Lerothodi, the Paramount Chief, is the son of Letsie and grandson of

Moshesh, and now ranks with Khama as the most important native potentate

south of the Zambesi. He is a strong, thickset man, who looks about

fifty years of age, and is not wanting either in intelligence or in

firmness. He was dressed in a grey shooting-coat and trousers of grey

cloth, with a neat new black, low-crowned hat, and received the Deputy

Acting Commissioner and ourselves in a stone house which he has recently

built as a sort of council-chamber and reception-room for white

visitors. Hard by, another house, also of stone, was being erected to

lodge such visitors, and over its doorway a native sculptor had carved

the figure of a crocodile, the totem of the Basutos. When a chief sits

to administer justice among the tribesmen, as he does on most mornings,

he always sits in the open air, a little way from his sleeping-huts. We

found a crowd of natives gathered at the levee, whom Lerothodi quitted

to lead us into the reception-room. He was accompanied by six or seven

magnates and counsellors,--one of the most trusted counsellors (a

Christian) was not a person of rank, but owed his influence to his

character and talents,--and among these one spoke English and

interpreted to us the compliments which Lerothodi delivered, together

with his assurances of friendship and respect for the Protecting Power,

while we responded with phrases of similar friendliness. The

counsellors, listening with profound and impressive gravity, echoed the

sentences of the chief with a chorus of "ehs," a sound which it is hard

to reproduce by letters, for it is a long, slow, deep expiration of the

breath in a sort of singing tune. The Kafirs constantly use it to

express assent and appreciation, and manage to throw a great deal of

apparent feeling into it. Presently some of them spoke, one in pretty

good English, dilating on the wish of the Basuto[67] tribe to be guided

in the path of prosperity by the British Government. Then Lerothodi led

us out and showed us, with some pride, the new guest-house he was

building, and the huts inhabited by his wives, all scrupulously neat.

Each hut stands in an enclosure surrounded by a tall fence of reeds, and

the floors of red clay were perfectly hard, smooth, and spotlessly

clean. The news of the reception accorded shortly before (in London) to

Khama had kindled in him a desire to visit England, but his hints thrown

out to that effect were met by the Commissioner's remark that Khama's

total abstinence and general hostility to the use of intoxicants had

been a main cause for the welcome given him, and that if other chiefs

desired like treatment in England they had better emulate Khama. This

shot went home.

From the chief's kraal we had a delightful ride of some twenty miles to

a spot near the foot of the high mountains, where we camped for the

night. The track leads along the base of the Maluti range, sometimes

over a rolling table-land, sometimes over hills and down through

valleys, all either cultivated or covered with fresh close grass. The

Malutis consist of beds of sandstone and shale, overlaid by an outflow

of igneous rock from two to five thousand feet thick. They rise very

steeply, sometimes breaking into long lines of dark brown precipice, and

the crest seldom sinks lower than 7000 feet. Behind them to the

south-east are the waterfalls, one of which, 630 feet high, is described

as the grandest cascade in Africa south of the Zambesi. It was only two

days' journey away, but unfortunately we had not time to visit it.

The country we were traversing beneath the mountains was full of beauty,

so graceful were the slopes and rolls of the hills, so bright the green

of the pastures; while the sky, this being the rainy season, had a soft

tone like that of England, and was flecked with white clouds sailing

across the blue. It was also a prosperous-looking country, for the rich

soil supported many villages, and many natives, men as well as women,

were to be seen at work in the fields as we rode by. Except where

streams have cut deeply into the soft earth, one gets about easily on

horseback, for there are no woods save a little scrub clinging to the

sides of the steeper glens. We were told that the goats eat off the

young trees, and that the natives have used the older ones for fuel. In

the afternoon we passed St. Michael's, the seat of a flourishing Roman

Catholic mission, and took our way up the steep and stony track of a

kloof (ravine) which led to a plateau some 6000 feet or more above

sea-level. The soil of this plateau is a deep red loam, formed by the

decomposition of the trap rock, and is of exceptional fertility, like

the decomposed traps of Oregon and the Deccan. Here we pitched our tent,

and found our liberal supply of blankets none too liberal, for the air

was keen, and the difference between day and night temperature is great

in these latitudes. Next morning, starting soon after dawn, we rode

across the deep-cut beds of streams and over breezy pastures for some

six or seven miles, to the base of the main Maluti range, and after a

second breakfast prepared for the ascent of the great summit, which we

had been admiring for two days as it towered over the long line of peaks

or peered alone from the mists which often enveloped the rest of the

range. It is called Machacha, and is a conspicuous object from Ladybrand

and the Free State uplands nearly as far as Thaba 'Ntshu. Our route lay

up a grassy hollow so steep that we had thought our friend, the

Commissioner, must be jesting when he pointed up it and told us that was

the way we had to ride. For a pedestrian it was a piece of hand and foot

climbing, and seemed quite impracticable for horses. But up the horses

went. They are a wonderful breed, these little Basuto nags. This region

is the part of South Africa where the horse seems most thoroughly at

home and happy, and is almost the only part where the natives breed and

ride him. Sixty years ago there was not a horse in the country--the

animal, it need hardly be said, is not a native of South Africa. But in

1852, the Basutos had plenty of ponies, and used them in the short

campaign of that year with extraordinary effect. They are small, seldom

exceeding twelve hands in height, a little larger than the ponies of

Iceland, very hardy, and wonderfully clever on hills, able not only to

mount a slope whose angle is 30 deg. to 35 deg., but to keep their footing when

ridden horizontally along it. A rider new to the country finds it hard

not to slip off over the tail when the animal is ascending, or over the

head when he is descending.

The hollow brought us to a col fully 7500 feet above the sea, from which

we descended some way into a valley behind, and then rode for three or

four miles along the steep sides, gradually mounting, and having below

us on the right a deep glen, covered everywhere with rich grass, and

from the depths of which the murmur of a rushing stream, a sound rare in

South Africa, rose up softly through the still, clear air. At length we

reached the mountain crest, followed it for a space, and then, to avoid

the crags along the crest, guided our horses across the extremely steep

declivities by which it sinks to the east, till we came to a pass

between precipices, with a sharp rock towering up in the middle of the

pass and a glen falling abruptly to the west. Beyond this point--8500

feet or so above sea-level--the slopes were too steep even for the

Basuto horses, and we therefore left them in charge of one of our Kafir

attendants. A more rich and varied alpine flora than that which clothed

the pastures all round I have seldom seen. The flowers had those

brilliant hues that belong to the plants of our high European mountains,

and they grew in marvellous profusion. They were mostly of the same

genera as one finds in the Alps or the Pyrenees, but all or nearly all

of different species; and among those I found several, particularly two

beautiful _Gerania_, which the authorities at Kew have since told me are

new to science. It was interesting to come here upon two kinds of

heath--the first we had seen since quitting the Cape peninsula, for,

rich as that peninsula is in heaths, there are very few to be found in

other parts of South Africa, and those only, I think, upon high

mountains.

After a short rest we started for the final climb, first up a steep

acclivity, covered with low shrubs and stones, and then across a wide

hollow, where several springs of deliciously cold water break out. Less

than an hour's easy work brought us to the highest point of a ridge

which fell northward in a precipice, and our Kafirs declared that this

was the summit of Machacha. But right in front of us, not half a mile

away, on the other side of a deep semi-circular gulf,--what is called in

Scotland a _corrie_,--a huge black cliff reared its head 400 feet above

us, and above everything else in sight. This was evidently the true top

and must be ascended. The Kafirs, perhaps thinking they had done enough

for one day, protested that it was inaccessible. "Nonsense," we

answered; "that is where we are going;" and when we started off at full

speed they followed. Keeping along the crest for about half a mile to

the eastward--it is an arete which breaks down to the corrie in

tremendous precipices, but slopes more gently to the south--we came to

the base of the black cliff, and presently discovered a way by which,

climbing hither and thither through the crags, we reached the summit,

and saw an immense landscape unroll itself before us. It was one of

those views which have the charm, so often absent from mountain

panoramas, of combining a wide stretch of plain in one direction with a

tossing sea of mountain-peaks in another. To the north-east and east and

south-east, one saw nothing but mountains, some of them, especially in

the far north-east, toward Natal, apparently as lofty as that on which

we stood, and many of them built on bold and noble lines. To the

south-east, where are the great waterfalls which are one of the glories

of Basutoland, the general height was less, but a few peaks seemed to

reach 10,000 feet. At our feet, to the west and south-west, lay the

smiling corn-fields and pastures we had traversed the day before, and

beyond them the rich and populous valley of the Caledon River, and

beyond it, again, the rolling uplands of the Orange Free State, with the

peak of Thaba 'Ntshu just visible, and still farther a blue ridge, faint

in the extreme distance, that seemed to lie on the other side of

Bloemfontein, nearly one hundred miles away. The sky was bright above

us, but thunderstorms hung over the plains of the Free State behind

Ladybrand, and now and then one caught a forked tongue of light flashing

from among them. It was a magnificent landscape, whose bareness--for

there is scarcely a tree upon these slopes--was more than compensated by

the brilliance of the light and the clearness of the air, which made the

contrast between the sunlit valley of the Caledon and the solemn shadows

under the thunder-clouds more striking, and the tone of the distant

ranges more deep and rich in colour, than in any similar prospect one

could recall from the mountain watch-towers of Europe. Nor was the

element of historical interest wanting. Fifteen miles away, but seeming

to lie almost at our feet, was the flat-topped hill of Thaba Bosiyo, the

oft-besieged stronghold of Moshesh, and beyond it the broad table-land

of Berea, where the Basutos fought, and almost overcame, the forces of

Sir George Cathcart in that war of 1852 which was so fateful both to

Basutoland and to the Free State.

Less than a mile from the peak on which we sat, we could descry, in the

precipice which surrounds the great corrie, the black mouth of a cave.

It was the den of the cannibal chief Machacha, whose name has clung to

the mountain, and who established himself there seventy years ago, when

the ravages of Tshaka, the Zulu king, had driven the Kafir tribes of

Natal to seek safety in flight, and reduced some among them, for want of

other food, to take to human flesh. Before that time this mountain-land

had been inhabited only by wandering Bushmen, who have left marks of

their presence in pictures on the rocks. Here and there among the crags

jabbering baboons darted about, and great hawks sailed in circles above

us. Otherwise we had seen no living wild creature since we left the

pastures of the valley.

The summit of Machacha is composed of a dark igneous rock, apparently a

sort of amygdaloidal trap, with white and greenish calcareous crystals

scattered through it. The height is given on the maps as 11,000 feet;

but so far as one could judge by frequent observations from below and by

calculations made during the ascent, I should think it not more than

10,500. It seems to be the culminating point of the Maluti range, but

may be exceeded in height by Mont aux Sources, eighty miles off to the

north-east, where Basutoland touches Natal on the one side and the Free

State on the other.

Descending by a somewhat more direct route, which we struck out for

ourselves, we rejoined our horses at the pass where we had left them

three hours before, and from there plunged down the kloof, or ravine,

between the precipices which led to the foot of the mountain. It was

here too steep to ride; indeed, it was about as steep a slope as one can

descend on foot with comfort, the angle being in some places fully 40 deg. A

grand piece of scenery, for the dark rock walls rose menacing on either

hand; and also a beautiful one, for the flowers, especially two

brilliant shrubby geraniums, were profuse and gorgeous in hue. At the

bottom, after a very rough scramble, we mounted our horses, and hastened

along to escape the thunderstorm which was now nearly upon us, and which

presently drove us for shelter into a native hut, where a Basuto woman,

with her infant hanging in a cloth on her back, was grinding corn

between two stones. She went on with her work, and presently addressed

my wife, asking (as was explained to us) for a piece of soap wherewith

to smear her face, presumably as a more fragrant substitute for the clay

or ochre with which the Basuto ladies cover their bodies. The hut was

clean and sweet, and, indeed, all through Basutoland we were struck by

the neat finish of the dwellings and of the reed fences which inclosed

them. When the storm had passed away over the mountains, "growling and

muttering into other lands," and the vast horizon was again flooded with

evening sunshine, we rode swiftly away, first over the rolling plateau

we had traversed in the forenoon, then turning to the north along the

top of the sandstone cliffs that inclose the valley of the Kaloe River,

where Bushman pictures adorn the caves. At last as night fell, we

dropped into the valley of the Kaloe itself, and so slowly through the

darkness, for the horses were tired, and the track (which crosses the

river four times) was rough and stony, came at last to the mission

station of Thaba Bosiyo. Here we were welcomed by the Swiss pastor in

charge of the mission, Mr. E. Jacottet, whose collection of Basuto and

Barotse popular tales have made him well known to the students of

folk-lore. No man knows the Basutos better than he and his colleague,

Mr. Dyke of Morija; and what they told us was of the highest interest.

Next day was Sunday, and gave us the opportunity of seeing a large

congregation of Basuto converts and of hearing their singing, the

excellence of which reminded us of the singing of negro congregations in

the Southern States of America. We had also two interesting visits. One

was from an elderly Basuto magnate of the neighbourhood, who was

extremely anxious to know if Queen Victoria really existed, or was a

mere figment of the British Government. He had met many white men, he

told us, but none of them had ever set eyes on the Queen, and he could

not imagine how it was possible that a great chieftainess should not be

seen by her people. We satisfied his curiosity by giving full details of

the times, places, and manner in which the British sovereign receives

her subjects, and he went away, declaring himself convinced and more

loyal than ever. The second visitor was a lady who had come to attend

church. She is the senior wife of a chief named Thekho, a son of

Moshesh. She impressed us as a person of great force of character and

great conversational gifts, was dressed in a fashionable hat and an

enormous black velvet mantle, and plied us with numerous questions

regarding the Queen, her family, and her government. She lives on the

hill among her dependents, exerts great influence, and has done good

service in resisting the reactionary tendencies of her brother-in-law

Masupha, a dogged and turbulent old pagan.

The mission station lies at the foot of the hill of Thaba Bosiyo, in a

singular region where crags of white or grey sandstone, detached from

the main mass of the tabular hills, stand up in solitary shafts and

pinnacles, and give a weird, uncanny look to the landscape. The soil is

fertile and well cultivated, but being alluvial, it is intersected in

all directions by the channels of streams, which have dug so deep into

it that much good land is every year lost by the mischief the streams

work when in flood. The sides of these channels are usually vertical,

and often eight, ten, or even twelve feet high, so that they offer a

serious obstacle to travellers either by waggon or on horseback. The

hill itself is so peculiar in structure, and has played such a part in

history, as to deserve some words of description. It is nearly two miles

long and less than a mile across, elliptical in form, rising about five

hundred feet above its base, and breaking down on every side in a line

of cliffs, which, on the north-west and north side (toward the mission

station), are from twenty to forty feet high. On the other side, which I

could not so carefully examine, they are apparently higher. These cliffs

are so continuous all round as to leave--so one is told--only three

spots in the circumference where they can be climbed; and although I

noticed one or two other places where a nimble cragsman might make his

way up, it is at those three points only that an attack by a number of

men could possibly be made. The easiest point is where a dyke of igneous

rock, thirty feet wide, strikes up the face of the hill from the

north-north-west, cutting through the sandstone precipice. The

decomposition of this dyke has opened a practicable path, from fifteen

to twenty-five feet in width, to the top. The top is a large grassy

flat, with springs of water and plenty of good pasture.

It was this natural fortress that the Basuto chief Mosheshwe, or, as he

is usually called, Moshesh, chose for his dwelling and the stronghold of

his tribe, in A.D. 1824. The conquests of the ferocious Tshaka had

driven thousands of Kafirs from their homes in Natal and on both sides

of the Vaal River. Clans had been scattered, and the old dynasties

rooted out or bereft of their influence and power. In the midst of this

confusion, a young man, the younger son of a chief of no high lineage,

and belonging to a small tribe, gathered around him a number of minor

clans and fugitives from various quarters, and by his policy--astute,

firm and tenacious--built them up into what soon became a powerful

nation. Moving hither and hither along the foot of the great Maluti

range, his skilful eye fixed on Thaba Bosiyo as a place fit to be the

headquarters of the nation. There was good land all round, the

approaches could be easily watched, and the hill itself, made almost

impregnable by nature, supplied pasture for the cattle as well as

perennial water. By tactfully conciliating the formidable tribes and

boldly raiding the weaker ones, Moshesh rapidly acquired wealth (that is

to say, cattle), strength and reputation, so that in 1836, when the

emigrant Boers moved up into what is now the Free State, he was already

the second power north of the mountains, inferior only to the terrible

Mosilikatze. The latter on one occasion (in 1831) had sent a strong

force of Matabili against him. Moshesh retired into his hill, which he

defended by rolling down stones on the assailants; and when the invaders

were presently obliged to retreat for want of food, he sent supplies to

them on their way back, declaring his desire to be at peace with all

men. The Matabili never attacked him again. In 1833 he intimated to the

missionaries of the Paris Evangelical Society his willingness to receive

them, planted them at Morija, and gave them afterwards their present

station at the foot of Thaba Bosiyo, his own village being, of course,

on the top. Their counsels were of infinite value to him in the

troublous times that followed, and he repaid them by constant protection

and encouragement. But though he listened, like so many Kafir chiefs, to

sermons, enjoyed the society of his French friends, and was himself fond

of quoting Scripture, he never became a Christian and was even thought

to have, like Solomon, fallen in his old age somewhat more under heathen

influences. Many were the wars he had to sustain with the native tribes

who lived round him, as well as with the white settlers in the Orange

River territory to the north, and many the escapes from danger which his

crafty and versatile policy secured. Two of these wars deserve special

mention, for both are connected with the place I am describing. In

December, 1852, Sir George Cathcart, then Governor of Cape Colony,

crossed the Caledon River a little above Maseru and led a force of two

thousand British infantry and five hundred cavalry, besides artillery,

against the Basutos. One of the three divisions in which the army moved

was led into an ambush, severely handled by the nimble Basuto horsemen,

and obliged to retreat. The division which Sir George himself led found

itself confronted, when it reached the foot of Thaba Bosiyo, by a body

of Basutos so numerous and active that it had great difficulty in

holding its ground, and might have been destroyed but for the timely

arrival of the third division just before sunset. The British general

intrenched himself for the night in a strong position; and next morning,

realizing at length the difficulties of his enterprise, set out to

retire to the Caledon River. Before he reached it, however, a message

from Moshesh overtook him. That wary chief, who knew the real strength

of the British better than did his people, had been driven into the war

by their over-confidence and their reluctance to pay the cattle fine

which the Governor had demanded. Now that there was a chance of getting

out of it he resolved to seize that chance, and after a consultation

with one of the French missionaries, begged Sir George Cathcart for

peace, acknowledging himself to be the weaker party, and declaring that

he would do his best to keep his tribesmen in order. The Governor, glad

to be thus relieved of what might have proved a long and troublesome

war, accepted these overtures. The British army was marched back to Cape

Colony, and Moshesh thereafter enjoyed the fame of being the only native

potentate who had come out of a struggle with Great Britain virtually if

not formally the victor.

But a still severer ordeal was in store for the virgin fortress and its

lord. After much indecisive strife, the whites and the Basutos were, in

1865, again engaged in a serious war. The people of what had then become

(see Chapter XI) the Orange Free State had found the Basutos troublesome

neighbours, and a dispute had arisen regarding the frontier line. The

Free State militia, well practised in native warfare, invaded

Basutoland, reduced many of the native strongholds and besieged Thaba

Bosiyo. A storming party advanced to carry the hill by assault, mounting

the steep open acclivity to the passage which is opened (as already

mentioned) by the greenstone dyke as it cuts its way through the line of

sandstone cliff. They had driven the Basutos before them, and had

reached a point where the path leads up a narrow cleft formed by the

decomposition of the dyke, between walls of rock some twenty feet high.

Thirty yards more would have brought them to the open top of the hill,

and Moshesh would have been at their mercy. But at this moment a bullet

from one of the few muskets which the defenders possessed, fired by a

good marksman from the rock above the cleft, pierced Wepener, the leader

of the assailants. The storming party halted, hesitated, fell back to

the bottom of the hill, and the place was once more saved. Not long

after, Moshesh, finding himself likely to be overmastered, besought the

Imperial Government, which had always regarded him with favour since the

conclusion of Sir George Cathcart's war, to receive him and his people

"and let them live under the large folds of the flag of England." The

High Commissioner intervened, declaring the Basutos to be thenceforward

British subjects, and in 1869 a peace was concluded with the Free State,

by which the latter obtained a fertile strip of territory along the

north-west branch of the Caledon which had previously been held by

Moshesh, while the Basutos came (in 1871) under the administrative

control of Cape Colony. Moshesh died soon afterwards, full of years and

honour, and leaving a name which has become famous in South Africa. He

was one of the remarkable instances, like Toussaint l'Ouverture and the

Hawaiian king Kamehameha the First, of a man, sprung from a savage race,

who effected great things by a display of wholly exceptional gifts. His

sayings have become proverbs in native mouths. One of them is worth

noting, as a piece of grim humour, a quality rare among the Kafirs. Some

of his chief men had been urging him, after he had become powerful, to

take vengeance upon certain cannibals who were believed to have killed

and eaten his grandparents. Moshesh replied: "I must consider well

before I disturb the sepulchres of my ancestors."

Basutoland remained quiet till 1879, when the Cape Government, urged, it

would appear, by the restless spirit of Sir Bartle Frere (then

Governor), conceived the unhappy project of disarming the Basutos. It

was no doubt a pity that so many of them possessed firearms; but it

would have been better to let them keep their weapons than to provoke a

war; and the Cape Prime Minister, who met the nation in its great

popular assembly, the Pitso, had ample notice through the speeches

delivered there by important chiefs of the resistance with which any

attempt to enforce disarmament would be met. However, rash counsels

prevailed. The attempt was made in 1880; war followed, and the Basutos

gave the colonial troops so much trouble that in 1883 the Colony

proposed to abandon the territory altogether. Ultimately, in 1884, the

Imperial Government took it over, and has ever since administered it by

a Resident Commissioner.

The Basuto nation, which had been brought very low at the time when

Moshesh threw himself upon the British Government for protection, has

latterly grown rapidly, and now numbers over 220,000 souls. This

increase is partly due to an influx of Kafirs from other tribes, each

chief encouraging the influx, since the new retainers, who surround him,

increase his importance. But it has now reached a point when it ought to

be stopped, because all the agricultural land is taken up for tillage,

and the pastures begin scarcely to suffice for the cattle. The area is

10,263 square miles, about two-thirds that of Switzerland, but by far

the larger part of it is wild mountain. No Europeans are allowed to hold

land, and a licence is needed even for the keeping of a store. Neither

are any mines worked. European prospectors are not permitted to come in

and search for minerals, for the policy of the authorities has been to

keep the country for the natives; and nothing alarms the chiefs so much

as the occasional appearance of these speculative gentry, who, if

allowed a foothold, would soon dispossess them. Thus it remains doubtful

whether either gold or silver or diamonds exist in "payable

quantities."

The natives, however, go in large numbers--in 1895-6 as many as 28,000

went out--to work in the mines at Kimberley and on the Witwatersrand,

and they bring back savings, which have done much to increase the

prosperity of the tribe. At present they seem fairly contented and

peaceable. The land belongs to the nation, and all may freely turn their

cattle on the untilled parts. Fields, however, are allotted to each

householder by the chief, to be tilled, and the tenant, protected by

public opinion, retains them so long as he tills them. He cannot sell

them, but they will pass to his children. Ordinary administration, which

consists mainly in the allotment and management of land, is left to the

chief; as also ordinary jurisdiction, both civil and criminal. The

present tendency is for the disposing power of the chief over the land

to increase; and it is possible that British law may ultimately turn

him, as it turned the head of an Irish sept, into an owner. The chief

holds his court at his kraal, in the open air, settles disputes and

awards punishments. There are several British magistrates to deal with

grave offences, and a force of 220 native police, under British

officers. Lerothodi, as the successor of Moshesh, is Paramount Chief of

the nation; and all the greater chieftainships under him are held by his

uncles and cousins,--sons and grandsons of the founder of the

dynasty,--while there are also a few chiefs of the second rank belonging

to other families. Some of the uncles, especially Masupha, who lives at

the foot of Thaba Bosiyo, and is an obstinately conservative heathen,

give trouble both to Lerothodi and to the British Commissioner, their

quarrels turning mainly on questions of land and frontier. But on the

whole, things go on as well as can be expected in such a world as the

present: disturbances tend to diminish; and the horses or cattle that

are occasionally stolen from the Free State farmers are always recovered

for their owners, unless they have been got away out of Basutoland into

the colonial territories to the south and west. As far back as 1855,

Moshesh forbade the "smelling out" of witches, and now the British

authorities have suppressed the more noxious or offensive kinds of

ceremonies practised by the Kafirs. Otherwise they interfere as little

as may be with native ways, trusting to time, peace, and the

missionaries to secure the gradual civilization of the people. Once a

year the Commissioner meets the whole people, in their national assembly

called the Pitso,--the name is derived from their verb "to call" (cf.

[Greek: ekklesia])--which in several points recalls the _agora_, or

assembly of freemen described in the Homeric poems. The Paramount Chief

presides, and debate is mainly conducted by the chiefs; but all freemen,

gentle and simple, have a right to speak in it. There is no voting, only

a declaration, by shouts, of the general feeling. Though the head of the

nation has been usually the person who convokes it, a magnate lower in

rank might always, like Achilles in the Iliad, have it summoned when a

fitting occasion arose. And it was generally preceded by a consultation

among the leading men, though I could not discover that there was any

regular council of chiefs.[68] In all these points the resemblance to

the primary assemblies of the early peoples of Europe is close enough to

add another to the arguments, already strong, which discredit the theory

that there is any such thing as an "Aryan type" of institutions, and

which suggest the view that in studying the polities of primitive

nations we must not take affinities of language as the basis of a

classification.

To-day the Pitso has lost much of its old importance, and tends to

become a formal meeting, in which the British Commissioner causes new

regulations to be read aloud, inviting discussion on points which any

one present may desire to raise, and addresses the people, awarding

praise or blame, and adding such exhortations as he thinks seasonable.

The missionaries (like the Bishops in a Witenagemot) and the chief

British officials are usually present. In perusing the shorthand report

of the great Pitso held in 1879, at which the question of disarmament

was brought forward by the Cape Prime Minister, I was struck by the

freedom and intelligence with which the speakers delivered their views.

One observed: "This is our parliament, though it is a very disorderly

parliament, because we are all mixed up, young and old; and we cannot

accept any measure without discussion." Another commented severely upon

an unhappy phrase that had been used at Cape Town by a member of the

Cape Government: "Mr. U. said the Basutos were the natural enemies of

the white man, because we were black. Is that language which should be

used by a high officer of the Government? Let sentiments like these pass

away--we are being educated to believe that all people are equal, and

feel that sentiments like these are utterly wrong." A third claimed that

the people must keep their guns, because "at our circumcision we were

given a shield and an assagai, and told never to part with them; and

that if ever we came back from an expedition and our shield and assagai

were not found before our house, we should die the death." And a fourth,

wishing to excuse any vehement expression he might use, observed: "We

have a proverb which says that a man who makes a mistake in a public

assembly cannot be killed." In this proverb there is the germ of the

English "privilege of Parliament." It is easy to gather from the whole

proceedings of these Pitsos how much more popular government has been

among the Basutos than it was among the Zulus or Matabili. Tshaka or Lo

Bengula would in a moment have had the neck twisted of any one who

ventured to differ publicly from his opinion. In this respect the

Basutos resemble their kinsfolk the Bamangwato, among whom Khama rules

as a chief amenable to public opinion, which, in that instance, is

unfortunately far behind the enlightened purposes of the sovereign.

Nowhere has the gospel made such progress among the Kafirs as in

Basutoland. The missionaries,--French, Protestant, Roman Catholic, and

English Episcopalian,--working not only independently but on very

different lines, have brought nearly fifty thousand natives under

Christian influences, as members or adherents. Not all of these are

baptised converts--the Franco-Swiss missionaries, by whom far the

largest part of the work has been done, tell me that baptisms do not

increase fast; and they are wise in not measuring the worth of their

work by the number of baptisms. Education is spreading. At the last

public examinations at the Cape, the French Protestant missionaries sent

up twenty Basuto boys, of whom ten passed in honours, and ten in high

classes, the standard being the same for whites and blacks. There are

now one hundred and fifty schools in the country, all but two of which

are conducted by the missionaries.

Strange waves of sentiment pass over the people, at one time carrying

them back to paganism, at another inclining them to Christianity--the

first sign of the latter tendency being discernible in an increase of

attendance at the mission schools. The women are more backward than the

men, because they have been kept in subjection, and their intelligence

has remained only half developed. But their condition is improving; men

now work with them in the fields, and they demand clothes instead of so

much oil, wherewith to smear their bodies. As education becomes more

diffused, old heathen customs lose their hold, and will probably in

thirty years have disappeared. The belief in ghosts and magic is, of

course, still strong. On the top of Thaba Bosiyo we were shown the

graves of Moshesh and several of his brothers and sons, marked by rude

stones, with the name of each chief on his stone. But we were told that

in reality the bodies of Moshesh and of several of the others are not

here at all, having been dug up and reinterred more than a mile away

near the foot of the hill. Were the body under the stone, the ghost,

which usually dwells near the body, would be liable to be called up by

necromancers, and might be compelled to work mischief to the

tribe--mischief which would be serious in proportion to the power the

spirit possessed during life. Considering, however, that nearly all the

ancient world held similar beliefs, and that a large part of the modern

world, even in Europe, still clings to them, the persistence of these

interesting superstitions need excite no surprise, nor are they

productive of much practical ill, now that the witch-doctor is no longer

permitted to denounce men to death.

The material progress of the people has been aided by the enactment of

stringent laws against the sale of white men's intoxicating liquors,

though some of the chiefs show but a poor example of obedience to these

laws, the enforcement of which is rendered difficult by the illicit sale

which goes on along the frontiers where Basutoland touches the Free

State and the eastern part of Cape Colony. The old native arts and

industries decline as European goods become cheaper, and industrial

training has now become one of the needs of the people. It is an

encouraging sign that, under the auspices of Lerothodi, a sum of L3,184

sterling was collected from the tribe in 1895-6, for the foundation of

an institution to give such training. The receipts from import duties

have so much increased that the contribution of L18,000 paid by Cape

Colony is now annually reduced by nearly L12,000, and the hut tax, of

ten shillings per hut, now easily and promptly collected, amounts to

L23,000 a year, leaving a surplus, out of which L1,300 is paid to the

Cape. Basutoland is within the South African Customs Union.

These facts are encouraging. They show that, so far, the experiment of

leaving a native race to advance in their own way, under their own

chiefs, but carefully supervised by imperial officers, has proved

successful. A warlike, unstable, and turbulent, although intelligent

people, while increasing fast in wealth and material comfort, has also

become more peaceful and orderly, and by the abandonment of its more

repulsive customs is passing from savagery to a state of

semi-civilization. Still the situation has its anxieties. The very

prosperity of the country has drawn into it a larger population than the

arable and pastoral land may prove able to support. The Free State

people are not friendly to it, and many politicians in Cape Colony would

like to recover it for the Colony, while many white adventurers would

like to prospect for mines, or to oust the natives from the best lands.

The natives themselves are armed, and being liable, like all natives, to

sudden fits of unreason, may conceivably be led into disorders which

would involve a war and the regular conquest of the country. The

firmness as well as the conciliatory tactfulness which the first

Commissioner, Sir Marshal Clarke, and his successor, the present Acting

Commissioner, have shown, has hitherto averted these dangers, and has

inspired the people with a belief in the good will of the British

Government. If the progress of recent years can be maintained for thirty

years more, the risk of trouble will have almost disappeared, for by

that time a new generation, unused to war, will have grown up. Whoever

feels for the native and cares for his future must wish a fair chance

for the experiment that is now being tried in Basutoland, of letting him

develop in his own way, shielded from the rude pressure of the whites.

[Footnote 67: The word "Ba Sot'ho" is in strictness used for the people,

"Se Sot'ho" for the language, "Le Sot'ho" for the country: but in

English it is more convenient to apply "Basuto" to all three.]

[Footnote 68: Gungunhana however had a sort of council of chiefs and

confidential advisers which he called together at intervals, and which

bore some resemblance to the Homeric Boule and to the earliest form of

our own Curia Regis.]

PART IV

_SOME SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTIONS_

CHAPTER XXI

BLACKS AND WHITES

Everywhere in South Africa, except in the Witwatersrand and Cape Town,

the black people greatly outnumber the whites. In the Orange Free State

they are nearly twice as numerous, in Cape Colony and the Transvaal more

than thrice as numerous, in Natal ten times as numerous, while in the

other territories, British, German, and Portuguese, the disproportion is

very much greater, possibly some four or five millions of natives

against nine or ten thousand Europeans. The total number of whites south

of the Zambesi hardly reaches 750,000, while that of the blacks is

roughly computed at from six to eight millions. At present, therefore,

so far as numbers go, the country is a black man's country.

It may be thought that this preponderance of the natives is only natural

in a region by far the larger part of which has been very recently

occupied by Europeans, and that in time immigration and the natural

growth of the white element will reduce the disproportion. This

explanation, however, does not meet the facts. The black race is at

present increasing at least as rapidly as the white. Unlike those true

aborigines of the country, the Hottentots and Bushmen, who withered up

and vanished away before the whites, the Kafirs, themselves apparently

intruders from the North, have held their ground, not only in the

wilder country where they have been unaffected by the European, but in

the regions where he has conquered and ruled over them. They are more

prolific than the whites, and their increase is not restrained by those

prudential checks which tell upon civilised man, because, wants being

few, subsistence in a warm climate with abundance of land is easy.

Formerly two powerful forces kept down population:--war, in which no

quarter was given and all the property of the vanquished was captured or

destroyed, and the murders that went on at the pleasure of the chief,

and usually through the agency of the witch-doctor. Now both these

forces have been removed by the action of European government, which has

stopped war and restrains the caprice of the chiefs. Relieved from these

checks, the Kafirs of the south coast and of Basutoland, the regions in

which observation has been easiest, are multiplying faster than the

whites, and there is no reason why the same thing should not happen in

other parts of the country. The number of the Fingoes, for instance

(though they are no doubt an exceptionally thrifty and thriving tribe),

is to-day ten times as great as it was fifty or sixty years ago. Here is

a fact of serious import for the future. Two races, far removed from one

another in civilization and mental condition, dwell side by side.

Neither race is likely to extrude or absorb the other. What then will be

their relations, and how will the difficulties be met to which their

juxtaposition must give rise?

The Colonies of Britain over the world fall into two groups: those which

have received the gift of self-government, and those which are governed

from home through executive officials placed over each of them. Those of

the latter class, called Crown Colonies, are all (with the insignificant

exceptions of the Falkland Islands and Malta) within the tropics, and

are all peopled chiefly by coloured races,--negroes, Indians, Malays,

Polynesians, or Chinese,--with a small minority of whites. The

self-governing Colonies, on the other hand, are all situated in the

temperate zone, and are all, with one exception, peopled chiefly by

Europeans. It is because they have a European population that they have

been deemed fit to govern themselves, just as it is because the tropical

Colonies have a predominantly coloured population that the supremacy of

the Colonial Office and its local representatives is acquiesced in as

fit and proper. Every one perceives that representative assemblies based

on a democratic franchise, which are capable of governing Canada or

Australia, would not succeed in the West Indies or Ceylon or Fiji.

The one exception to this broad division, the one case of self-governing

communities in which the majority of the inhabitants are not of European

stock, is to be found in South Africa. The general difficulty of

adjusting the relations of a higher and a lower race, serious under

every kind of government, here presents itself in the special form of

the construction of a political system which, while democratic as

regards one of the races, cannot safely be made democratic as regards

the other. This difficulty, though new in the British empire, is not new

in the Southern States of America, which have been struggling with it

for years; and it is instructive to compare the experience of South

Africa with that through which the Southern States have passed since the

War of Secession.

Throughout South Africa--and for this purpose no distinction need be

drawn between the two British Colonies and the two Boer Republics--the

people of colour may be divided into two classes: the wild or tribal

natives, who are, of course, by far the more numerous, and the tame or

domesticated natives, among whom one may include, though they are not

aborigines, but recent incomers, the East Indians of Natal and the

Transvaal, as well as the comparatively few Malays of the Cape.

It will be convenient to deal with the two classes separately, and to

begin with the semi-civilized or non-tribal natives, who have been for

the longest period under white influences, and whose present relations

with the whites indicate what the relations of the races are likely to

be, for some time to come, in all parts of the country.

The non-tribal people of colour live in the Cape Colony, except the

south-eastern parts (called Pondoland and Tembuland), in Natal, in the

Orange Free State, and in the southern parts of the Transvaal. They

consist of three stocks: (1) the so-called Cape boys, a mixed race

formed by the intermarriage of Hottentots and Malays with the negro

slaves brought in early days from the west coast, plus some small

infusion of Dutch blood; (2) the Kafirs no longer living in native

communities under their chiefs; and (3) the Indian immigrants who

(together with a few Chinese) have recently come into Natal and the

Transvaal, and number about 60,000, not counting in the indentured

coolies who are to be sent back to India. There are no data for

conjecturing the number of Cape boys and domesticated Kafirs, but it can

hardly exceed 400,000.

These coloured people form the substratum of society in all the four

States above mentioned. Some till the land for themselves, while others

act as herdsmen or labourers for white farmers, or work at trades for

white employers. They do the harder and rougher kinds of labour,

especially of outdoor labour. Let me remind the reader of what has been

incidentally observed before, and must now be insisted on as being the

capital feature of South African life--the fact that all unskilled work

is done by black people. In many parts of the country the climate is not

too hot for men belonging to the north European races to work in the

fields, for the sun's rays are generally tempered by a breeze, the

nights are cool, and the dry air is invigorating. Had South Africa,

like California or New South Wales, been colonized solely by white men,

it would probably, like those countries, have to-day a white labouring

population. But, unluckily, South Africa was colonized in the

seventeenth century, when the importation of negro slaves was deemed the

easiest means of securing cheap and abundant labour. From 1658 onward

till, in 1834, slavery was abolished by the British Parliament, it was

to slaves that the hardest and humblest kinds of work were allotted. The

white people lost the habit of performing manual toil, and acquired the

habit of despising it. No one would do for himself what he could get a

black man to do for him. New settlers from Europe fell into the ways of

the country, which suited their disinclination for physical exertion

under a sun hotter than their own. Thus, when at last slavery was

abolished, the custom of leaving menial or toilsome work to people of

colour continued as strong as ever. It is as strong as ever to-day. The

only considerable exception, that which was furnished by the German

colonists who were planted in the eastern province after the Crimean War

of 1854, has ceased to be an exception; for the children of those

colonists have now, for the most part, sold or leased their allotments

to Kafirs, who till the soil less efficiently than the sturdy old

Germans did. The artisans who to-day come from Europe adopt the habits

of the country in a few weeks or months. The English carpenter hires a

native "boy" to carry his bag of tools for him; the English bricklayer

has a native hodman to hand the bricks to him, which he proceeds to set;

the Cornish or Australian miner directs the excavation of the seam and

fixes the fuse which explodes the dynamite, but the work with the

pickaxe is done by the Kafir. The herdsmen who drive the cattle or tend

the sheep are Kafirs, acting under the orders of a white. Thus the

coloured man is indispensable to the white man, and is brought into

constant relations with him. He is deemed a necessary part of the

economic machinery of the country, whether for mining or for

manufacture, for tillage or for ranching.

But though the black people form the lowest stratum of society, they are

not all in a position of personal dependence. A good many Kafirs,

especially in the eastern province, own the small farms which they till,

and many others are tenants, rendering to their landlord, like the

metayers of France, a half of the produce by way of rent. Some few

natives, especially near Cape Town, are even rich, and among the Indians

of Natal a good many have thriven as shopkeepers. There is no reason to

think that their present exclusion from trades requiring skill will

continue. In 1894 there were Kafirs earning from five shillings to seven

shillings and sixpence a day as riveters on an iron bridge then in

course of construction. I was informed by a high railway official that

many of them were quite fit to be drivers or stokers of locomotives,

though white sentiment (which tolerates them as navvies or platelayers)

made it inexpedient to place them in such positions. Many work as

servants in stores, and are little more prone to petty thefts than are

Europeans. They have dropped their old usages and adopted European

habits, have substituted European clothes for the _kaross_ of the wild

or "red" Kafir, have lost their tribal attachments, usually speak Dutch,

or even perhaps English, and to a considerable extent, especially in the

western province and in the towns, have become Christians. The Indians

are, of course, Mohammedans or heathens, the Malays (of whom there are

only about 13,000), Mohammedans. The coloured people travel a good deal

by rail, and are, especially the Kafirs, eager for instruction, which is

provided for them only in the mission schools. Some will come from great

distances to get taught, and those who can write are very fond of

corresponding with one another. Taken as a whole, they are a quiet and

orderly people, not given to crimes of violence, and less given (so far

as I could gather) to pilfering than are the negroes of the Southern

States of America. The stealing of stock from farms has greatly

diminished. Assaults upon women, such as are frequent in those States,

and have recently caused a hideous epidemic of lynching, are extremely

rare; indeed, I heard of none, save one or two in Natal, where the

natives are comparatively wild and the whites scattered thinly among

them. So few Kafirs have yet received a good education, or tried to

enter occupations requiring superior intelligence, that it is hardly

possible to speak confidently of their capacity for the professions or

the higher kinds of commerce; but judicious observers think they will in

time show capacity, and tell you that their inferiority to white men

lies less in mere intellectual ability than in power of will and

steadiness of purpose. They are unstable, improvident, easily

discouraged, easily led astray. When the morality of their old life, in

which they were ruled by the will of their chief, the opinion of their

fellows, and the traditional customs of the tribe, has been withdrawn

from them, it may be long before any new set of principles can gain a

like hold upon them.

That there should be little community of ideas, and by consequence

little sympathy, between such a race and the whites is no more than any

one would expect who elsewhere in the world has studied the phenomena

which mark the contact of dissimilar peoples. But the traveller in South

Africa is astonished at the strong feeling of dislike and contempt--one

might almost say of hostility--which the bulk of the whites show to

their black neighbours. He asks what can be the cause of it. It is not

due, as in the Southern States of America, to political resentment, for

there has been no sudden gift to former slaves of power over former

masters. Neither is it sufficiently explained by the long conflicts with

the south-coast Kafirs; for the respect felt for their bravery has

tended to efface the recollection of their cruelties. Neither is it

caused (except as respects the petty Indian traders) by the dislike of

the poorer whites to the competition with them in industry of a class

living in a much ruder way and willing to accept much lower wages. It

seems to spring partly from the old feeling of contempt for the slaves,

a feeling which has descended to a generation that has never seen

slavery as an actual system; partly from physical aversion; partly from

an incompatibility of character and temper, which makes the faults of

the coloured man more offensive to the white than the (perhaps morally

as grave) faults of members of his own white stock. Even between

civilized peoples, such as Germans and Russians, or Spaniards and

Frenchmen, there is a disposition to be unduly annoyed by traits and

habits which are not so much culpable in themselves as distasteful to

men constructed on different lines. This sense of annoyance is naturally

more intense toward a race so widely removed from the modern European as

the Kafirs are. Whoever has travelled among people of a race greatly

weaker than his own must have sometimes been conscious of an impatience

or irritation which arises when the native either fails to understand or

neglects to obey the command given. The sense of his superior

intelligence and energy of will produces in the European a sort of

tyrannous spirit, which will not condescend to argue with the native,

but overbears him by sheer force, and is prone to resort to physical

coercion. Even just men, who have the deepest theoretical respect for

human rights, are apt to be carried away by the consciousness of

superior strength, and to become despotic, if not harsh. To escape this

fault, a man must be either a saint or a sluggard. And the tendency to

race enmity lies very deep in human nature. Perhaps it is a survival

from the times when each race could maintain itself only by slaughtering

its rivals.

The attitude of contempt I have mentioned may be noted in all classes,

though it is strongest in those rough and thoughtless whites who plume

themselves all the more upon their colour because they have little else

to plume themselves upon, while among the more refined it is restrained

by self-respect and by the sense that allowances must be made for a

backward race. It is stronger among the Dutch than among the English,

partly, perhaps, because the English wish to be unlike the Dutch in this

as in many other respects. Yet one often hears that the Dutch get on

better with their black servants than the English do, because they

understand native character better, and are more familiar in their

manners, the Englishman retaining his national stiffness. The laws of

the Boer Republics are far more harsh than those of the English

Colonies, and the Transvaal Boers have been always severe and cruel in

their dealings with the natives. But the English also have done so many

things to be deplored that it does not lie with them to cast stones at

the Boers, and the mildness of colonial law is largely due to the

influence of the home government, and to that recognition of the equal

civil rights of all subjects which has long pervaded the common law of

England. Only two sets of Europeans are free from reproach: the imperial

officials, who have almost always sought to protect the natives, and the

clergy, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, who have been the truest and

most constant friends of the Hottentot and the Kafir, sometimes even

carrying their zeal beyond what discretion could approve.

Deep and wide-spread as is the sentiment of aversion to the coloured

people which I am describing, it must not be supposed that the latter

are generally ill-treated. There is indeed a complete social separation.

Intermarriage, though permitted by law in the British Colonies, is

extremely rare, and illicit unions are uncommon. Sometimes the usual

relations of employer and employed are reversed, and a white man enters

the service of a prosperous Kafir. This makes no difference as respects

their social intercourse, and I remember to have heard of a case in

which the white workman stipulated that his employer should address him

as "boss." Black children are very seldom admitted to schools used by

white children; indeed, I doubt if the two colours are ever to be seen

on the same benches, except at Lovedale and in one or two of the mission

schools in Cape Town, to which, as charging very low fees, some of the

poorest whites send their children. I heard of a wealthy coloured man at

the Paarl, a Dutch town north of Cape Town, who complained that, though

he paid a considerable sum in taxes, he was not permitted to send his

daughter to any of the schools in the place. In the Protestant

Episcopal, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and Methodist Churches, and

of course among the Roman Catholics, blacks are admitted along with

whites to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper; but this (so I was told)

is not the case in the Dutch Reformed Church. An eminent and thoughtful

ecclesiastic in Natal deplored to me the complete want of sympathy on

the part of the white congregations with the black ones worshipping near

them. It rarely, if ever, happens that a native, whatever his standing

among his own people,--for to the white there is practically no

difference between one black and another,--is received within a white

man's house on any social occasion; indeed, he would seldom be

permitted, save as a servant, to enter a private house, but would be

received on the _stoep_ (veranda). When Khama, the most important chief

now left south of the Zambesi, a Christian and a man of high personal

character, was in England in 1895, and was entertained at lunch by the

Duke of Westminster and other persons of social eminence, the news of

the reception given him excited annoyance and disgust among the whites

in South Africa. I was told that at a garden-party given a few years ago

by the wife of a white bishop, the appearance of a native clergyman

caused many of the white guests to withdraw in dudgeon. Once when

myself a guest at a mission station in Basutoland I was asked by my host

whether I had any objection to his inviting to the family meal a native

pastor who had been preaching to the native congregation. When I

expressed surprise at the question, my host explained that race feeling

was so strong among the colonists that it would be deemed improper, and

indeed insulting, to make a black man sit down at the same table with a

white guest, unless the express permission of the latter had been first

obtained. But apart from this social disparagement, the native does not

suffer much actual wrong. Now and then, on a remote farm, the employer

will chastise his servant with a harshness he would not venture to apply

to a white boy. A shocking case of the kind occurred a few years ago in

the eastern province. A white farmer--an Englishman, not a Boer--flogged

his Kafir servant so severely that the latter died; and when the culprit

was put on his trial, and acquitted by a white jury, his white

neighbours escorted him home with a band of music. More frequently,

unscrupulous employers, especially on the frontiers of civilization,

will try to defraud their native workmen, or will provoke them by

ill-usage to run away before the day of payment arrives. But there are

no lynchings, as in America, and the white judges and magistrates, if

not always the juries, administer the law with impartiality.

As regards the provisions of the law, one must distinguish between the

British Colonies and the Dutch Republics. In the former the ordinary

civil rights of whites and blacks are precisely the same, though there

exist certain police provisions which are applicable only to the latter.

Cape Colony has a so-called "curfew law," requiring natives who are out

of doors after dark to be provided with a pass--a law which is found

oppressive by the best class of natives, educated and respectable men,

though defended as necessary for public order, having regard to the

large black population of the lower class, and their propensity to

drink and petty offences. There are also certain "labour laws," applying

to natives only, and particularly to those on agricultural locations,

which are intended to check the disposition of Kafirs living on native

reserves to become idle or to take to vagrancy. Doubtless there is a

risk that people who have never acquired habits of steady industry--for

the tribal Kafir leaves to his wives the cultivation of his plot of

maize or sorghum--may relapse into a laziness hurtful to their own

progress, seeing that a few weeks' labour is sufficient to provide all

the food needed for a whole year. In the transition from one state of

society to another exceptional legislation is needed, and a _prima

facie_ case for the so-called "Glen Grey Act" and similar laws may,

therefore, be made out.

The friends of the natives whom I consulted on the subject, and one or

two of the most educated and representative Kafirs themselves, did not

seem to object to this Act in principle, though they criticized its

methods and many of its details. But as all such laws are prompted not

only by regard for the welfare of the Kafir, but also by the desire of

the white colonist to get plenty of labour and to get it cheap, they are

obviously open to abuse and require great care in their administration.

The whole subject of native labour and native land tenure is an

intricate and difficult one, which I have not space to discuss here,

though I obtained a good deal of information regarding it. It is also an

urgent one, for the population which occupies the native reserves is in

some districts growing so fast that the agricultural land will soon

cease to feed them, while the pasture is suffering from being

overstocked. Most of my informants agreed in thinking that the control

of the British magistrate over the management of lands in reservations

was better than that of the native headman, and ought to be extended,

and that the tenure of farms by individual natives outside the

reservations ought to be actively encouraged. They deemed this a step

forward in civilization; and they also held that it is necessary to

prevent native allotments, even when held by individuals, from being

sold to white men, conceiving that without such a prohibition the whites

will in course of time oust the natives from the ownership of all the

best land.

One law specially applicable to natives has been found most valuable in

Natal, as well as in the territories of the Chartered Company, and ought

to be enacted in Cape Colony also, viz., an absolute prohibition of the

sale to them of intoxicating spirits. The spirits made for their

consumption are rough and fiery, much more deleterious than European

whisky or brandy or hollands. Unfortunately, the interests of the

winegrowers and distillers in the Colony have hitherto proved strong

enough to defeat the bills introduced for this purpose by the friends of

the natives. Though some people maintain that the Dutch and anti-native

party resist this much-needed measure because they desire through strong

drink to weaken and keep down the natives, I do not believe in the

existence of any such diabolical motive. Commercial self-interest, or

rather a foolish and short-sighted view of self-interest,--for in the

long run the welfare of the natives is also the welfare of the

whites,--sufficiently accounts for their conduct; but it is a slur on

the generally judicious policy of the Colonial Legislature.

In the two Dutch Republics the English principle of equal civil rights

for white and black finds no place. One of the motives which induced the

Boers of 1836 to trek out of the Colony was their disgust at the

establishment of such equality by the British Government. The Grondwet

(fundamental law) of the Transvaal Republic declared, in 1858, and

declares to-day, that "the people will suffer no equality of whites and

blacks, either in state or in church."[69] Democratic Republics are not

necessarily respectful of what used to be called human rights, and

neither the "principles of 1789" nor those of the American Declaration

of Independence find recognition among the Boers. Both in the Transvaal

and in the Orange Free State a native is forbidden to hold land, and is

not permitted to travel anywhere without a pass, in default of which he

may be detained. (In the Free State, however, the sale of intoxicants to

him is forbidden, and a somewhat similar law, long demanded by the

mine-owners, has very recently been enacted in the Transvaal.) Nor can a

native serve on a jury, whereas in Cape Colony he is legally qualified,

and sometimes is empanelled. The whites may object to his presence, but

a large-minded and strong-minded judge can manage to overcome their

reluctance. For a good while after they settled in the Transvaal the

Boers had a system of apprenticing Kafir children which was with

difficulty distinguishable from predial serfdom: and though they have

constantly denied that they sanctioned either the kidnapping of children

or the treatment of the apprentices as slaves, there is reason to think

that in some parts of the country these abuses did for a time exist. It

seems clear, however, that no such practices are now legal.

Political rights have, of course, never been held by persons of colour

in either of the Dutch Republics, nor has it ever been proposed to grant

them. Boer public opinion would scout such an idea, for it reproaches

the people of Cape Colony now with being "governed by black men,"

because the electoral franchise is there enjoyed by a few persons of

colour. In the two Colonies the history of the matter is as follows.

When representative government was established, and the electoral

franchise conferred upon the colonists in 1853, no colour-line was

drawn; and from that time onward black people have voted, though of

course not very many were qualified under the law to vote. Some years

ago, however, the whites, and the Dutch party in particular, became

uneasy at the strength of the coloured element, though it did not vote

solid, had no coloured leaders, and was important only in a very few

constituencies. Accordingly, an Act was passed in 1892, establishing a

combined educational and property qualification--that is to say, the

ownership of a house or other building of the value of L75 or upwards,

or the being in receipt of a salary of L50 per annum, with the ability

to sign one's name and write one's address and occupation This Act,

which did not apply to those already registered in any particular

district and claiming to be re-registered therein, is expected to keep

down the number of coloured voters; and as it applies to whites also

there is no inequality of treatment. Tribal Kafirs have, of course,

never had the franchise at all. Neither the natives--the most

substantial and best educated among whom possess the qualifications

required--nor their friends complain of this law, which may be defended

on the ground that, while admitting those people of colour whose

intelligence fits them for the exercise of political power, it excludes

a large mass whose ignorance and indifference to public questions would

make them the victims of rich and unscrupulous candidates. It is,

perhaps, less open to objection than some of the attempts recently made

in the Southern States of America to evade the provisions of the

amendments to the Federal Constitution under which negroes obtained the

suffrage. In Natal nearly all the Kafirs live under native law, and have

thus been outside the representative system; but the Governor has power

to admit a Kafir to the suffrage, and this has been done in a few

instances. As stated in Chapter XVIII, the rapid increase of Indian

immigrants in that Colony alarmed the whites, and led to the passing, in

1896, of an Act which will practically debar these immigrants from

political rights, as coming from a country in which no representative

institutions exist. Thus Natal also has managed to exclude coloured

people without making colour the nominal ground of disability. I need

hardly say that whoever has the suffrage is also eligible for election

to the Legislature. No person of colour is now, however, a member of

either chamber in either Colony.

It is easy for people in Europe, who have had no experience of the

presence among them of a semi-civilized race, destitute of the ideas and

habits which lie at the basis of free government, to condemn the action

of these Colonies in seeking to preserve a decisive electoral majority

for the whites. But any one who has studied the question on the spot,

and especially any one who has seen the evils which in America have

followed the grant of the suffrage to persons unfit for it, will form a

more charitable judgment. It is indeed impolitic to exclude people

merely on the score of their race. There are among the educated Kafirs

and Indians persons quite as capable as the average man of European

stock, and it is wholesome that the white, too apt to despise his

coloured neighbour, should be made to feel this, and that the educated

coloured man should have some weight in the community as an elector, and

should be entitled to call on his representative to listen to and

express the demands he may make on behalf of his own race. As the number

of educated and property-holding natives increases, they will naturally

come to form a larger element in the electorate, and will be a useful

one. But to toss the gift of political power into the lap of a multitude

of persons who are not only ignorant, but in mind children rather than

men, is not to confer a boon, but to inflict an injury. So far as I

could judge, this is the view of the most sensible natives in Cape

Colony itself, and of the missionaries also, who have been the steadiest

friends of their race. What is especially desirable is to safeguard the

private rights of the native, and to secure for him his due share of the

land, by retaining which he will retain a measure of independence. The

less he is thrown into the whirlpool of party politics the better.

Let me again repeat that there is at present no serious friction between

the black and the white people in South Africa. Though the attitude of

most of the whites--there are, of course, many exceptions--is

contemptuous, unfriendly, and even suspicious, the black man accepts the

superiority of the white as part of the order of nature. He is too low

down, too completely severed from the white, to feel indignant. Even the

few educated natives are too well aware of the gulf that divides their

own people from the European to resent, except in specially aggravated

cases, the attitude of the latter. Each race goes its own way and lives

its own life.

The condition of the wild or tribal Kafirs can be much more shortly

described, for they have as yet entered into few relations with the

whites. They are in many different grades of civilisation, from the

Basutos, an industrious and settled population, among whom Christianity

has made great progress, to the fierce Matabili of the north, and the

Tongas of the east coast, who remain complete savages. There are

probably six millions of Kafirs living under their chiefs south of the

Zambesi, many of them entirely unaffected by Europeans, with not even a

white magistrate or a native commissioner to collect hut-tax; and

besides these there are the Korannas (akin to the Bushmen) and Namaquas

(akin to the Hottentots) of the desert country between Bechuanaland and

the Atlantic. In many of the districts where a regular British or Boer

Government has been established, the tribal natives are now settled in

regular locations, where the land is reserved from the intrusion of

Europeans. Here they live under their chiefs in the old way (see Chapter

X), and in the remoter districts continue to practise their old

ceremonies. In Cape Colony and Natal, however, in both of which Colonies

there are hundreds of thousands of tribal Kafirs, the more offensive of

these ceremonies are now forbidden by the Government. Nowhere is

anything done for their education, except by the missionaries, who,

however, receive some little assistance from the two Colonial

Governments. The ancient rites and beliefs gradually decay wherever the

whites come, and, except beyond the Zambesi, intertribal wars and raids

have now practically ceased. Yet the tribal hatreds survive. Not long

ago the Zulus and the Kosa Kafirs employed as platelayers on the Cape

Government Railway fought fiercely with each other. One powerful

influence is telling upon them, even where they live uncontrolled by any

white government. The diamond-mines at Kimberley, the gold-mines in the

Witwatersrand and in various parts of Mashonaland and Matabililand,

offer large wages for native labour, and cannot (except at Kimberley)

obtain as much native labour as they need. Accordingly a steady though

still insufficient stream of Kafirs sets towards these mining centres,

not only from Basutoland, Natal, and Bechuanaland, but also from the

Portuguese territories, where the Shangans live, and from the banks of

the Zambesi. Most of the workmen remain for a few weeks or months only,

and return home when they have earned as much money as will purchase two

oxen, heretofore the usual price of a wife. They are paid in English

coin, and thus the English twenty-shilling gold piece has become known,

and to-day passes current in villages where no white man has yet been

seen, even beyond the Zambesi, on the shores of Lake Bangweolo. With the

use of coin there will come in time a desire for European goods, which,

in its turn, will draw more labour toward the mines, and perhaps at

last create even among the home-keeping Kafirs a disposition to till the

land or raise cattle for sale. The destruction of cattle by the murrain

which has been raging over the country may accelerate this change.

Already wandering traders and gold-prospectors traverse regions beyond

the border of civilization; and to keep these people, who are often

reckless and lawless, from injuring the natives and provoking them to

take vengeance on the next white man who comes their way, is one of the

greatest difficulties of the British Government, a difficulty aggravated

by the absence in nearly all cases of sufficient legal evidence--for all

over South Africa native evidence is seldom received against a white

man. The regions in which white influence is now most active, and which

will most quickly become assimilated to the two British Colonies, are

those through which railways have been or are now being

constructed--Bechuanaland, Matabililand, and Mashonaland. Should the

mines in these countries turn out well, and means be found for replacing

by new stock the cattle that have perished, these regions may in fifteen

or twenty years possess a considerable population of non-tribal and

semi-civilised natives. Within the next half-century it is probable

that, at least in the British territories as far as the Zambesi, as well

as in the Transvaal and Swaziland, the power of the chiefs will have

practically vanished and the natives be in a position similar to that

which they now hold in Natal and the greater part of Cape Colony; that

is to say, they will either dwell among the whites under the ordinary

law, or will be occupying reservations under the control of a European

magistrate, their old land customs having been mostly superseded and

their heathen rites forbidden or disused.

The position which the whites and the blacks hold toward one another in

South Africa is sufficiently similar to that of the two races in the

Southern States of America to make a short comparison between the two

cases instructive. There are no doubt many differences. In the United

States the Southern negroes are strangers and therefore isolated, with

no such reserve of black people behind them as the Kafirs have in the

rest of the African continent. In South Africa it is the whites who are

new-comers and isolated, and they are numerically inferior to the

blacks, not, as in America, in a few particular areas (the three States

of South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana), but all over the

country. In the whole United States the whites are to the blacks as ten

to one; in Africa south of the Zambesi it is the blacks who are ten to

one to the whites. Or if we compare the four South African Colonies and

Republics with the fifteen old slave States, the blacks are in the

former nearly four times as numerous as the whites, and the whites in

the latter twice as numerous as the blacks. In point of natural capacity

and force of character the Bantu races are at least equal, probably

superior, to the negroes brought from Africa to North America, most of

whom seem to have come from the Guinea coasts. But in point of education

and in habits of industry the American negroes are far ahead of the

South African; for the latter have not been subjected to the industrial

training of nearly two centuries of plantation life or domestic service,

while comparatively few have had any industrial contact with white

workmen, or any stimulation like that which the grant of the suffrage

after the War of Secession has exercised upon a large section of the

American negroes, even in places where they have not been permitted to

turn their legal rights to practical account. The American negroes are,

moreover, all nominally Christians; the South African Kafirs nearly all

heathens. Yet, after allowing for these and other minor points of

contrast, the broad fact remains that in both countries we see two races

in very different stages of civilisation dwelling side by side, yet not

mingling nor likely to mingle. In both countries one race rules over

the other. The stronger despises and dislikes the weaker; the weaker

submits patiently to the stronger. But the weaker makes in education and

in property a progress which will some day bring it much nearer to the

stronger than it is now.

The social and political troubles which the juxtaposition of the two

races has caused in North America, and which have induced many Americans

to wish that it were possible to transport the whole seven millions of

Southern negroes back to the Niger or the Congo, have as yet scarcely

shown themselves in South Africa. Neither in the British Colonies nor in

the Boer Republics is there any cause for present apprehension. The

coloured people are submissive and not resentful. They have, moreover, a

certain number of friends and advocates in the legislatures of the

Colonies, and a certain amount of public opinion, the opinion of the

best part of the community, disposed to protect them. Nevertheless, no

traveller can study the colour problem in South Africa without

anxiety--anxiety, not for the present, but for the future, a future in

which the seeds that are now being sown will have sprung up and grown to

maturity.

What is the future of the Kafirs likely to be? Though a writer may

prophesy with an easy mind when he knows that the truth or error of the

prophecy will not be tested till long after he has himself quitted the

world, still it is right to make the usual apologies for venturing to

prophesy at all. These apologies being taken as made, let us consider

what is likely to come to pass in South Africa.

The Kafirs will stay where they are and form the bulk of the population

all over South Africa. Some sanguine men think they will move off to the

hotter north, as in America the centre of negro population has shifted

southward toward the Gulf of Mexico. This is improbable, because the

South African white seems resolved to rely upon natives for all the

harder and rougher kinds of labour, not to add that, although the

European can thrive and work, the Kafir is more truly the child of the

soil and of the climate. And not only will he stay, but, to all

appearances, he will increase faster than does the white man.

The Kafirs, now divided into many tribes and speaking many languages and

dialects, will lose their present tribal organization, their languages,

their distinctive habits. Whether some sort of native _lingua Franca_

will spring up, or whether they will all come to speak English, is

doubtful; but probably in the long run English will prevail and become

the common speech of the southern half of the continent. They will also

lose their heathenism (though many superstitions will survive), and will

become, in name at least, Christians. Thus they will form to a far

greater extent than now a homogeneous mass pervaded by the same ideas

and customs.

While thus constituting one vast black community, they will probably

remain as sharply marked off from the whites as they are to-day. That

there will be no intermarriage may safely be assumed from the fact that

mixture of blood has greatly diminished since the days of slavery, just

as it has diminished in the Southern States of America. White opinion

universally condemns it, and rightly, for as things are now the white

race would lose more by the admixture than the coloured race would gain.

The Kafirs will be far more generally educated than they are now, and

will have developed a much higher intelligence. That they will remain

inferior to the whites in all intellectual pursuits and in most

handicrafts may be concluded from American experience; but they will

doubtless be able to compete with white men in many trades, will to some

extent enter the professions, will acquire property, and (assuming the

law to remain as at present) will form a much larger part, though

probably for a very long time a minority, of the electorate. From among

them there will doubtless arise men fit to lead them for social and

political purposes. A talent for public speaking is already remarked as

one of their gifts.

Thus the day will arrive when South Africa will see itself filled by a

large coloured population, tolerably homogeneous, using the same

language, having forgotten its ancient tribal feuds, and not, like the

people of India, divided by caste or by the mutual hatred of Hindus and

Mussulmans. Most of this population will be poor, and it may, unless

successive Colonies are led off to the more thinly peopled parts of

Africa, tread hard upon the means of subsistence which the land offers;

I say the land, for the mines--or at least the gold-mines--will have

been exhausted long before the day we are contemplating arrives.

When will that day arrive? Probably not for at least a century, possibly

not for two centuries. Fast as the world moves in our time, it must take

several generations to develop a race so backward as the Kafirs. Many

political changes may occur before then; but political changes are not

likely to make much difference to a process like this, which goes on

under natural laws--laws that will continue to work, whatever may happen

to the Boers, and whatever may be the future relations of the Colonies

to the mother country. It is only some great change in human thought and

feeling, or some undreamt-of discovery in the physical world, that can

be imagined as likely to affect the progress of the natives and the

attitude of the whites toward them.

When, perhaps in the twenty-first century, the native population has

reached the point of progress we have been imagining, the position may

be for both races a grave or even a perilous one, if the feeling and

behaviour of the whites continue to be what they are now. The present

contented acquiescence of the coloured people in the dominance of the

whites, and the absence of resentment at the contempt displayed toward

them, cannot be expected from a people whose inferiority, though still

real, will be much less palpable. And if trouble comes, the

preponderance of numbers on the black side may make it more serious than

it could be in the United States, where the Southern whites are the

outmost fringe of an enormous white nation. These anxieties are little

felt, these problems are little canvassed, in South Africa, for things

which will not happen in our time or in the time of our children are for

most of us as though they would never happen; and we have become so

accustomed to see the unexpected come to pass as to forget that where

undoubted natural causes are at work--causes whose working history has

examined and verified--a result may be practically certain, uncertain as

may be the time when and the precise form in which it will arrive.

There are, however, some thoughtful men in the Colonies who see the

magnitude of the issues involved in this native problem. They hold, so

far as I could gather their views, that the three chief things to be

done now are to save the natives from intoxicating liquor, which injures

them even more than it does the whites, to enact good land laws, which

shall keep them from flocking as a loafing proletariate into the towns,

as well as just labour laws, and to give them much better opportunities

than they now have of industrial education. Manual training and the

habit of steady industry are quite as much needed as book education, a

conclusion at which the friends of the American negro have also arrived.

Beyond this the main thing to be done seems to be to soften the feelings

of the average white and to mend his manners. At present he considers

the native to exist solely for his own benefit. He is harsh or gentle

according to his own temper; but whether harsh or gentle, he is apt to

think of the black man much as he thinks of an ox, and to ignore a

native's rights when they are inconvenient to himself.

Could he be got to feel more kindly toward the native, and to treat him,

if not as an equal, which he is not, yet as a child, the social aspect

of the problem--and it is the not least serious aspect--would be

completely altered.

[Footnote 69: The Boers are a genuinely religious people, but they have

forgotten 1 Cor. xii. 13, Gal. iii. 28, and Col. iii. 11. Many nations

have been inspired by the Old Testament, but few indeed are the

instances in which any has paid regard to the New.]

CHAPTER XXII

MISSIONS

The strength and vitality of a race, and its power of holding its own in

the world, depend less on the quickness of its intelligence than on the

solidity of its character. Its character depends upon the moral ideas

which govern its life, and on the habits in which those ideas take

shape; and these, in their turn, depend very largely upon the

conceptions which the race has formed of religion, and on the influence

that religion has over it. This is especially true of peoples in the

earlier stages of civilization. Their social virtues, the beliefs and

principles which hold them together and influence their conduct, rest

upon and are shaped by their beliefs regarding the invisible world and

its forces. Races in which religious ideas are vague and feeble seldom

attain to a vigorous national life, because they want one of the most

effective bonds of cohesion and some of the strongest motives that rule

conduct. It may doubtless be said that the religion of a people is as

much an effect as a cause, or, in other words, that the finer or poorer

quality of a race is seen in the sort of religion it makes for itself,

the higher races producing nobler religious ideas and more impressive

mythologies, just as they produce richer and more expressive languages.

Nevertheless, it remains true that a religion, once formed, becomes a

potent factor in the future strength and progress of a people. Now the

religious ideas of the Bantu races, as of other negroes, have been

scanty, poor, and unfruitful. And accordingly, one cannot meditate upon

their condition and endeavour to forecast their progress without giving

some thought to the influence which better ideas, and especially those

embodied in Christianity, may have upon them.

Neither the Kafirs nor the Hottentots have had a religion in our sense

of the word. They had no deities, no priesthood, no regular forms of

worship. They were, when Europeans discovered them, still in the stage

in which most, if not all, primitive races would seem to have once

been--that of fearing and seeking to propitiate nature spirits and the

ghosts of the dead, a form of superstition in which there was scarcely a

trace of morality. Hence the first task of the missionaries who came

among them was to create a religious sense, to give them the conception

of an omnipotent spiritual power outside natural objects and above man,

and to make them regard this power as the source of moral ideas and the

author of moral commands. To do this has been a difficult task.

Besides this constructive work, which was less needed in some other more

advanced heathen races, the missionaries had also a destructive work to

do. Though the Kafirs had no religion, they had a multitude of

superstitious rites and usages closely intertwined with the whole of

their life and with what one may call their political system. These

usages were so repugnant to Christian morality, and often to common

decency, that it became necessary to attack them and to require the

convert to renounce them altogether. Renunciation, however, meant a

severance from the life of the tribe, contempt and displeasure from the

tribesmen, and possibly the loss of tribal rights. These were evils

which it required courage and conviction to face, nor had the missionary

any temporal benefits to offer by way of compensation. There was,

however, very little direct persecution, because there were no gods who

would be incensed, and the witch-doctors were less formidable opponents

than a regular priesthood would have been. The chiefs were often

friendly, for they recognized the value of missionary knowledge and

counsel. Even the ferocious Mosilikatze showed kindness to Robert

Moffat, and Livingstone complained far more of the Boers than he ever

did of Kafir enemies. Lo Bengula protected the missionaries: Gungunhana

listened, and made his chiefs listen, to their discourses, though his

nearest approach to conversion was his expression of detestation for

Judas Iscariot. But it rarely befell that a chief himself accepted

Christianity, which would have meant, among other things, the departure

of all his wives but one, and possibly the loss of his hold upon his

tribe. All these things being considered, it need excite no surprise

that the Gospel should have made comparatively little progress among the

wild or tribal Kafirs.

It has been preached to them for nearly a century, by German (chiefly, I

think, Moravian) and French, as well as by English, Scottish, and

American missionaries. At present there are not a few British societies

and denominations in the field. The French Protestants have done some

excellent work, especially in Basutoland, and have also stations near

the east coast and on the Upper Zambesi. There are also French Roman

Catholic missions, mostly in the hands of Jesuit fathers, many of whom

are men of learning and ability. Between the Roman Catholics, the

Protestant Episcopalians (Church of England), and the missionaries of

the English Nonconformists and Scottish or French Presbyterians there is

little intercourse and no co-operation. Here, as in other mission

fields, this absence of intercourse and sympathy puzzles the native. I

was told of an English (Protestant Episcopal) clergyman who made it one

of his prime objects to warn the Kafirs against attending the services

of the French Protestant missionaries, whom he apparently regarded as

outside the pale of the true Church. In the Boer Republics there are

fewer missions in proportion to the number of natives than in British

territories; but no district, except the deserts of the west, seems to

be wholly unprovided for, and in some cases stations have been pushed

far beyond the limits of European administration, as, for instance,

among the Barotse, who dwell north of the Upper Zambesi. The native

congregations are usually small, and the careers of the converts not

always satisfactory. This is so natural that it is odd to find

Europeans, and most conspicuously those whose own life is not a model of

Christian morality, continually growling and sneering at the

missionaries because their converts do not all turn out saints. The

savage is unstable in character, and baptism does not necessarily

extinguish either his old habits or the hold which native superstitions

have upon him. It is in this instability of his will, and his proneness

to yield to drink or some other temptation, rather than in his

intellect, that the weakness of the savage lies. And a man with hundreds

of generations of savagery behind him is still, and must be, in many

respects a savage, even though he reads and writes, and wears European

clothes, and possibly even a white necktie. The Kafirs are not such bad

Christians as the Frankish warriors were for two or three generations

after the conversion of Clovis. We must wait for several generations

before we can judge fairly of the influence of his new religion upon the

mind of a Kafir whose ancestors had no religion at all, and were ruled

by the lowest forms of superstition.

These facts are better recognized by the missionaries to-day than they

were sixty years ago, and they have in consequence made some changes in

their methods. They are no longer so anxious to baptize, or so apt to

reckon success by the number of their converts. They are more cautious

in ordaining native pastors. The aid of such pastors is indispensable,

but the importance of the example which the native preacher or teacher

sets makes it necessary to be careful in selection. The dogma of the

equality of the black man and the white, which was warmly insisted on in

the old days, and often roused the wrath of the Boers, has now been

silently dropped. It was a dogma wholesome to inculcate so far as

equality of protection was concerned, but its wider application led the

early philanthropists of South Africa, as it led their excellent

contemporaries, the Abolitionists of America, to some strange

conclusions. Perceiving that other influences ought to go hand in hand

with religion in helping the natives forward, the missionaries now

devote themselves more than formerly to secular instruction, and

endeavour to train the people to habits of industry. The work of

education is indeed entirely in their hands. Special mention is due to

one admirable institution, that which was founded by the Free Church of

Scotland at Lovedale, in the Eastern Province, not far from King

William's Town, nearly fifty years ago. Conducted on wholly

non-sectarian lines, it receives coloured people, together with some

whites, not only from the Colony, but from all parts of Africa--there

are even Galla boys from the borders of Abyssinia in it--and gives an

excellent education, fitting young men and women not only for the native

ministry, but for the professions: and it is admitted even by those who

are least friendly to missionary work to have rendered immense services

to the natives. I visited it, and was greatly struck by the tone and

spirit which seemed to pervade it, a spirit whose results are seen in

the character and careers of many among its graduates. A race in the

present condition of the Kafirs needs nothing more than the creation of

a body of intelligent and educated persons of its own blood, who are

able to enter into the difficulties of their humbler kinsfolk and guide

them wisely. Dr. Stewart, who has directed the institution for many

years, possesses that best kind of missionary temperament, in which a

hopeful spirit and an inexhaustible sympathy are balanced by Scottish

shrewdness and a cool judgment.

One of the greatest among the difficulties which confront the

missionaries is to know how to deal with polygamy, a practice deeply

rooted in Kafir life. A visitor from Europe is at first surprised to

find how seriously they regard it, and asks whether the example of the

worthies of the Old Testament does not make it hard for them to refuse

baptism to the native who seeks it, though he has more than one wife.

The clergy of the Church of England, however, and those of the French

Protestant Church--and I think other missionaries also--are unanimous in

holding that, although they may properly admit a polygamist as a

catechumen, they should not baptize such a one; and they say that the

native pastors hold this view even more strongly than they do

themselves. Polygamy is so bound up with heathen customs, and exerts, in

their view, so entirely baneful an influence upon native society, that

it must be at all hazards resisted and condemned.[70] One is reminded of

the Neoplatonic philosophers, the last professors of the Platonic

academy at Athens, who in the sixth century of our era sought an asylum

from Christian persecution at the court of Chosroes Anurshirwan, in

Persia. They forced themselves to tolerate the other usages of the

people among whom they came, but polygamy was too much for them, and

rather than dwell among those who practised it, they returned to the

unfriendly soil of the Roman Empire.

The missionaries, and especially those of the London Missionary Society,

played at one time a much more prominent part in politics than they now

sustain. Within and on the borders of Cape Colony they were, for the

first sixty years of the present century, the leading champions of the

natives, and as they enjoyed the support of an active body of opinion in

England and Scotland, they had much influence in Parliament and with the

Colonial Office. Outside the Colony they were often the principal

advisers of the native chiefs (as their brethren were at the same time

in the islands of the Pacific), and held a place not unlike that of the

bishops in Gaul in the fifth century of our era. Since, in advocating

the cause of the natives, they had often to complain of the behaviour of

the whites, and since, whenever a chief came into collision with the

emigrant Boers or with colonial frontiersmen, they became the channel by

which the chief stated his case to the British Government, they incurred

the bitter hostility of the emigrant Boers and some dislike even in the

Colony. To this old cause much of the unpopularity that still attaches

to them seems due. Unpopular they certainly are. They are reproached

with the paucity of their converts, and that by white men whose own

treatment of the Kafirs might well make the white man's religion odious

to a native. They are also accused of abusing their position to enrich

themselves by trade with the Kafirs. This abuse has sometimes occurred,

and clearly ought to be checked by the home societies. But probably it

does not disgust the wandering white trader any more than the fact that

the missionary often warns the native against the exorbitant prices

which the trader demands for his goods. They are blamed for making the

converted Kafir uppish, and telling him that he is as good as a white

man, an offence which has no doubt been often committed. A graver

allegation, to which Mr. Theal has given some countenance in his

historical writings, is that they used to bring groundless or

exaggerated charges against the Boer farmers, and always sided with the

natives, whatever the merits of the case. I do not venture to pronounce

on the truth of this allegation, which it would take much time and

labour to sift. As there have been some few missionaries whose

demeanour was not creditable to their profession, so there have

doubtless been instances in which partisan ardour betrayed them into

exaggerations. But whosoever remembers that but for the missionaries the

natives would have lacked all local protection, and that it was only

through the missionaries that news of injustice or cruelty practised on

a native could reach the ears of the British Government, will look

leniently on the errors of honest zeal, and will rejoice that ministers

of religion were found to champion the cause of the weaker race and keep

the home Government alive to a sense of one of its first duties.

Notwithstanding the slowness of the progress hitherto made, the

extinction of heathenism in South Africa may be deemed certain, and

certain at no distant date. There is here no ancient and highly

organized system of beliefs and doctrines, such as Hinduism and Islam

are in India, to resist the solvent power which European civilisation

exerts. In forty years there will probably be no more pagan rites

practised in Cape Colony. In eighty years there will be none in

Matabililand, or perhaps even sooner, if the gold-reefs turn out well;

for though a mining-camp is not a school of Christianity, it is a

destroyer of paganism. Already I found, in traversing Mashonaland, that

the poor ghosts were ceasing to receive their wonted offerings of native

beer.

What will happen when heathenism and the tribal system have vanished

away? Such morality, such principles of manly conduct as the natives now

have, are bound up with their ghost-worship and still more with their

tribal system, which prescribes loyalty to the chief, courage in war,

devotion to the interests of the tribe or clan. When these principles

have disappeared along with the tribal organization, some other

principles, some other standard of duty and precepts of conduct, ought

to be at hand to replace them. Where are such precepts to be found, and

whence are the motives and emotions to be drawn which will give the new

precepts a power to command the will? Although the Kafirs have shown

rather less aptitude for assimilating Christian teaching than some other

savage races have done, there is nothing in the experience of the

missions to discourage the hope that such teaching may come to prevail

among them, and that through it each generation may show a slight moral

advance upon that which has gone before. As the profession of

Christianity will create a certain link between the Kafirs and their

rulers which may soften the asperity which the relations of the two

races now wear, so its doctrines will in time give them a standard of

conduct similar to that accepted among the whites, and an ideal which

will influence the superior minds among them. So much may certainly be

said: that the Gospel and the mission schools are at present the most

truly civilizing influences which work upon the natives, and that upon

these influences, more than on any other agency, does the progress of

the coloured race depend.

[Footnote 70: After listening to their arguments, I did not venture to

doubt that they were right.]

CHAPTER XXIII

SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE TWO BRITISH COLONIES

The two South African Colonies have not yet had time to develop new and

distinctive types of life and character. Though Cape Colony is nearly as

old as Massachusetts or Virginia, it has been less than a century under

British rule, and the two diverse elements in its population have not

yet become blent into any one type that can be said to belong to the

people as a whole. One must therefore describe these elements

separately. The Dutch are almost all country folk, and the country folk

are (in Cape Colony) mostly Dutch. Some, especially near Cape Town, are

agriculturists, but many more are ranchmen or sheep-masters. They are a

slow, quiet, well-meaning hospitable people, extremely conservative in

their opinions as well as their habits, very sparing, because they have

little ready money, very suspicious, because afraid of being out-witted

by the English traders, and many of them so old-fashioned in their

theory of the universe as to object to legislation against sheep scab,

because they regard it as a visitation of Providence, to be combated

only by repentance and not by ordinary human means. The women are

usually ill-educated and often unattractive; but they have strong

characters. Nothing was more remarkable in the wars of the emigrant

Boers against the Kafirs than the courage and devotion which the women

displayed. That love of cleanliness for which their kinsfolk in Holland

are famous has vanished under the conditions of a settler's life and the

practice of using negro servants, and they are now apt to be slatternly.

These country folk live in a simple, old-fashioned way, loving solitude

and isolation, yet very hospitable, and enjoying the rare occasions on

which they meet for festivities at one another's farmhouses. Such

meetings are almost their only recreations, for hunting is less

attainable now that the larger game has disappeared, and they care

nothing for the intellectual pleasures of reading or art or music.

Education is beginning to spread among them, but it has not yet done

much to quicken their minds or give them new interests. The population

is so extremely thin, the towns so few and so small, that it is not

surprising that a people who came out from the least educated strata of

society in Holland should, under the difficult conditions of a settler's

life, have remained at a low level of mental culture. They would

probably have been still more backward, and have produced fewer men of

ability, but for the infusion of French Huguenot blood, which still

proclaims itself in the names of some of the leading families.

Compared to the Dutch, the English are recent immigrants. They have all

arrived within the present century, and few of them can point to

grandfathers born in South Africa. Partly for this reason, partly from

their desire to be unlike the Dutch, they have remained markedly

English, both in their speech, in their ideas, and, so far as the

differences of climate permit, in their way of life. Nevertheless, they

have been affected by the Dutch. They have taken from the latter the

aversion to field labour, the contempt for the blacks, the tendency to

prefer large pastoral farms to agriculture, and, in some districts, a

rather sleepy and easy-going temperament. Even in Mashonaland I was told

that the English ranchmen were apt to fall into the habits of their

Boer neighbours. They form the large majority of the town population,

for not only the seaports, but also such inland places as Graham's Town,

King William's Town, and Kimberley are quite English, and nearly all the

commerce and finance of the country are in their hands. They have more

enterprise than the Dutch, and are much less antiquated in their ideas,

so it is to them that the profits of the new mining ventures have

chiefly fallen, so far as these have not been appropriated by keener and

more ingenious adventurers from Europe, mostly of Semitic stock.

There has been hardly any Irish immigration; and though one meets many

Scotchmen among the bankers and merchants, the Scottish element seems

smaller than in Ontario or most of the Australasian Colonies. Many

settlers have come from Germany, but these have now become blended with

the English. There are no better colonists than the Germans; and indeed

the Europeans whom the last ninety years have brought have been mostly

of excellent stocks, superior to the mid-European races that have lately

inundated the United States.

Though the English and the Dutch form distinct social elements which are

not yet fused, and though these elements are now politically opposed,

there is no social antagonism between the races. The Englishman will

deride the slowness of the Dutchman, the Dutchman may distrust the

adroitness or fear the activity of the Englishman, but neither dislikes

nor avoids the other. Neither enjoys, or even pretends to, any social

superiority, and hence neither objects to marry his son or his daughter

to a member of the other race. Both are, as a rule, in fairly easy

circumstances; that is to say, nearly everybody has enough, and till

lately hardly anybody had more than enough. Within the last few years,

however, two changes have come. The diamond mines and the gold-mines

have given vast riches to a small number of persons, some half-dozen or

less of whom continue to live in the Colony, while the others have

returned to Europe. These great fortunes are a disturbing element,

giving an undue influence to their possessors, and exciting the envy or

emulation of the multitude. The other change is the growth of a class of

people resembling the "mean whites" of the Southern States of America,

loafers and other lazy or shiftless fellows who hang about and will not

take to any regular work. I heard them described and deplored as a new

phenomenon, but gather that they are not yet numerous. Their appearance,

it is to be feared, is the natural result of that contempt for hard

unskilled labour which the existence of slavery inspired in the whites;

and they may hereafter constitute, as they now do in the Southern States

of America, the section of the population specially hostile to the

negro, and therefore dangerous to the whole community.

To an Englishman or American who knows how rapidly his language has

become the language of commerce over the world; how it has almost

extinguished the ancient Celtic tongues in Scotland and Ireland; how

quickly in the United States it has driven Spanish out of the South

West, and has come to be spoken by the German, Scandinavian, and

Slavonic immigrants whom that country receives, it is surprising to find

that Dutch holds its ground stubbornly in South Africa. It is still the

ordinary language of probably one-half of the people of Cape Colony

(although most of these can speak some English) and of three-fourths of

those in the Orange Free State, though of a minority in Natal.

Englishmen settling in the interior usually learn it for the sake of

talking to their Dutch neighbours, who are slow to learn English; and

English children learn it from the coloured people, for the coloured

people talk it far more generally than they do English; in fact, when a

native (except in one of the coast towns) speaks a European tongue, that

tongue is sure to be Dutch. Good observers told me that although an

increasing number of the Africanders (_i.e._, colonists born in Africa)

of Dutch origin now understand English, the hold of Dutch is so strong

that it will probably continue to be spoken in the Colony for two

generations at least. Though one must call it Dutch, it differs widely

from the cultivated Dutch of Holland, having not only preserved some

features of that language as spoken two centuries ago, but having

adopted many Kafir or Hottentot words, and having become vulgarized into

a dialect called the Taal, which is almost incapable of expressing

abstract thought or being a vehicle for any ideas beyond those of daily

life. In fact, many of the Boers, especially in the Transvaal, cannot

understand a modern Dutch book, hardly even an Amsterdam newspaper. This

defect might give English a great advantage if the Boers wished to

express abstract ideas. But they have not this wish, for they have no

abstract ideas to express. They are a people who live in the concrete.

The rise of great fortunes, which I have noted, has been too recent and

too exceptional a phenomenon to have affected the generally tranquil and

even tenor of South African social life. Among both Dutch and English

months and years flow smoothly on. Few new immigrants enter the rural

districts or the smaller towns; few new enterprises are started; few

ambitions or excitements stir the minds of the people. The Witwatersrand

gold-field is, of course, a startling exception, but it is an exception

which tends to perpetuate the rule, for, by drawing off the more eager

and restless spirits, it has left the older parts of both the Colonies

more placid than ever. The general equality of conditions has produced a

freedom from assumption on the one hand, and from servility on the

other, and, indeed, a general absence of snobbishness, which is quite

refreshing to the European visitor. Manners are simple, and being

simple, they are good. If there is less polish than in some countries,

there is an unaffected heartiness and kindliness. The Dutch have a sense

of personal dignity which respects the dignity of their fellows, and

which expresses itself in direct and natural forms of address. An

experienced observer dilated to me on the high level of decorum

maintained in the Cape Parliament, where scenes of disorder are, I

believe, unknown, and violent language is rare. One expects to find in

all Colonies a sense of equality and an element of _sans gene_ in social

intercourse. But one usually finds also more roughness and more of an

off-hand, impatient way of treating strangers than is visible in South

Africa. This may be partly due to the fact that people are not in such a

hurry as they are in most new countries. They have plenty of time for

everything. The climate disinclines them to active exertion. There is

little immigration. Trade, except in the four seaports,[71] is not

brisk, and even there it is not brisk in the American sense of the word.

The slackness of the black population, which has to be employed for the

harder kinds of work, reacts upon the white employer. I have visited no

new English-speaking country where one so little felt the strain and

stress of modern life. This feature of South African society, though it

implies a slow material development, is very agreeable to the visitor,

and I doubt if it be really an injury to the ultimate progress of the

country. In most parts of North America, possibly in Australia also,

industrial development has been too rapid, and has induced a nervous

excitability and eager restlessness of temper from which South Africa is

free. Of course, in saying this, I except always the mining districts,

and especially the Witwatersrand, which is to the full as restless and

as active as San Francisco or Melbourne.

The comparative ease of life disposes the English part of the population

to athletic sports, which are pursued with almost as much avidity as in

Australia. Even one who thinks that in England the passion for them has

gone beyond all reasonable limits, and has become a serious injury to

education and to the taste for intellectual pleasures, may find in the

character of the climate a justification for the devotion to cricket, in

particular, which strikes him in South Africa. Now that the wild animals

have become scarce, hunting cannot be pursued as it once was, and young

people would have little incitement to physical exertion in the open air

did not the English love of cricket flourish in the schools and

colleges. Long may it flourish!

The social conditions I have been describing are evidently unfavourable

to the development of literature or science or art. Art has scarcely

begun to exist. Science is represented only by a few naturalists in

Government employment, and by some intelligent amateur observers.

Researches in electricity or chemistry or biology require nowadays a

somewhat elaborate apparatus, with which few private persons could

provide themselves, and which are here possessed only by one or two

public institutions. English and American writers have hitherto supplied

the intellectual needs of the people, and the established reputation of

writers in those countries makes competition difficult to a new colonial

author. The towns are too small, and their inhabitants too much occupied

in commerce to create groups of highly educated people, capable of

polishing, whetting, and stimulating one another's intellects. There are

few large libraries, and no fully equipped university to train young men

in history or philosophy or economics or theology. Accordingly, few

books are composed or published, and, so far as I know, only three South

African writers have caught the ear of the European public. One of these

was Robert Pringle, a Scotchman, whose poems, written sixty or seventy

years ago, possess considerable merit, and one of which, beginning with

the line,

Afar in the desert I love to ride,

remains the most striking picture of South African nature in those early

days when the wilderness was still filled with wild creatures. Another,

Miss Olive Schreiner (now Mrs. Cronwright-Schreiner), has attained

deserved fame. A third, Mr. Scully, is less known in England, but his

little volume of _Kafir Tales_ is marked by much graphic power and shows

insight into native character.

These three writers, and indeed all the writers of merit, belong to the

English or Anglified section of the population. The Dutch section is

practically disqualified by its language (which, be it remembered, is

not the language of Holland, but a debased dialect) from literary

composition, even were it otherwise disposed to authorship. Literature

will always, I think, remain English in character, bearing few or no

traces of the Dutch element in the people. But otherwise things are

likely to change in a few years. The conditions which have been

described as unfavourable to intellectual production are not necessarily

permanent, and the time will probably come when the Europeans of South

Africa will emulate their kinsfolk at home or in North America in

literary and artistic fertility. The materials for imaginative work,

whether in poetry or in prose, lie ready to their hand. The scenery

deserves some great native landscape-painter, and such a genius will, no

doubt, one day arise.

Journalism has now everywhere become, in point of quantity, the most

important part of literature. The South African newspapers impress a

visitor favourably. Several of them are written with great ability, and

they were in 1895 comparatively free from that violence of invective,

that tawdriness of rhetoric, and that proneness to fill their columns

with criminal intelligence which are apt to be charged against the press

in some other new countries. No journal seems to exert so great a

political power as is wielded by several of the Australian dailies. As

might be expected, the Press is chiefly English, that language having

sixty-one papers, against seventeen printed in Dutch and twenty-three in

both languages.

Although the dispersion of the small European population over an

exceedingly wide area makes it difficult to provide elementary schools

everywhere,[72] education is, among the whites, well cared for, and in

some regions, such as the Orange Free State, the Boer element is just as

eager for it as is the English. Neither are efficient secondary schools

wanting. That which is wanting, that which is urgently needed to crown

the educational edifice, is a properly equipped teaching university.

There are several colleges which provide lectures,[73] and the Cape

University holds examinations and confers degrees; but to erect over

these colleges a true university with an adequate teaching staff seems

to be as difficult an enterprise at the Cape as it has proved to be in

London, where thirteen years had to be spent in efforts, not successful

till 1898, to establish a teaching university. It is strange to find

that in a new country, where the different religious bodies live on good

terms with one another, one of the chief obstacles in the way is the

reluctance of two of the existing colleges, which have a denominational

character, to have an institution superior to them set up by the State.

The other obstacles are the rivalry of the eastern province with the

western, in which, at Cape Town, the natural seat of a university would

be found, and the apathy or aversion of the Dutch section of the people.

Some of them do not care to spend public money for a purpose whose value

they cannot be made to understand. Others, knowing that a university

would necessarily be mainly in English hands and give instruction of an

English type, fear to establish what would become another Anglifying

influence. Thus several small colleges go on, each with inadequate

resources, and the Cape youth who desires to obtain a first-rate

education is obliged to go to Europe for it. He cannot even get a full

course of legal instruction, for there is no complete law school. It is

no doubt well that a certain number of young men should go to Europe and

there acquire a first-hand knowledge of the ideas and habits of the Old

World; but many who cannot afford the luxury of a European journey and

residence remain without the kind of instruction to which their natural

gifts entitle them, and the intellectual progress of the country

suffers. Were Cape Colony somewhere in the United States, a millionaire

would forthwith step in, build a new university, and endow it with a few

millions of dollars. But South Africa is only just beginning to produce

great fortunes; so the best hope is that some enlightened and tactful

statesman may, by disarming the suspicions and allaying the jealousies I

have described, succeed in uniting the existing colleges, and add to

their scanty revenues an adequate Government grant. This may possibly be

effected. But the jealousies and ambitions which those who control an

institution feel for it are often quite as tenacious as is the

selfishness of men where their own pockets are concerned; and since

these jealousies disguise themselves under a cloak of disinterestedness,

it is all the more hard to overcome them by the pressure of public

opinion.

One other intellectual force remains to be mentioned--that of the

churches. In the two British Colonies no religious body receives special

State recognition or any grants from the State.[74] All are on an equal

footing, just as in Australia and in North America. In the two Boer

Republics the Dutch Reformed Church is in a certain sense the State

church. In the Transvaal it is recognized as such by the Grondwet

("Fundamental Law"), and receives a Government subvention. In that

Republic members of other churches were at one time excluded from the

suffrage and from all public offices, and even now Roman Catholics are

under some disability. In the Orange Free State the Dutch Reformed

Church receives public aid, but I think this is given, to a smaller

extent, to some other denominations also, and no legal inequalities

based on religion exist. In these two Republics nearly the whole of the

Boer population, and in the Free State a part even of the English

population, belong to the Dutch Reformed communion, which is

Presbyterian in government and Calvinistic in theology. In the British

Colonies the Protestant Episcopal Church (Church of England) comes next

after the Dutch Reformed, which is much the strongest denomination; but

the Wesleyans are also an important body; and there are, of course, also

Congregational and Baptist churches. The Presbyterians seem to be less

numerous (in proportion to the population) than in Canada or Australia,

not merely because the Scottish element is less numerous, but also

because many of the Scottish settlers joined the Dutch Reformed Church

as being akin to their own in polity and doctrine. The comparative

paucity of Roman Catholics is due to the paucity of Irish

immigrants.[75] These bodies live in perfect harmony and good feeling

one with another, all frankly accepting the principle of equality, none

claiming any social pre-eminence, and none, so far as I could learn,

attempting to interfere in politics. Both the bishops and the clergy of

the Church of England (among whom there are many gifted men) are, with

few exceptions, of marked High-church proclivities, which, however, do

not appear to prevail equally among the laity. The Dutch Reformed Church

has been troubled by doubts as to the orthodoxy of many of its younger

pastors who have been educated at Leyden or Utrecht, and for a time it

preferred to send candidates for the ministry to be trained at

Edinburgh, whose theological schools inspired less distrust. It is

itself in its turn distrusted, apparently without reason, by the still

more rigid Calvinists of the Transvaal.

One curious feature of South African society remains to be mentioned,

which impressed me the more the longer I remained in the country. The

upper stratum of that society, consisting of the well-to-do and best

educated people, is naturally small, because the whole white population

of the towns is small, there being only four towns that have more than

ten thousand white residents. But this little society is virtually one

society, though dispersed in spots hundreds of miles from one another.

Natal stands rather apart, and has very little to do either socially or

in the way of business with Cape Colony, and not a great deal even with

the Transvaal. So too the four or five towns of the eastern province of

Cape Colony form a group somewhat detached, and though the "best people"

in each of them know all about the "best people" in Cape Town, they are

not in close touch with the latter. But Cape Town, Kimberley,

Bloemfontein, Johannesburg, and Pretoria, the five most important places

(excluding the Natal towns), are for social purposes almost one city,

though it is six hundred and fifty miles from Cape Town to Kimberley,

and one thousand miles from Cape Town to Johannesburg. All the persons

of consequence in these places know one another and follow one another's

doings. All mix frequently, because the Cape Town people are apt to be

called by business to the inland cities, and the residents of the inland

cities come to Cape Town for sea air in the summer, or to embark thence

for Europe. Where distances are great, men think little of long

journeys, and the fact that Cape Town is practically the one port of

entrance and departure for the interior, so far as passengers are

concerned, keeps it in constant relations with the leading men of the

interior, and gives a sort of unity to the upper society of the whole

country, which finds few parallels in any other part of the world.

Johannesburg and Cape Town in particular are, for social purposes, in

closer touch with each other than Liverpool is with Manchester or New

York with Philadelphia. When one turns to the map it looks a long way

from the Cape to the Witwatersrand; but between these places most of the

country is a desert, and there is only one spot, Bloemfontein, that

deserves to be called a town. So I will once more beg the reader to

remember that though South Africa is more than half as large as Europe,

it is, measured by population, a very small country.

[Footnote 71: Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London and Durban.]