably light up a civil war through

the two Colonies. The power of Great Britain would of course have

prevailed, even against the whole Dutch-speaking population of South

Africa; but it would have prevailed only after much bloodshed, and at

the cost of an intense embitterment of feeling, which would have

destroyed the prospects of the peace and welfare of the two Colonies

for many years to come. The loss of the Transvaal seemed a slight evil

in comparison.

Whether such a race conflict would in fact have broken out all over

South Africa is a question on which opinion is still divided, and about

which men may dispute for ever. The British government, however, deemed

the risk of it a real one, and by that view their action was mainly

governed. After careful inquiries from those best qualified to judge, I

am inclined to think that they were right. It must, however, be admitted

that the event belied some of their hopes. They had expected that the

Transvaal people would appreciate the generosity of the retrocession, as

well as the humanity which was willing to forgo vengeance for the

tarnished lustre of British arms. The Boers, however, saw neither

generosity nor humanity in their conduct, but only fear. Jubilant over

their victories, and (like the Kafirs in the South Coast wars) not

realizing the overwhelming force which could have been brought against

them, they fancied themselves entitled to add some measure of contempt

to the dislike they already cherished to the English, and they have ever

since shown themselves unpleasant neighbours. The English in South

Africa, on their part, have continued to resent the concession of

independence to the Transvaal, and especially the method in which it was

conceded. Those who had recently settled in the Republic, relying on the

declarations repeatedly made that it would for ever remain British,

complained that no proper compensation was made to them, and that they

had much to suffer from the Boers. Those who live in the two Colonies

hold that the disgrace (as they term it) of Majuba Hill ought to have

been wiped out by a march to Pretoria, and that the Boers should have

been made to recognize that Britain is, and will remain, the paramount

power in fact as well as in name. They feel aggrieved to this day that

the terms of peace were settled at Laing's Nek, within the territory of

Natal, while it was still held by the Boers. Even in Cape Colony, where

the feeling is perhaps less strong than it is in Natal, the average

Englishman has neither forgotten nor forgiven the events of 1881.

I have dwelt fully upon these events because they are, next to the Great

Trek of 1836, the most important in the internal history of South

Africa, and those which have most materially affected the present

political situation. The few years that followed may be more briefly

dismissed. The Transvaal State emerged from its war of independence

penniless and unorganized, but with a redoubled sense of Divine favour

and a reinvigorated consciousness of national life. The old constitution

was set to work; the Volksraad again met; Mr. Stephen John Paul Kruger,

who had been the leading figure in the triumvirate, was chosen by the

people to be President, and has subsequently been thrice re-elected to

that office. Undismayed by the scantiness of his State resources, he

formed bold and far-reaching plans of advance on the three sides which

lay open to him. To the north a trek was projected, and some years later

was nearly carried out, for the occupation of Mashonaland. To the south

bands of Boer adventurers entered Zululand, the first of them as

trekkers, the rest as auxiliaries to one of the native chiefs, who were

at war with one another. These adventurers established a sort of

republic in the northern districts, and would probably have seized the

whole had not the British government at last interfered and confined

them to a territory of nearly three thousand square miles, which was

recognized in 1886 under the name of the New Republic, and which in 1888

merged itself in the Transvaal. To the west, other bands of Boer raiders

entered Bechuanaland, seized land or obtained grants of land by the

usual devices, required the chiefs to acknowledge their supremacy, and

proceeded to establish two petty republics, one called Stellaland,

round the village of Vryburg, north of Kimberley, and the other,

farther north, called Goshen. These violent proceedings, which were not

only injurious to the natives, but were obviously part of a plan to add

Bechuanaland to the Transvaal territories, and close against the English

the path to those northern regions in which Britain was already

interested, roused the British Government. In the end of 1884 an

expedition led by Sir Charles Warren entered Bechuanaland. The

freebooters of the two Republics retired before it, and the districts

they had occupied were erected into a Crown Colony under the name of

British Bechuanaland. In 1895 this territory was annexed to Cape Colony.

In order to prevent the Boers from playing the same game in the country

still farther north, where their aggressions had so far back as 1876 led

Khama, chief of the Bamangwato, to ask for British protection, a British

protectorate was proclaimed (March, 1885) over the whole country as far

as the borders of Matabililand; and a few years later, in 1888, a treaty

was concluded with Lo Bengula, the Matabili king, whereby he undertook

not to cede territory to, or make a treaty with, any foreign power

without the consent of the British High Commissioner. The west was thus

secured against the further advance of the Boers, while on the eastern

shore the hoisting of the British flag at St. Lucia Bay in 1884 (a spot

already ceded by Panda in 1843), followed by the conclusion (in 1887) of

a treaty with the Tonga chiefs, by which they undertook not to make any

treaty with any other power, announced the resolution of the British

crown to hold the coast line up to the Portuguese territories.

This policy of preventing the extension of Boer dominion over the

natives was, however, accompanied by a willingness to oblige the

Transvaal people in other ways. Though they had not observed the

conditions of the Convention of 1881, the Boers had continued to

importune the British government for an ampler measure of independence.

In 1884 they succeeded in inducing Lord Derby, then Colonial Secretary,

to agree to a new Convention, which thereafter defined the relations

between the British crown and the South African Republic, a title now at

last formally conceded. By this instrument (called the Convention of

London),[32] whose articles were substituted for the articles of the

Convention of 1881, the control of foreign policy stipulated for in the

Pretoria Convention of 1881 was cut down to a provision that the

Republic should "conclude no treaty with any State or nation other than

the Orange Free State, nor with any native tribe to the eastward or

westward of the Republic," without the approval of the Queen. The

declarations of the two previous Conventions (of 1852 and 1881) against

slavery were renewed, and there was a "most favoured nation" clause with

provisions for the good treatment of strangers entering the Republic.

Nothing was said as to the "suzerainty of her Majesty" mentioned in the

Convention of 1881. The Boers have contended that this omission is

equivalent to a renunciation, but to this it has been (among other

things) replied that as that suzerainty was recognized not in the

"articles" of the instrument of 1881, but in its introductory paragraph,

it has not been renounced, and still subsists.[33]

A few years later, the amity which this Convention was meant to secure

was endangered by the plan formed by a body of Boer farmers and

adventurers to carry out an idea previously formed by Mr. Kruger, and

trek northward into the country beyond the Limpopo River, a country

where the natives were feeble and disunited, raided on one side by the

Matabili and on the other by Gungunhana. This trek would have brought

the emigrants into collision with the English settlers who had shortly

before entered Mashonaland. President Kruger, however, being pressed by

the imperial government, undertook to check the movement, and so far

succeeded that the waggons which crossed the Limpopo were but few and

were easily turned back. Prevented from expanding to the north, the

Boers were all the more eager to acquire Swaziland, a small but rich

territory which lies to the east of their Republic, and is inhabited by

a warlike Kafir race, numbering about 70,000, near of kin to the Zulus,

but for many years hostile to them. Both the Boers and Cetewayo had

formerly claimed supremacy over this region. The British government had

never admitted the Boer claim, but when the head chief of the Swazis

had, by a series of improvident concessions, granted away to

adventurers, most of them Boers, nearly all the best land and minerals

the country contained, it was found extremely difficult to continue the

system of joint administration by the High Commissioner and the

Transvaal government which had been provisionally established, and all

the more difficult because by the concession to the New Republic (which

had by this time become incorporated with the Transvaal) of the part of

Zululand which adjoined Swaziland, direct communication between Natal

and Swaziland had become difficult, especially in the malarious season.

Accordingly, after long negotiations, an arrangement was concluded, in

1894, which placed the Swazi nation and territory under the control of

the South African Republic, subject to full guarantees for the

protection of the natives. A previous Convention (of 1890) had given the

South African Republic certain rights of making a railway to the coast

at Kosi Bay through the low and malarious region which lies between

Swaziland and the sea, and the earlier negotiations had proceeded on the

assumption that these rights were to be adjusted and renewed in the same

instrument which was destined to settle the Swaziland question. The

Boer government, however, ultimately declined to include such an

adjustment in the new Convention, and as this new Convention superseded

and extinguished the former one of 1890, those provisions for access to

the sea necessarily lapsed. The British government promptly availed

itself of the freedom its rivals had thus tendered to it, and with the

consent of the three chiefs (of Tonga race) who rule in the region

referred to, proclaimed a protectorate over the strip of land which lies

between Swaziland and the sea, as far north as the frontiers of

Portuguese territory. Thus the door has been finally closed on the

schemes which the Boers have so often sought to carry out for the

acquisition of a railway communication with the coast entirely under

their own control. It was an object unfavourable to the interests of the

paramount power, for it would not only have disturbed the commercial

relations of the interior with the British coast ports, but would also

have favoured the wish of the Boer government to establish political

ties with other European powers. The accomplishment of that design was

no doubt subjected by the London Convention of 1884 to the veto of

Britain. But in diplomacy facts as well as treaties have their force,

and a Power which has a seaport, and can fly a flag on the ocean, is in

a very different position from one cut off by intervening territories

from those whose support it is supposed to seek. Thus the establishment

of the protectorate over these petty Tonga chiefs may be justly deemed

one of the most important events in recent South African history.

Down to 1884 Great Britain and Portugal had been the only European

powers established in South Africa. For some time before that year there

had been German mission stations in parts of the region which lies

between the Orange River and the West African possessions of Portugal,

and in 1883 a Bremen merchant named Luederitz established a trading

factory at the bay of Angra Pequena, which lies on the Atlantic coast

about one hundred and fifty miles north of the mouth of that river, and

obtained from a neighbouring chief a cession of a piece of territory

there, which the German government a few months later recognized as a

German Colony. Five years earlier, in 1878, Walfish Bay, which lies

farther north, and is the best haven (or rather roadstead) on the coast,

had been annexed to Cape Colony; but though it was generally understood

both in the Colony and in England, that the whole of the west coast up

to the Portuguese boundary was in some vague way subject to British

influence, nothing had been done to claim any distinct right, much less

to perfect that right by occupation. The Colony had always declined or

omitted to vote money for the purpose, and the home government had not

cared to spend any. When the colonists knew that Germany was really

establishing herself as their neighbour on the north, they were much

annoyed; but it was now too late to resist, and in 1884, after a long

correspondence, not creditable to the foresight or promptitude of the

late Lord Derby, who was then Colonial Secretary, the protectorate of

Germany was formally recognized, while in 1890 the boundaries of the

German and British "spheres of influence" farther north were defined by

a formal agreement--the same agreement which settled the respective

"spheres of influence" of the two powers in Eastern Africa, between the

Zambesi and the upper Nile. Although the people of Cape Colony continue

to express their regret at having a great European power conterminous

with them on the north, there has been really little or no practical

contact between the Germans and the colonists, for while the northern

part of the Colony, lying along the lower course of the Orange River, is

so arid as to be very thinly peopled, the southern part of the German

territory, called Great Namaqualand, is a wilderness inhabited only by

wandering Hottentots (though parts of it are good pasture land), while,

to the east, Namaqualand is separated from the habitable parts of

British Bechuanaland by the great Kalahari Desert.

The new impulse for colonial expansion which had prompted the Germans to

occupy Damaraland and the Cameroons on the western, and the Zanzibar

coasts on the eastern, side of Africa was now telling on other European

powers, and made them all join in the scramble for Africa, a continent

which a few years before had been deemed worthless. Italy and France

entered the field in the north-east, France in the north-west; and

Britain, which had in earlier days moved with such slow and wavering

steps in the far south, was roused by the competition to a swifter

advance. Within nine years from the assumption of the protectorate over

British Bechuanaland, which the action of the Boers had brought about in

1885, the whole unappropriated country up to the Zambesi came under

British control.

In 1888 a treaty made with Lo Bengula extended the range of British

influence and claim not only over Matabililand proper, but over

Mashonaland and an undefined territory to the eastward, whereof Lo

Bengula claimed to be suzerain. Next came, in 1889, the grant of a royal

charter to a company, known as the British South Africa Company, which

had been formed to develop this eastern side of Lo Bengula's dominion,

and to work the gold mines believed to exist there, an undertaking

chiefly due to the bold and forceful spirit of Mr. Cecil Rhodes, who

perceived that if Britain did not speedily establish some right to the

country, the Transvaal Boers would trek in and acquire it. In 1890 the

pioneer British settlers moved up through Bechuanaland into Mashonaland,

and the Company, which, like the East India Company of the eighteenth

century, was to be a ruling and administering power as well as a trading

association, established itself along the eastern part of the great

plateau and began to build forts. Here it came into collision with the

Portuguese, who, stimulated by the activity of other nations, had been

re-asserting their dormant claims to the interior and sending up

expeditions to occupy the country. A skirmish which occurred near

Massikessi, in Manicaland, ended in the repulse of the Portuguese, and

the capture of their commanders, who were, however, soon after released

by Dr. Jameson, the newly appointed administrator of the Company; and

another conflict in May, 1891, in which the Portuguese again suffered

severely, hastened the conclusion of a treaty (June, 1891) between Great

Britain and Portugal, by which the boundary between the Portuguese

territories and those included in the British "sphere of influence" was

fixed. By this treaty a vast region in the interior which lies along the

Upper Zambesi west of Portuguese territory and south of the Congo Free

State was recognized by Portugal as within the British sphere. An

agreement of the preceding year between Germany and Great Britain (July

1, 1890) had defined the limits of German and British influence on the

east side of the continent; and as Germany, Portugal, and the Congo

State were the only civilized powers conterminous with Great Britain in

this part of the world, these treaties, together with the instrument--to

which Great Britain had been a party--that determined the limits of the

Congo State, settled finally all these questions of the interior, and

gave to Great Britain a legal title to her share of it.

That title, however, like the other titles by which the European powers

held their new African possessions, was a paper title, and valid only as

against other neighbouring European powers. It had nothing whatever to

do with the Kafir tribes who dwelt in the country. What are called the

rights of a civilized Power as against the natives rests in some cases

upon treaties made with the chiefs, treaties of whose effect the chiefs

are often ignorant, and in others on the mere will of the European power

which proclaims to the world that it claims the country; and it is held

that the Power which makes the claim must, at least in the latter class

of cases, perfect its claim by actual occupation. In the case of these

new British territories treaties were made with a certain number of

chiefs. One already existed with Lo Bengula, king of the Matabili; but

it merely bound him not to league himself with any other power, and did

not make him a British vassal. It was clear, however, that with so

restless and warlike a race as the Matabili this state of things could

not last long. Lo Bengula had been annoyed at the march of the pioneers

into Mashonaland, and tried to stop them, but was foiled by the

swiftness of their movements. Once they were established there he seems

to have desired to keep the peace; but his young warriors would not

suffer him to do so. They had been accustomed to go raiding among the

feeble and disunited Mashonas, whom they slaughtered and plundered to

their hearts' content. When they found that the Company resented these

attacks, collisions occurred, and the reluctance to fight which Lo

Bengula probably felt counted for little. What he could do he did: he

protected with scrupulous care not only the missionaries, but other

Europeans at his kraal, and, after the war had broken out, he sent

envoys to treat, two of whom, by a deplorable error, were killed by the

advancing column of Bechuanaland imperial police, for as the Company's

officers were not at the moment prepared, either in money or in men, for

a conflict, the imperial government sent a force northward from

Bechuanaland to co-operate with that which the Company had in

Mashonaland. A raid by Matabili warriors on the Mashonas living near

Fort Victoria, whom they called their slaves, precipitated hostilities

(July to October, 1893). The Matabili, whose vain confidence in their

own prowess led them to attack in the open when they ought to have

resorted to bush fighting, were defeated in two battles by the Company's

men. Lo Bengula fled towards the Zambesi and died there (January, 1894)

of fever and despair, as Shere Ali Khan had died when chased out of

Kabul by the British in 1878; while his indunas and the bulk of the

Matabili people submitted with little further resistance. Matabililand

was now occupied by the Company, which shortly afterwards took

possession of the northern part of its sphere of operations by running a

telegraph wire across the Zambesi and by placing officers on the shore

of Lake Tanganyika. In March, 1896, the Matabili and some of the Mashona

chiefs revolted, but after five months' fighting, in which many lives

were lost, peace was restored, and the subsequent construction of two

railways into the heart of the country of these tribes has given a

great, if not complete, security against a renewal of like troubles.[34]

By the establishment of the British South Africa Company to the north of

the Transvaal that State had now become inclosed in British territory on

every side except the east; nor could it advance to Delagoa Bay, because

Portugal was bound by the Arbitration Treaty of 1872 to allow Great

Britain a right of pre-emption over her territory there. Meantime new

forces had begun to work within the Republic. Between 1867 and 1872 gold

had been found in several places on the eastern side of the country, but

in quantities so small that no one attached much importance to the

discovery. After 1882, however, it began to be pretty largely worked. In

1885 the conglomerate or _banket_ beds of the Witwatersrand were

discovered,[35] and the influx of strangers, which had been considerable

from 1882 onward, increased immensely, till in 1895 the number of recent

immigrants, most of whom were adult males, had risen to a number

(roughly estimated at 100,000) largely exceeding that of the whole Boer

population. Although the first result of the working of the gold mines

and the growth of the towns had been to swell the revenues of the

previously impecunious Republic, President Kruger and the Boers

generally were alarmed at seeing a tide of aliens from the British

colonies and Europe and the United States, most of them British

subjects, and nearly all speaking English, rise up around and threaten

to submerge them. They proceeded to defend themselves by restricting the

electoral franchise, which had theretofore been easily acquirable by

immigrants. Laws were passed which, by excluding the newcomers, kept the

native Boer element in a safe majority; and even when in 1890 a

concession was made by the creation of a second Legislative Chamber,

based on a more extended franchise, its powers were carefully

restricted, and the election not only of the First Raad (the principal

Chamber), but also of the President and Executive Council, remained

confined to those who had full citizenship under the previous statutes.

Discontent spread among the new-comers, who complained both of their

exclusion from political rights and of various grievances which they and

the mining industry suffered at the hands of the government. A reform

association was formed in 1892. In 1894 the visit of the British High

Commissioner, who had come from the Cape to negotiate with the President

on Swaziland and other pending questions, led to a vehement pro-British

and anti-Boer demonstration at Pretoria, and thenceforward feeling ran

high at Johannesburg, the new centre of the Rand mining district and of

the immigrant population. Finally, in December, 1895, a rising took

place at Johannesburg, the circumstances attending which must be set

forth in the briefest way, for the uncontroverted facts are fresh in

every one's recollection, while an attempt to discuss the controverted

ones would lead me from the field of history into that of contemporary

politics.[36] It is enough to say while a large section of the

Uitlanders (as the new alien immigrants are called) in Johannesburg were

preparing to press their claims for reforms upon the government, and to

provide themselves with arms for that purpose, an outbreak was

precipitated by the entry into Transvaal territory from Pitsani in

Bechuanaland of a force of about five hundred men, mostly in the service

of the British South Africa Company as police, and led by the Company's

Administrator, with whom (and with Mr. Rhodes, the managing director of

the Company) a prior arrangement had been made by the reform leaders,

that in case of trouble at Johannesburg he should, if summoned, come to

the aid of the Uitlander movement. A question as to the flag under which

the movement was to be made caused a postponement of the day previously

fixed for making it. The leaders of the force at Pitsani, however,

became impatient, thinking that the Boer government was beginning to

suspect their intentions; and thus, though requested to remain quiet,

the force started on the evening of December 29. Had they been able, as

they expected, to get through without fighting, they might probably have

reached Johannesburg in three or four days' march, for the distance is

only 170 miles. But while the High Commissioner issued a proclamation

disavowing their action and ordering them to retire, they found

themselves opposed by the now rapidly gathering Boer levies, were

repulsed at Krugersdorp, and ultimately forced to surrender on the

forenoon of January 1, 1896, at a place called Doornkop. The

Johannesburg Uitlanders, who, though unprepared for any such sudden

movement, had risen in sympathy at the news of the inroad, laid down

their arms a few days later.[37]

I have given the bare outline of these latest events in South African

history for the sake of bringing the narrative down to the date when I

began to write. But as I was at Pretoria and Johannesburg immediately

before the rising of December 1895 took place, and had good

opportunities of seeing what forces were at work, and in what direction

the currents of opinion were setting, I propose to give in a subsequent

chapter (Chapter XXV) a somewhat fuller description of the state of

things in the Transvaal at the end of 1895, and to reserve for a still

later chapter some general reflections on the course of South African

history.

[Footnote 23: It has been stated (see Mr. Molteno's _Federal South

Africa_, p. 87) that Portugal was then prepared to sell her rights for a

small sum--according to report, for L12,000.]

[Footnote 24: In 1891 the southern boundary of Portuguese territory was

fixed by a treaty with Great Britain at a point on the coast named Kosi

Bay, about seventy miles south of Lourenco Marques.]

[Footnote 25: See especially the case of Brown _vs._ Leyds, decided in

January, 1897 by the High Court of the South African Republic. An

English translation of the Grondwet has been published by Mr. W. A.

Macfadyen of Pretoria, in a little volume entitled _The Political Laws

of the South African Republic_.]

[Footnote 26: Some extracts from the narrative, vindicating his conduct,

which he had prepared and which was published after his death (in 1882),

may be found in Mr. John Nixon's _Complete Story of the Transvaal_, an

interesting book, though written in a spirit far from judicial.]

[Footnote 27: Although there is some reason to think that if Sir T.

Shepstone had waited a few weeks or months, the Boers would have been

driven by their difficulties to ask to be annexed.]

[Footnote 28: See above, p. 120.]

[Footnote 29: A description of Majuba Hill will be found in Chapter

XVIII.]

[Footnote 30: The Convention of 1881 will be found in the Appendix to

this volume.]

[Footnote 31: Sir B. Frere reported after meeting the leaders of the

discontented Boers in April, 1879, that the agitation, though more

serious than he supposed, was largely "sentimental," and that the

quieter people were being coerced by the more violent into opposition.]

[Footnote 32: This Convention will be found in the Appendix to this

volume.]

[Footnote 33: Arguments on this question may be found in a Parliamentary

paper.]

[Footnote 34: See further as to this rising some remarks in Chapter XV.]

[Footnote 35: See Chapter XVIII. for an account of these beds.]

[Footnote 36: The salient facts may be found in the evidence taken by

the committee of inquiry appointed by the Cape Assembly in 1896. The

much more copious evidence taken by a Select Committee of the British

House of Commons in 1897 adds comparatively little of importance to what

the Cape Committee had ascertained.]

[Footnote 37: Of the many accounts of the incidents that led to this

rising which have appeared, the clearest I have met with is contained in

the book of M. Mermeix, _La Revolution de Johannesburg_. A simple and

graphic sketch has been given by an American lady (Mrs. J. H. Hammond),

in her little book entitled _A Woman's Part in a Revolution_.]

PART III

_A JOURNEY THROUGH SOUTH AFRICA_

CHAPTER XIII

TRAVELLING AND COMMUNICATIONS

There is nothing one more desires to know about a country, and

especially a new country, than how one can travel through it. There was

nothing about which, when contemplating a journey to South Africa, I

found it more difficult to get proper information in England; so I hope

that a few facts and hints will be useful to those who mean to make the

tour, while to others they may serve to give a notion of the conditions

which help or obstruct internal communication.

First, as to coast travel. There is no line of railway running along the

coast, partly because the towns are small, as well as few and far

between, partly because the physical difficulties of constructing a

railway across the ridges which run down to the sea are considerable,

but chiefly, no doubt, because the coasting steamers are able to do what

is needed. The large vessels of the Castle Line and the Union Line run

once a week between Cape Town and Durban (the port of Natal), calling at

Port Elizabeth and East London, sometimes also at Mossel Bay. Thus one

can find two opportunities every week of getting east or west in

powerful ocean steamers, besides such chances as smaller vessels,

designed for freight rather than for passengers, supply. From Durban

there is one weekly boat as far as Delagoa Bay, a voyage of about

twenty-four hours. From Delagoa Bay northward to Beira and Mozambique

the traveller must rely either on the steamers of the German East Africa

Line, which run from Hamburg through the Red Sea all the way to Durban

making the entire voyage in about seven weeks, or on Messrs. Rennie's

line, which ply from Durban to Delagoa Bay, Beira and Chinde. The

drawback to these coast voyages is that the sea is apt to be rough

between Cape Town and Durban, less frequently so between Durban and

Beira, and that there is no sheltered Port between Cape Town and Delagoa

Bay. At Port Elizabeth and at East London the large steamers lie out in

the ocean, and passengers reach the land by a small tender, into which

they are let down in a sort of basket, if there is a sea running, and

are occasionally, if the sea be very high, obliged to wait for a day or

more until the tender can take them off. Similar conditions have

prevailed at Durban, where a bar has hitherto prevented the big liners,

except under very favourable conditions of tide and weather, from

entering the otherwise excellent port. Much, however, has recently been

done to remove the Durban bar, and it is expected that the largest

steamers will soon be able to cross it at high tide. At Delagoa Bay the

harbour is spacious and sheltered, though the approach requires care and

is not well buoyed and lighted. At Beira the haven is still better, and

can be entered at all states of the tide. There is now a brisk goods

trade, both along the coast between the ports I have mentioned, and from

Europe to each of them.

Secondly, as to the railways. The railway system is a simple one. A

great trunk-line runs north-eastward from Cape Town to a place called De

Aar Junction, in the eastern part of the Colony. Here it bifurcates. One

branch runs first east and then north-north-east through the Orange Free

State and the Transvaal to Pretoria; the other runs north by east to

Kimberley and Mafeking, and thence through Bechuanaland to

Bulawayo.[38] The distance from Cape Town to Pretoria is ten hundred and

forty miles, and the journey takes (by the fastest train) fifty-two

hours. From Cape Town to Mafeking it is eight hundred and seventy-five

miles, the journey taking about fifty hours; and from Mafeking to

Bulawayo it is a little over five hundred more. From this trunk-line two

important branches run southward to the coast, one to Port Elizabeth,

the other to East London; and by these branches the goods landed at

those ports, and destined for Kimberley or Johannesburg, are sent up.

The passenger traffic on the branches is small, as people who want to go

from the Eastern towns to Cape Town usually take the less fatiguing as

well as cheaper sea voyage.

Three other lines of railway remain. One, opened in the end of 1895,

connects Durban with Pretoria and Johannesburg; another, opened in 1894,

runs from Delagoa Bay to Pretoria; a third, opened part of it in 1894

and the last part in 1899, connects Beira with Fort Salisbury, in the

territory of the British South Africa Company.[39]

Of these railways the trunk-line with its branches was constructed by

and is (except the parts which traverse the Orange Free State and the

Transvaal) owned by the government of Cape Colony. It has latterly paid

very well. The line from Durban to the Transvaal border at Charlestown

belongs to the Natal government, and is also a considerable source of

revenue. The rest of this line, from Charlestown northward through the

Transvaal, is the property of a Dutch company, which also owns the line

from Delagoa Bay to Pretoria and from Pretoria to the frontier of the

Free State. The Beira railway belongs to a company controlled by the

British South Africa Company, and is virtually a part of that great

undertaking.

All these railways, except the Beira line, have the same gauge, one of

three feet six inches. The Beira line has a two-foot gauge, but is now

(1899) being enlarged to the standard gauge. Throughout South Africa the

lines of railway are laid on steeper gradients than is usual in Europe:

one in forty is not uncommon, and on the Natal line it is sometimes one

in thirty, though this is being gradually reduced. Although the

accommodation at the minor stations is extremely simple, and sometimes

even primitive, the railways are well managed, and the cars are arranged

with a view to sleep on the night journeys; so that one can manage even

the long transit from Cape Town to Pretoria with no great fatigue.

Considering how very thinly peopled the country is, so that there is

practically no local passenger and very little local goods traffic, the

railway service is much better than could have been expected, and does

great credit to the enterprise of the people.

Railways have made an enormous difference, not to travel only, but to

trade and to politics; for before the construction of the great

trunk-line (which was not opened to Pretoria till 1892) the only means

of conveyance was the ox-waggon. The ox-waggon needs a few words of

description, for it is the most characteristic feature of South African

travel. It is a long low structure, drawn by seven, eight, nine, or even

ten yoke of oxen, and is surmounted (when intended to carry travellers)

by a convex wooden frame and canvas roof. The animals are harnessed by a

strong and heavy chain attached to the yoke which holds each pair

together. The oxen usually accomplish about twelve miles a day, but can

be made to do sixteen, or with pressure a little more. They walk very

slowly, and they are allowed to rest and feed more hours than those

during which they travel. The rest-time is usually the forenoon and

till about four P.M. with another rest for part of the night. It was in

these waggons that the Boers carried with them their wives and children

and household goods in the great exodus of 1836. It was in such waggons

that nearly all the explorations of South Africa have been made, such as

those by the missionaries, and particularly by Robert Moffat and by

Livingstone (in his earlier journeys), and such as those of the hunting

pioneers, men like Anderson, Gordon-Cumming, and Selous. And to this day

it is on the waggon that whoever traverses any unfrequented region must

rely. Horses, and even mules, soon break down; and as the traveller must

carry his food and other necessaries of camp life with him, he always

needs the waggon as a basis of operations, even if he has a seasoned

horse which he can use for two or three days when speed is required.

Waggons have, moreover, another value for a large party; they can be

readily formed into a laager, or camp, by being drawn into a circle,

with the oxen placed inside and so kept safe from the attacks of wild

beasts. And where there are hostile Kafirs to be feared, such a laager

is an efficient fortress, from within which a few determined marksmen

have often successfully resisted the onslaught of hordes of natives. An

immense trade has been carried on by means of ox-waggons between the

points where the railways end and the new settlements in Matabililand

and Mashonaland. When I passed from Mafeking to Bulawayo in October,

1895, thousands of oxen were drawing hundreds of waggons along the track

between those towns. When, a month later, I travelled from Fort

Salisbury to Chimoyo, then the terminus of the Beira line, I passed

countless waggons standing idle along the track, because owing to the

locusts and the drought which had destroyed most of the grass, the oxen

had either died or grown too lean and feeble to be able to drag the

loads. Hence the cattle-plague which in 1896 carried off the larger part

of the transport-oxen was a terrible misfortune, not only to the

natives who owned these animals, but also to the whole northern region,

which largely depends upon cattle transport for its food, its comforts,

its building materials, and its mine machinery.

It is the character of the country that has permitted the waggon to

become so important a factor in South African exploration, politics, and

commerce. The interior, though high, is not generally rugged. Much of

it--indeed, all the eastern and northern parts--is a vast rolling plain,

across which wheeled vehicles can pass with no greater difficulty than

the beds of the streams, sometimes deeply cut through soft ground,

present. The ranges of hills which occur here and there are generally

traversed by passes, which, though stony, are not steep enough to be

impracticable. Over most of the southern half of the plateau there is no

wood, and where forests occur the trees seldom grow thick together, and

the brushwood is so dry and small that it can soon be cut away to make a

passage. Had South Africa been thickly wooded, like the eastern parts of

North America or some parts of Australia, waggon-travelling would have

been difficult or impossible; but most of it is, like the country

between the Missouri River and the Great Salt Lake, a dry open country,

where the waggon can be made a true ship of the desert. This explains

the fact, so surprising to most European readers of African travel and

adventure, that wherever man can walk or ride he can take his moving

home with him.

For rapid transit, however, the traveller who has passed beyond the

railway is now not wholly dependent on the ox. Coaches, drawn sometimes

by mules, sometimes by horses, run from some points on the railways to

outlying settlements; they are, however, always uncomfortable and not

always safe. They travel night and day, usually accomplishing from six

to eight miles an hour on good ground, but much less where the surface

is sandy or rugged. In the north and north-east of Cape Colony and in

the Transvaal, as well as in Matabililand, horses are very little used

either for riding or for driving, owing to the prevalence of a disease

called horse-sickness, which attacks nearly every animal, and from which

only about a quarter recover. This is one reason why so little

exploration has been done on horseback; and it is a point to be noted by

those who desire to travel in the country, and who naturally think of

the mode by which people used to make journeys in Europe, and by which

they make journeys still in large parts of South and of North America,

as well as in Western Asia.

I have spoken of the "tracks" used by waggons and coaches; the reader

must not suppose that these tracks are roads. There are few made roads

in South Africa, except in the neighbourhood of Cape Town, Durban,

Maritzburg, Graham's Town, and one or two other towns. Those in Natal

are among the best. Neither are there (except as aforesaid) any bridges,

save here and there rude ones of logs thrown across a stream bed.

Elsewhere the track is merely a line across the veldt (prairie), marked

and sometimes cut deep by the wheels of many waggons, where all that man

has done has been to remove the trees or bushes. Here and there the

edges of the steep stream banks have been cut down so as to allow a

vehicle to descend more easily to the bottom, where during the rains the

stream flows, and where during the rest of the year the ground is sandy

or muddy. After heavy rain a stream is sometimes impassable for days

together, and the waggons have to wait on the bank till the torrent

subsides. At all times these water channels are troublesome, for the

oxen or mules are apt to jib or get out of hand in descending the steep

slope, and it is no easy matter to get them urged up the steep slope on

the other side. Accidents often occur, and altogether it may be said

that the _dongas_--this is the name given to these hollow stream

channels--form the most exciting feature of South African travel (in

places where wild beasts and natives are no longer dangerous) and afford

the greatest scope for the skill of the South African driver.

Skilful he must be, for he never drives less than six span of oxen, and

seldom less than three pairs of horses or mules (the Bulawayo coach had,

in 1895, five pairs). It takes two men to drive. One wields an immensely

long whip, while the other holds the reins. Both incessantly

apostrophise the animals. It is chiefly with the whip that the team is

driven; but if the team is one of mules, one of the two drivers is for a

large part of the time on his feet, running alongside the beasts,

beating them with a short whip and shouting to them by their names, with

such adjectives, expletives, and other objurgations as he can command.

Many Dutchmen do drive wonderfully well.

I have said nothing of internal water travel by river or lake, because

none exists. There are no lakes, and there is not a river with water

enough to float the smallest steamboat, except some reaches of the

Limpopo River in the wet season. The only steamer that plies anywhere on

a river is that which ascends the Pungwe River from Beira to

Fontesvilla; it goes only as far as the tide goes, and on most of its

trips spends fully half its time sticking on the sand-banks with which

the Pungwe abounds. So far as I know, no one has ever proposed to make a

canal in any part of the country.

From what has been said it will be gathered that there is no country

where railways are and will be more needed than South Africa. They are

the chief need of the newly settled districts, and the best means, next

to a wise and conciliatory administration, of preventing fresh native

outbreaks. Unfortunately, they will for a great while have no local

traffic, because most of the country they pass through has not one white

inhabitant to the square mile. Their function is to connect the coast

with the distant mining centres, in which population has begun to grow.

To lay them is, however, comparatively cheap work. Except in the

immediate neighbourhood of a town, nothing has to be paid for the land.

The gradients all through the interior plateau are comparatively easy,

and the engineers have in Africa cared less for making their ascents

gentle than we do in older countries. Even in the hilly parts of the

Transvaal and Matabililand the ranges are not high or steep, and one can

turn a kopje instead of cutting or tunnelling through it. Few bridges

are needed, because there are few rivers.

A word as to another point on which any one planning a tour to South

Africa may be curious--the accommodation obtainable. Most travellers

have given the inns a bad name. My own experience is scanty, for we were

so often the recipient of private hospitality as to have occasion to

sleep in an inn (apart from the "stores" of Bechuanaland and

Mashonaland, of which more hereafter) in four places only, Mafeking,

Ladybrand, Durban, and Bloemfontein. But it seemed to us that,

considering the newness of the country and the difficulty in many places

of furnishing a house well and of securing provisions, the entertainment

was quite tolerable, sometimes much better than one had expected. In the

two Colonies, and the chief places of the two Republics, clean beds and

enough to eat can always be had; in the largest places there is nothing

to complain of, though the prices are sometimes high. Luxuries are

unprocurable, but no sensible man will go to a new country expecting

luxuries.

[Footnote 38: At the time of my visit it went no further than Mafeking.]

[Footnote 39: There is also a line of railway from Port Elizabeth to

Graaf-Reinet, some short branch lines near Cape Town, and a small line

from Graham's Town to the coast at Port Alfred.]

CHAPTER XIV

FROM CAPE TOWN TO BULAWAYO

In this and the four following chapters I propose to give some account

of the country through which the traveller passes on his way from the

coast to the points which are the natural goals of a South African

journey, Kimberley and Johannesburg, Bulawayo and Fort Salisbury, hoping

thereby to convey a more lively impression of the aspects of the land

and its inhabitants than general descriptions can give, and incidentally

to find opportunities for touching upon some of the questions on which

the future of the country will turn.

First, a few words about the voyage. You can go to South Africa either

by one of the great British lines across the Atlantic to the ports of

Cape Colony and Natal, or by the German line through the Red Sea and

along the East African coast to Beira or Delagoa Bay. The steamers of

the German line take thirty days from Port Said to Beira, and two days

more to Delagoa Bay. They are good boats, though much smaller than those

of the two chief English lines to the Cape (the Castle and the Union),

and the voyage from Port Said has the advantage of being, at most times

of the year, a smooth one pretty nearly the whole way. They touch at

Aden, Zanzibar, Dar-es-Salaam, and Quilimane, and give an opportunity of

seeing those places. But all along the East African coast the heat is

excessive--a damp, depressing heat. And the whole time required to reach

Beira from England, even if one travels by rail from Calais to

Marseilles, Brindisi, or Naples, and takes a British steamer thence to

Port Said, joining the German boat at the latter port, is more than five

weeks. Nearly everybody, therefore, chooses the Atlantic route from

Southampton or London to the Cape. The Atlantic voyage, which lasts from

sixteen to twenty days, is, on the whole, a pleasant and healthful one.

The steamers, both those of the Castle Line and those of the Union

Line--and the same may be said for the New Zealand Line and the Aberdeen

Line which plies to Australia, both of these touching at the Cape--are

comfortable and well appointed, and I cannot imagine any navigation more

scrupulously careful than that which I saw on board the _Hawarden

Castle_, by which I went out and returned. During the winter and spring

months there is often pretty rough weather from England as far as

Madeira. But from that island onward, or at any rate from the Canaries

onward, one has usually a fairly smooth sea with moderate breezes till

within two or three days of Cape Town, when head winds are frequently

encountered. Nor is the heat excessive. Except during the two days

between Cape Verde and the equator, it is never more than what one can

enjoy during the day and tolerate during the night. One sees land only

at Madeira, where the steamer coals for a few hours; at the picturesque

Canary Islands, between which she passes, gaining, if the weather be

clear, a superb view of the magnificent Peak of Teneriffe; and at Cape

Verde, where she runs (in the daytime) within a few miles of the African

coast. Those who enjoy the colours of the sea and of the sea skies, and

to whom the absence of letters, telegrams, and newspapers is welcome,

will find few more agreeable ways of passing a fortnight. After Cape

Finisterre very few vessels are seen. After Madeira every night reveals

new stars rising from the ocean as our own begin to vanish.

Tutte le stolle gia dell' altro polo

Vedea la notte, e il nostro tanto basso

Che non sorgeva fuor del marin suolo,[40]

as Ulysses says, in Dante's poem, of his voyage to the southern

hemisphere. The pleasure of watching unfamiliar constellations rise from

the east and sweep across the sky, is a keen one, which often kept us

late from sleep.

For a few hours only before reaching Cape Town does one discern on the

eastern horizon the stern grey mountains that rise along the barren

coast. A nobler site for a city and a naval stronghold than that of the

capital of South Africa can hardly be imagined. It rivals Gibraltar and

Constantinople, Bombay and San Francisco. Immediately behind the town,

which lies along the sea, the majestic mass of Table Mountain rises to a

height of 3600 feet, a steep and partly wooded slope capped by a long

line of sheer sandstone precipices more than 1000 feet high, and flanked

to right and left by bold, isolated peaks. The beautiful sweep of the

bay in front, the towering crags behind, and the romantic pinnacles

which rise on either side, make a landscape that no one who has seen it

can forget. The town itself is disappointing. It has preserved very

little of its old Dutch character. The miniature canals which once

traversed it are gone. The streets, except two, are rather narrow, and

bordered by low houses; nor is there much to admire in the buildings,

except the handsome Parliament House, the new post office, and the

offices of the Standard Bank. The immediate suburbs, inhabited chiefly

by Malays and other coloured people, are mean. But the neighbourhood is

extremely attractive. To the north-west Table Mountain and its spurs

descend steeply to the sea, and the road which runs along the beach past

the village of Sea Point offers a long series of striking views of shore

and crag. It is on the east, however, that the most beautiful spots lie.

Five miles from Cape Town and connected with it by railway, the village

of Rondebosch nestles under the angle of Table Mountain, and a mile

farther along the line is the little town of Wynberg. Round these

places, or between them and Cape Town, nearly all the richer, and a

great many even of the poorer, white people of Cape Town live. The roads

are bordered by pretty villas, whose grounds, concealed by no walls, are

filled with magnolias and other flowering trees and shrubs. Avenues of

tall pines or of superb oaks, planted by the Dutch in the last century,

run here and there along the by-roads. Immediately above, the grey

precipices of Table Mountain tower into the air, while in the opposite

direction a break in the woods shows in the far distance the sharp

summits, snow-tipped during the winter months, of the lofty range of the

Hottentots Holland Mountains. It would be hard to find anywhere, even in

Italy or the Pyrenees, more exquisite combinations of soft and

cultivated landscape with grand mountain forms than this part of the

Cape peninsula presents. Perhaps the most charming nook of all is where

the quaint old Dutch farmhouse of Groot Constantia[41] stands among its

vineyards, about ten miles from Cape Town. Behind it is the range which

connects the hills of Simon's Bay with Table Mountain; its declivities

are at this point covered with the graceful silver-tree, whose

glistening foliage shines brighter than that of the European olive.

Beneath the farmhouse are the vineyards which produce the famous sweet

wine that bears the name of Constantia, sloping gently towards the

waters of False Bay, whose farther side is guarded by a wall of

frowning peaks, while the deep blue misty ocean opens in the distance.

It is a landscape unlike anything one can see in Europe, and though the

light in sea and sky is brilliant, the brilliance is on this coast soft

and mellow, unlike the clear sharp radiance of the arid interior.