CHAPTER XIX.

PIETER MARITZBURG TO NEWCASTLE 339

[Illustration:

SOUTH AFRICA

BY

HENRY HALL, R.E.D.

]

SOUTH AFRICA.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

It was in April of last year, 1877, that I first formed a plan of paying

an immediate visit to South Africa. The idea that I would one day do so

had long loomed in the distance before me. Except the South African

group I had seen all our great groups of Colonies,--among which in my

own mind I always include the United States, for to my thinking, our

Colonies are the lands in which our cousins, the descendants of our

forefathers, are living and still speaking our language. I had become

more or less acquainted I may say with all these offshoots from Great

Britain, and had written books about them all,--except South Africa. To

“do” South Africa had for some years past been on my mind, till at last

there was growing on me the consciousness that I was becoming too old

for any more such “doing.” Then, suddenly, the newspapers became full of

the Transvaal Republic. There was a country not indeed belonging to

Great Britain but which once had been almost British, a country, with

which Britain was much too closely concerned to ignore it,--a country,

which had been occupied by British subjects, and established as a

Republic under British authority,--now in danger of being reconquered by

the native tribes which had once peopled it. In this country, for the

existence of which in its then condition we were in a measure

responsible, the white man there would not fight, nor pay taxes, nor

make himself conformable to any of these rules by which property and

life are made secure. Then we were told that English interference and

English interference only could save the country from internecine

quarrels between black men and white men. While this was going on I made

up my mind that now if ever must I visit South Africa. The question of

the Confederation of the States was being mooted at the same time, a

Confederation which was to include not only this Republic which was so

very much out of elbows, but also another quiet little Republic of which

I think that many of us did not know much at home,--but as to which we

had lately heard that it was to receive £90,000 out of the revenue of

the Mother Country, not in compensation for any acknowledged wrong, but

as a general plaster for whatever little scratches the smaller

community, namely the Republic of the Orange Free States, might have

received in its encounters with the greater majesty of the British

Empire. If a tour to South Africa would ever be interesting, it

certainly would be so now. Therefore I made up my mind and began to make

enquiries as to steamers, cost, mode of travelling, and letters of

introduction. It was while I was doing this that the tidings came upon

us like a clap of thunder of the great deed done by Sir Theophilus

Shepstone. The Transvaal had already been annexed! The thing which we

were dreaming of as just possible,--as an awful task which we might

perhaps be forced to undertake in the course of some indefinite number

of months to come, had already been effected. A sturdy Englishman had

walked into the Republic with five and twenty policemen and a Union Jack

and had taken possession of it. “Would the inhabitants of the Republic

like to ask me to take it?” So much enquiry he seems to have made. No;

the people by the voice of their parliament declined even to consider so

monstrous a proposition. “Then I shall take it without being asked,”

said Sir Theophilus. And he took it.

That was what had just been done in the Transvaal when my idea of going

to South Africa had ripened itself into a resolution. Clearly there was

an additional reason for going. Here had been done a very high-handed

thing as to which it might be the duty of a Briton travelling with a pen

in his hand to make a strong remonstrance. Or again it might be his duty

to pat that sturdy Briton on the back,--with pen and ink,--and hold his

name up to honour as having been sturdy in a righteous cause. If I had

premeditated a journey to South Africa a year or two since, when South

Africa was certainly not very much in men’s mouths, there was much more

to reconcile me to the idea now that Confederation and the Transvaal

were in every man’s mouth.

But when my enquiries which had at first been general came down to

minute details, when I was warned by one South African friend that the

time I had chosen for my journey was so altogether wrong that I should

be sure to find myself in some improvisioned region between two rivers

of which I should be as unable to repass the one as to pass the other,

and by another that the means of transit through the country were so

rough as to be unfit for any except the very strong,--or very slow; when

I was assured that the time I had allowed myself was insufficient even

to get up to Pretoria and back, I confess that I became alarmed. I shall

never forget the portentous shaking of the head of one young man who

evidently thought that my friends were neglecting me in that I was

allowed to think of such a job of work. Between them all they nearly

scared me. Had I not been ashamed to abandon my plan I think I should

have gone into the city and begged Mr. Donald Currie to absolve me from

responsibility in regard to that comfortable berth which he had promised

to secure for me on board the Caldera.

I have usually found warnings to be of no avail, and often to be

illfounded. The Bay of Biscay as I have felt it is not much rougher than

other seas. No one ever attempted to gouge me in Kentucky or drew a

revolver on me in California. I have lived in Paris as cheaply as

elsewhere; and have invariably found Jews to be more liberal than other

men. Such has been the case with the South African lions which it was

presumed that I should find in my path. I have never been stopped by a

river and have never been starved; and am now, that the work is done,

heartily glad that I made the attempt. Whether my doing so can be of any

use in giving information to others will be answered by the fate of my

little book which is thus sent upon the waves within twelve months of

the time when I first thought of making the journey; but I am sure that

I have added something worth having to my own stock of knowledge

respecting the Colonies generally.

As I have written the following chapters I think that I have named the

various works, antecedent to my own, from which I have made quotations

or taken information as to any detail of South African history. I will,

however, acknowledge here what I owe to Messrs. Wilmot and Chase’s

“History of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope,”--to the “Compendium of

South African History and Geography,” by George M. Theal, as to which

the reader may be interested to know that the entire work in two volumes

was printed, and very well printed, by native printers at Lovedale,--to

Mr. John Noble’s work, entitled “South Africa, Past and Present,”--to

Messrs. Silver and Co.’s “Handbook to South Africa,” which of all such

works that have ever come into my hands is the most complete; and to the

reprints of two courses of lectures, one given by Judge Watermeyer on

the Cape Colony, and the other by Judge Cloëte “On the Emigration of the

Dutch Farmers.” I must also name the “Compendium of Kafir Laws and

Customs” collected and published by Col. Maclean, who was at one time

Lieut.-Governor of British Kafraria. Were I to continue the list so as

to include all the works that I have read or consulted I should have to

name almanacks, pamphlets, lectures, letters and blue books to a very

great number indeed.

I have a great deal of gratitude to own to gentlemen holding official

positions in the different Colonies and districts I have visited,

without whose aid my task would have been hopeless. Chief among these

have been Captain Mills the Colonial Secretary at Capetown, without

whom I cannot presume it possible that the Cape Colony should continue

to exist. There is however happily no reason why for many years to come

it should be driven to the necessity of even contemplating such an

attempt. At Pieter Maritzburg in Natal I found my old friend Napier

Broome, and from him and from the Governor’s staff generally I received

all the assistance that they could give me. At Pretoria Colonel Brooke

and Mr. Osborn, who were ruling the Dutchmen in the absence of Sir

Theophilus Shepstone, were equally kind to me. At Bloemfontein Mr.

Höhne, who is the Government Secretary, was as cordial and communicative

as though the Orange Free States were an English Colony and he an

English Minister. I must also say that Mr. Brand, the President of the

Free States, though he is Dutch to the back bone, and has in his time

had some little tussles with what he has thought to be British

high-handedness,--in every one of which by-the-bye he has succeeded in

achieving something good for his country,--was with me as open and

unreserved as though I had been a Dutch Boer, or he a member of the same

political club with myself in England. But how shall I mention the

full-handed friendship of Major Lanyon, whom I found administering the

entangled affairs of Griqualand West,--by which perhaps hitherto unknown

names my readers will find, if they go on far enough with the task

before them, that the well-known South African Diamond Fields are

signified? When last I had seen him, and it seems but a short time ago,

he was a pretty little boy with a pretty little frock in Belfast. And

there he was among the diamonds carrying on his government in a capital

which certainly is not lovely to look at,--which of itself is perhaps

the most unlovely city that I know,--but which his kindness succeeded in

making agreeable, though not even his kindness could make it other than

hideous.

These names I mention because of the information which I have received

from their owners. What I owe to the hospitality of the friends I have

made in South Africa is a matter private between me and them. I may

however perhaps acknowledge the great courtesy which I have received

from Sir Bartle Frere and Sir Henry Bulwer, the Governors of the Cape

Colony and Natal. As to the former it was a matter of much regret to me

that I should not have seen him on my return to Capetown after my

travels, when he was still detained at the frontier by the disturbances

with Kreli and the Galekas. It was my misfortune not to become

personally acquainted with Sir Theophilus Shepstone, who unhappily for

me was absent inspecting his new dominion when I was at Pretoria.

I must express my hearty thanks to Sir Henry Barkly, the late Governor

of the Cape Colony, who had returned home just before I started from

London, and who was kind enough to prepare for me with great minuteness

a sketch of my journey, as, in his opinion, it ought to be made, giving

me not only a list of the places which I should visit but an estimate of

the time which should be allotted to each, so as to turn to the best

advantage the months which I had at my disposal. I have not quite done

all which his energy would have exacted from me. I did not get to the

Gold-fields of the Transvaal or into Basutoland. But I have followed his

guidance throughout, and can certainly testify to the exactness of his

knowledge of the country.

My readers will find that in speaking of the three races I found in

South Africa, the native tribes namely, the Dutch and the English, I

have attributed by far the greater importance to the former because of

their numbers. But I fear that I have done so in such a way as not to

have conciliated the friends of the aborigines at home, while I shall

certainly have insured the hostility,--or at any rate opposition,--of

the normal white men in the Colonies. The white man in the South African

Colonies feels that the colony ought to be his and kept up for him,

because he, perhaps, with his life in his hand, went forth as a pioneer

to spread the civilization of Europe and to cultivate the wilds of the

world’s surface. If he has not done so himself, his father did it before

him, and he thinks that the gratitude of the Mother Country should

maintain for him the complete ascendency which his superiority to the

black man has given him. I feel confident that he will maintain his own

ascendency, and think that the Mother Country should take care that that

ascendency be not too complete. The colonist will therefore hardly agree

with me. The friend of the aborigines, on the other hand, seems to me to

ignore the fact,--a fact as it presents itself to my eyes,--that the

white man has to be master and the black man servant, and that the best

friendship will be shown to the black man by seeing that the terms on

which the master and servant shall be brought together are just. In the

first place we have to take care that the native shall not be subjected

to slavery on any pretence or in any of its forms; and in doing this we

shall have to own that compulsory labour, the wages for which are to be

settled by the employer without the consent of the employed, is a form

of slavery. After that,--after acknowledging so much, and providing

against any infraction of the great law so laid down,--the more we do to

promote the working of the coloured man, the more successful we are in

bringing him into his harness, the better for himself, and for the

colony at large. A little garden, a wretched hut, and a great many hymns

do not seem to me to bring the man any nearer to civilization. Work

alone will civilize him, and his incentive to work should be, and is,

the desire to procure those good things which he sees to be in the

enjoyment of white men around him. He is quite alive to this desire, and

is led into new habits by good eating, good clothes, even by finery and

luxuries, much quicker than by hymns and gardens supposed to be just

sufficient to maintain an innocent existence. The friend of the

aboriginal would, I fear, fain keep his aboriginal separated from the

white man; whereas I would wish to see their connexion as close as

possible. In this way I fear that I may have fallen between two stools.

In regard to Kreli and his rebellious Galekas,--in regard also to the

unsettled state of the Zulus and their borders, I have to ask my readers

to remember that my book has been written while these disturbances were

in existence. In respect to them I can not do more than express an

opinion of my own,--more or less crude as it must necessarily be.

CHAPTER II.

EARLY DUTCH HISTORY.

Our possessions in South Africa, like many of our other Colonial

territories, were taken by us from others who did the first rough work

of discovering and occupying the land. As we got Canada from the French,

Jamaica from the Spaniards, and Ceylon from the Dutch, so did we take

the Cape of Good Hope from the latter people. In Australia and New

Zealand we were the pioneers, and very hard work we found it. So also

was it in Massachusetts and Virginia, which have now, happily, passed

away from us. But in South Africa the Dutch were the first to deal with

the Hottentots and Bushmen; and their task was nearly as hard as that

which fell to the lot of Englishmen when they first landed on the coast

of Australia with a cargo of convicts.

The Portuguese indeed came before the Dutch, but they only came, and did

not stay. The Cape, as far as we know, was first doubled by Bartholomew

Diaz in 1486. He, and some of the mariners with him, called it the Cape

of Torments, or Capo Tormentoso, from the miseries they endured. The

more comfortable name which it now bears was given to it by King John of

Portugal, as being the new way discovered by his subjects to the

glorious Indies. Diaz, it seems, never in truth saw the Cape but was

carried past it to Algoa Bay where he merely landed on an island and put

up a cross. But he certainly was one of the great naval heroes of the

world and deserves to be ranked with Columbus. Vasco da Gama, another

sailor hero, said to have been of royal Portuguese descent, followed him

in 1497. He landed to the west of the Cape. There the meeting between

Savage and Christian was as it has almost always been. At first there

was love and friendship, a bartering of goods in which the Christian of

course had the advantage, and a general interchange of amenities. Then

arose mistakes, so natural among strangers who could not speak to each

other, suspicion, violence, and very quickly an internecine quarrel in

which the poor Savage was sure to go to the wall. Vasco da Gama did not

stay long at the Cape, but proceeding on went up the East Coast as far

as our second South African colony, which bears the name which he then

gave to it. He called the land Tierra de Natal, because he reached it on

the day of our Lord’s Nativity. The name has stuck to it ever since and

no doubt will now be preserved. From thence Da Gama went on to India,

and we who are interested in the Cape will lose sight of him. But he

also was one of the world’s mighty mariners,--a man born to endure much,

having to deal not only with Savages who mistook him and his purposes,

but with frequent mutinies among his own men,--a hero who had ever to do

his work with his life in his hand, and to undergo hardships of which

our sailors in these happier days know nothing.

The Portuguese seem to have made no settlement at the Cape intended even

to be permanent; but they did use the place during the sixteenth and

first half of the next century as a port at which they could call for

supplies and assistance on their way out to the East Indies.

The East had then become the great goal of commerce to others besides

the Portuguese. In 1600 our own East India Company was formed, and in

1602 that of the Dutch. Previous to those dates, in 1591, an English

sailor, Captain Lancaster, visited the Cape, and in 1620 Englishmen

landed and took possession of it in the name of James I. But nothing

came of these visitings and declarations, although an attempt was made

by Great Britain to establish a house of call for her trade out to the

East. For this purpose a small gang of convicts was deposited on Robben

Island, which is just off Capetown, but as a matter of course the

convicts quarrelled with themselves and the Natives, and came to a

speedy end. In 1595 the Dutch came, but did not then remain. It was not

till 1652 that the first Europeans who were destined to be the pioneer

occupants of the new land were put on shore at the Cape of Good Hope,

and thus made the first Dutch settlement. Previous to that the Cape had

in fact been a place of call for vessels of all nations going and coming

to and from the East. But from this date, 1652, it was to be used for

the Dutch exclusively. The Hollanders of that day were stanch

Protestants and sound Christians, but they hardly understood their duty

to their neighbours. They had two ideas in forming their establishment

at the Cape;--firstly that of aiding their own commerce with the East,

and secondly that of debarring the commerce of all other nations from

the aid which they sought for themselves. It is on record that when a

French merchant-vessel was once treated with hospitality by the

authorities at the Cape, the authorities at home brought their colonial

dependents very severely to task for such forgetfulness of their duty.

The Governor at the time was dismissed for not allowing the Frenchman to

“float on his own fins.” It was then decided that water should be given

to Europeans in want of it, but as little other refreshment as possible.

The home Authority at this time was not the Dutch Government, but the

Council of Seventeen at Amsterdam, who were the Directors of the Dutch

East India Company. For, as with us, the commercial enterprise with the

East was a monopoly given over to a great Company, and this Company for

the furtherance of its own business established a depôt at the Cape of

Good Hope. When therefore we read of the Dutch Governors we are reading

of the servants not of the nation but of a commercial firm. And yet

these Governors, with the aid of their burgher council, had full power

over life and limb.

Jan van Riebeek was the first Governor, a man who seems to have had a

profound sense of the difficulties and responsibilities of his

melancholy position, and to have done his duty well amidst great

suffering, till at last, after many petitions for his own recall, he was

released. He was there for ten sad years, and seems to have ruled,--no

doubt necessarily,--with a stern hand. The records of the little

community at this time are both touching and amusing, the tragedy being

interspersed with much comedy. In the first year Volunteer Van Vogelaar

was sentenced to receive a hundred blows from the butt of his own musket

for “wishing the purser at the devil for serving out penguins instead of

pork.” Whether the despatch devilwards of the purser or of Van Vogelaar

was most expedited by this occurrence we are not told. Then the

chaplain’s wife had a child, and we learn that all the other married

ladies hurried on to follow so good an example. But the ladies generally

did not escape the malice of evil tongues. Early in the days of the

establishment one Woüters was sentenced to have his tongue bored, to be

banished for three years, and to beg pardon on his bare knees for

speaking ill of the Commander’s wife and of other females. It is added

that he would not have been let off so lightly but that his wife was

just then about to prove herself a good citizen by adding to the

population of the little community. In 1653, the second year of Van

Riebeek’s government, we are told that the lions seemed as though they

were going to take the fort by storm, and that a wolf seized a sheep

within sight of the herds. We afterwards hear that a dreadful

ourang-outang was found, as big as a calf.

From 1658, when the place was but six years old, there comes a very sad

record indeed. The first cargo of slaves was landed at the Cape from the

Guinea Coast. In this year, out of an entire population of 360, more

than a half were slaves. The total number of these was 187. To control

them and to defend the place there were but 113 European men capable of

bearing arms. This slave element at once became antagonistic to any

system of real colonization, and from that day to this has done more

than any other evil to retard the progress of the people. It was

extinguished, much to the disgust of the old Dutch inhabitants, under

Mr. Buxton’s Emancipation Act in 1834;--but its effects are still felt.

In 1666 two men were flogged and sentenced to work in irons for three

years for stealing cabbages. Terrible severity seems to have been the

only idea of government. Those who were able to produce more than they

consumed were allowed to sell to no purchaser except the Company. Even

the free men, the so-called burghers, were little better than slaves,

and were bound to perform their military duties with almost more than

Dutch accuracy. Time was kept by the turning of an official hour glass,

for which purpose two soldiers called Rondegangers were kept on duty,

one to relieve the other through the day and night. And everything was

done vigorously by clockwork,--or hour-glass work rather; the Senate

sitting punctually at nine for their executive and political duties. A

soldier, if he was found sleeping at his post, was tied to a triangle

and beaten by relays of flagellators. Everything was done in accordance

with the ideas of a military despotism, in which, however, the

Commander-in-chief was assisted by a Council or Senate.

And there was need for despotism. Food often ran short, so that penguins

had to be supplied in lieu of pork,--to the infinite disgust we should

imagine of others besides poor Van Vogelaar. It often became a serious

question whether the garrison,--for then it was little more than a

garrison,--would produce food sufficient for their need. But this was

not the only or the worse trouble to which the Governor was subjected.

The new land of which he had taken possession was by no means unoccupied

or unpossessed. There was a race of savages in possession, to whom the

Dutch soon gave the name of Hottentots,[1] and who were friendly enough

as long as they thought that they were getting more than they gave; but,

as has always been the case in the growing relations between Christians

and Savages, the Savages quickly began to understand they were made to

have the worst in every bargain. Soon after the settlement was

established the burghers were forbidden to trade with these people at

all, and then hostilities commenced. The Hottentots found that much, in

the way of land, had been taken from them and that nothing was to be

got. They too, Savages though they were, became logical, and asked

whether they would be allowed to enter Holland and do there as the Dutch

were doing with them. “You come,” they said, “quite into the interior,

selecting our best land, and never asking whether we like it;”--thus

showing that they had made themselves accustomed to the calling of

strangers at their point of land, and that they had not objected to such

mere calling, because something had always been left behind; but that

this going into the interior and taking from them their best land was

quite a different thing. They understood the nature of pasture land

very well, and argued that if the Dutchmen had many cattle there would

be but little grass left for themselves. And so there arose a war.

The Hottentots themselves have not received, as Savages, a bad

character. They are said to have possessed fidelity, attachment, and

intelligence; to have been generally good to their children; to have

believed in the immortality of the soul, and to have worshipped a god.

The Hottentot possessed property and appreciated its value. He was not

naturally cruel, and was prone rather to submit than to fight. The

Bosjesman, or Bushman, was of a lower order, smaller in stature, more

degraded in appearance, filthier in his habits, occasionally a cannibal

eating his own children when driven by hunger, cruel, and useless. Even

he was something better than the Australian aboriginal, but was very

inferior to his near relative the Hottentot.

But the Hottentot, with all his virtues, was driven into rebellion.

There was some fighting in which the natives of course were beaten, and

rewards were offered, so much for a live Hottentot, and so much for a

dead one. This went on till, in 1672, it was found expedient to purchase

land from the natives. A contract was made in that year to prevent

future cavilling, as was then alleged, between the Governor and one of

the native princes, by which the district of the Cape of Good Hope was

ceded to the Dutch for a certain nominal price. The deed is signed with

the marks of two Hottentot chiefs and with the names of two Dutchmen.

The purchase was made simply as an easy way out of the difficulty. But

after a very early period--1684--there was no further buying of land.

“There was no longer an affectation of a desire on the part of the Dutch

authorities,” as we are told by Judge Watermeyer, “that native claims to

land should be respected.” The land was then annexed by Europeans as

convenience required.

In all this the Dutch of those days did very much as the English have

done since. Of all the questions which a conscientious man has ever had

to decide, this is one of the most difficult. The land clearly belongs

to the inhabitants of it,--by as good a title as England belongs to the

English or Holland to the Dutch. But the advantage of spreading

population is so manifest, and the necessity of doing so has so clearly

been indicated to us by nature, that no man, let him be ever so

conscientious, will say that throngs of human beings from the

over-populated civilized countries should refrain from spreading

themselves over unoccupied countries or countries partially occupied by

savage races. Such a doctrine would be monstrous, and could be held only

by a fanatic in morality. And yet there always comes a crisis in which

the stronger, the more civilized, and the Christian race is called upon

to inflict a terrible injustice on the unoffending owner of the land.

Attempts have been made to purchase every acre needed by the new

comers,--very conspicuously in New Zealand. But such attempts never can

do justice to the Savage. The savage man from his nature can understand

nothing of the real value of the article to be sold. The price must be

settled by the purchaser, and he on the other side has no means of

ascertaining who in truth has the right to sell, and cannot know to

whom the purchase money should be paid. But he does know that he must

have the land. He feels that in spreading himself over the earth he is

carrying out God’s purpose, and has no idea of giving way before this

difficulty. He tries to harden his heart against the Savage, and

gradually does so in spite of his own conscience. The man is a nuisance

and must be made to go. Generally he has gone rapidly enough. The

contact with civilization does not suit his nature. We are told that he

takes the white man’s vices and ignores the white man’s virtues. In

truth vices are always more attractive than virtues. To drink is easy

and pleasant. To love your neighbour as yourself is very difficult, and

sometimes unpleasant. So the Savage has taken to drink, and has worn his

very clothes unwholesomely, and has generally perished during the

process of civilization. The North American Indian, the Australian

Aboriginal, the Maori of New Zealand are either going or gone,--and so

in these lands there has come, or is coming, an end of trouble from that

source.

The Hottentot too of whom we have been speaking is said to be nearly

gone, and, being a yellow man, to have lacked strength to endure

European seductions. But as to the Hottentot and his fate there are

varied opinions. I have been told by some that I have never seen a pure

Hottentot. Using my own eyes and my own idea of what a Hottentot is, I

should have said that the bulk of the population of the Western Province

of the Cape Colony is Hottentot. The truth probably is that they have

become so mingled with other races as to have lost much of their

identity; but that the race has not perished, as have the Indians of

North America and the Maoris. The difficulty as to the Savage has at any

rate not been solved in South Africa as in other countries in which our

Colonies have settled themselves. The Kafir with his numerous varieties

of race is still here, and is by no means inclined to go. And for this

reason South Africa at present differs altogether from the other lands

from which white Colonists have driven the native inhabitants. Of these

races I shall have to speak further as I go on with my task.

In 1687 and 1689 there arrived at the Cape a body of emigrants whose

presence has no doubt had much effect in creating the race which now

occupies the land, and without whom probably the settlers could not have

made such progress as they did effect. These were Protestant Frenchmen,

who in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes were in want

of a home in which they could exercise their religion in freedom. These

arrived to the number of about 300, and the names of most of them have

been duly recorded. Very many of the same names are now to be found

through the Colony--to such an extent as to make the stranger ask why

the infant settlement should have been held to be exclusively Dutch.

These Frenchmen, who were placed out round the Cape as agriculturists,

were useful, industrious, religious people. But though they grew and

multiplied they also had their troubles, and hardly enjoyed all the

freedom which they had expected. The Dutch, indeed, appear to have had

no idea of freedom either as to private life, political life, or

religious life. Gradually they succeeded in imposing their own language

upon the new comers. In 1709 the use of French was forbidden in all

public matters, and in 1724 the services of the French Church were for

the last time performed in the French language. Before the end of the

last century the language was gone. Thus the French comers with their

descendants were forced by an iron hand into Dutch moulds, and now

nothing is left to them of their old country but their names. When one

meets a Du Plessis or a De Villiers it is impossible to escape the

memory of the French immigration.

The last half of the seventeenth and the whole of the eighteenth century

saw the gradual progress of the Dutch depôt,--a colony it could hardly

be called,--going on in the same slow determined way, and always with

the same purpose. It was no colony because those who managed it at home

in Holland, and they who at the Cape served with admirable fidelity

their Dutch masters, never entertained an idea as to the colonization of

the country. A half-way house to India was erected by the Dutch East

India Company for the purpose of commerce, and it was necessary that a

community should be maintained at the Cape for this purpose. The less of

trouble, the less of expense, the less of anything beyond mechanical

service with which the work could be carried on, the better. It was not

for the good of the Dutchmen who were sent out or of the Frenchmen who

joined them, that the Council of 17 at Amsterdam troubled themselves

with the matter; but because by doing so they could assist their own

trade and add to their own gains. Judge Watermeyer in one of three

lectures which he gave on the state of the Colony under the Dutch quotes

the following opinion on colonization from a Dutch Attorney General of

the time. “The object of paramount importance in legislation for

Colonies should be the welfare of the parent State of which the Colony

is but a subordinate part and to which it owes its existence!” I need

hardly point out that the present British theory of colonization is

exactly the reverse of this. Some of those prosperous but by no means

benevolent looking old gentlemen with gold chains, as we see them

painted by Rembrandt and other Dutch Masters, were no doubt the owners

of the Cape and its inhabitants. Slave labour was the readiest labour,

and therefore slave labour was procured. The native races were not to be

oppressed beyond endurance, because they would rise and fight. The

community itself was not to grow rich, because if rich it would no

longer be subservient to its masters. In the midst of all this there

were fine qualities. The Governors were brave, stanch, and faithful. The

people were brave and industrious,--and were not self-indulgent except

with occasional festivities in which drunkenness was permissible. The

wonder is that for so long a time they should have been so submissive,

so serviceable, and yet have had so little of the sweets of life to

enjoy.

There were some to whom the austerities of Dutch rule proved too hard

for endurance, and these men moved away without permission into further

districts in which they might live a free though hard life. In other

words they “trekked,” as the practice has been called to this day. This

system has been the mode of escape from the thraldom of government which

has been open to all inhabitants of South Africa. Men when they have

been dissatisfied have gone away, always intending to get beyond the arm

of the existing law; but as they have gone, the law has of necessity

followed at their heels. An outlawed crew on the borders of any colony

or settlement must be ruinous to it. And therefore far as white men have

trekked, government has trekked after them, as we shall find when we

come by and bye to speak of Natal, the Orange Free State, and the

Transvaal.

In 1795 came the English. In that year the French Republican troops had

taken possession of Holland, and the Prince of Orange, after the manner

of dethroned potentates, took refuge in England. He gave an authority,

which was dated from Kew, to the Governor of the Cape to deliver up all

and everything in his hands to the English forces. On the arrival of the

English fleet there was found to be, at the same time, a colonist

rebellion. Certain distant burghers,--for the territory had of course

grown,--refused to obey the officers of the Company or to contribute to

the taxes. In this double emergency the poor Dutch Governor, who does

not seem to have regarded the Prince’s order as an authority, was sorely

puzzled. He fought a little, but only a little, and then the English

were in possession. The castle was given up to General Craig, and in

1797 Lord Macartney came out as the first British Governor.

Great Britain at this time took possession of the Cape to prevent the

French from doing so. No doubt it was a most desirable possession, as

being a half-way house for us to India as it had been for the Dutch. But

we should not, at any rate then, have touched the place had it not been

that Holland, or rather the Dutch, were manifestly unable to retain it.

We spent a great deal of money at the settlement, built military works,

and maintained a large garrison. But it was but for a short time, and

during that short time our rule over the Dutchmen was uneasy and

unprofitable. Something of rebellion seems to have been going on during

the whole time,--not so much against English authority as against Dutch

law, and this rebellion was complicated by continual quarrels between

the distant Boers, or Dutch farmers, and the Hottentots. It was an

uncomfortable possession, and when at the peace of Amiens in 1802 it was

arranged that the Cape of Good Hope should be restored to Holland,

English Ministers of State did not probably grieve much at the loss. At

this time the population of the Colony is supposed to have been 61,947,

which was divided as follows:--

Europeans 21,746.

Slaves 25,754.

Hottentots 14,447.

But the peace of Amiens was delusive, and there was soon war between

England and France. Then again Great Britain felt the necessity of

taking the Cape, and proceeded to do so on this occasion without any

semblance of Dutch authority. At that time whatever belonged to Holland

was almost certain to fall into the hands of France. In 1805, while the

battle of Austerlitz was making Napoleon a hero on land, and Trafalgar

was proving the heroism of England on the seas, Sir David Baird was sent

with half a dozen regiments to expel, not the Dutch, but the Dutch

Governor and the Dutch soldiers from the Cape. This he did easily,

having encountered some slender resistance; and thus in 1806, on the

19th January, after a century and a half of Dutch rule, the Cape of Good

Hope became a British Colony.

It should perhaps be stated that on the restoration of the Cape to

Holland the dominion was not given back to the Dutch East India Company,

but was maintained by the Government at the Hague. The immediate

consequence of this was a great improvement in the laws, and a

considerable relaxation of tyranny. Of this we of course had the full

benefit, as we entered in upon our work with the idea of maintaining in

most things the Dutch system.

CHAPTER III.

ENGLISH HISTORY.

I have to say that I feel almost ashamed of the headings given to these

initiatory chapters of my book as I certainly am not qualified to write

a history of South Africa. Nor, were I able to do so, could it be done

in a few pages. And, again, it has already been done and that so

recently that there is not as yet need for further work of the kind. But

it is not possible to make intelligible the present condition of any

land without some reference to its antecedents. And as it is my object

to give my reader an idea of the country as I saw it I am obliged to

tell something of what I myself found it necessary to learn before I

could understand that which I heard and saw. When I left England I had

some notion more or less correct as to Hottentots, Bushmen, Kafirs, and

Zulus. Since that my mind has gradually become permeated with Basutos,

Griquas, Bechuanas, Amapondos, Suazies, Gaikas, Galekas, and various

other native races,--who are supposed to have disturbed our serenity in

South Africa, but whose serenity we must also have disturbed very

much,--till it has become impossible to look at the picture without

realizing something of the identity of those people. I do not expect to

bring any readers to do that. I perhaps have been filling my mind with

the subject for as many months as the ordinary reader will take hours in

turning over these pages. But still I must ask him to go back a little

with me, or, as I go on, I shall find myself writing as though I

presumed that things were known to him, as to which if he have learned

much, it may be unnecessary that he should look at my book at all.

The English began their work with considerable success. The Dutch laws

were retained, but were executed with mitigated severity; a large

military force was maintained in the Colony, numbering from four to five

thousand men, which of course created a ready market for the produce of

the country; and there was a Governor with almost royal appanages and a

salary of £12,000 a year,--as much probably, when the change in the

value of money is considered, as the Governor-General of India has now.

Men might sell and buy as they pleased, and the intolerable strictness

of Dutch colonial rule was abated. Whatever Dutch patriotism might say,

the English with their money were no doubt very welcome at first, and

especially at or in the neighbourhood of Capetown. We are told that Lord

Caledon, who was the first regular Governor after the return of the

English, was very popular. But troubles soon came, and we at once hear

the dreaded name of Kafir.[2]

In 1811 the Dutch Boers had stretched themselves as far east as the

country round Graff Reynet,--for which I must refer my reader to the

map. Between the Dutch and the Kafirs a neutral district had been

established in the vain hope of maintaining limits. Over this district

the Kafirs came plundering,--no doubt thinking that they were exercising

themselves in the legitimate and patriotic defence of their own land.

The Dutch inhabitants of course called for Government aid, and such aid

was forthcoming. An officer sent to report on the matter recommended

that all the Kafirs should be expelled from the Colony, and that the

district called the Zuurveld,--a district which by treaty had been left

to the Kafirs,--should be divided among white farmers. “This,” says the

chronicler, “was hardly in accordance with the agreement with Ngquika,

but necessity has no law.” The man whose name has thus been imperfectly

reduced to letters was the Kafir chieftain of that ilk, and is the same

as the word Gaika now used for a tribe of British subjects. Necessity we

all know has no law. But what is necessity? A man must die. A man,

generally, must work or go to the wall. But need a man establish himself

as a farmer on another man’s land? The reader will understand that I do

not deny the necessity;--but that I feel myself to be arrested when I

hear it asserted as sufficient excuse.

The Dutch never raised a question as to the necessity. The English have

in latter days continually raised the question, but have so acted that

they have been able to argue as sufferers while they have been the

aggressors. On this occasion the necessity was allowed. A force was

sent, and a gallant Dutch magistrate, one Stockenstroom, who trusted

himself among the Kafirs, was, with his followers, murdered by them.

Then came the first Kafir war. We are told that no quarter was given by

the white men, no prisoners taken;--that all were slaughtered, till the

people were driven backwards and eastwards across the Great Fish river.

This, the first Kafir war, took place in 1811.

The next and quickly succeeding trouble was of another kind. There have

been the two great troubles;--the contests between the white men and the

savages, and then the contests between the settled colonists and those

who have ever been seceding or “trekking” backwards from the

settlements. These latter have been generally, though by no means

exclusively, Dutchmen; and it is of them we speak when we talk of the

South African up-country Boers. These men, among other habits of their

time, had of course been used to slavery;--and though the slavery of the

Colony had never been of its nature cruel, it had of course been open to

cruelty. Laws were made for the protection of slaves, and these laws

were unpalatable to the Boer who wished to live in what he called

freedom,--“to do what he liked with his own,” according to the Duke of

Newcastle,--“to do what he dam pleased,” as the American of the South

used to say. A certain Dutchman named Bezuidenhout refused to obey the

law, and hence there arose a fight between a party of Dutch who swore

that they would die to a man rather than submit, and the armed British

authorities. The originator of the rebellion was shot down. The Dutch

invited the Kafirs to join them; but the Kafir chief declared that as

sparks were flying about, he would like to wait and see which way the

wind blew. But the battle went on, and of course the rebels were beaten.

There then followed an act of justice combined with vengeance. The

leaders were tried and six men were condemned to be hanged. That may

have been right;--but their friends and relatives were condemned to see

them executed. That must have been wrong, and in the result was most

unfortunate. Five of the six were hanged,--while thirty others had to

stand by and see. The place of execution was called Slagter’s Nek, a

name long remembered by the retreating Dutch Boers. But they were

hanged,--not simply once, but twice over. The apparatus, overweighted

with the number, broke down when the poor wretches dropped from the

platform. They were half killed by the ropes, but gradually struggled

back to life. Then there arose prayers that they might now at least be

spared;--and force was attempted, but in vain. The British officer had

to see that they were hanged, and hanged they were a second time, after

the interval of many hours spent in constructing a second gallows. They

were all Dutchmen, and the Dutch implacable Boer has said ever since

that he cannot forget Slagter’s Nek. It was the followers and friends of

these men who trekked away northwards and eastwards till after many a

bloody battle with the natives they at last came to Natal.

From this time the Colony went on with a repetition of those two

troubles,--war with the Kafirs and disturbances with other native races,

and an ever-increasing disposition on the part of the European Colonists

to go backwards so that they might live after their own fashion and not

be forced to treat either slaves or natives according to humanitarian

laws. While this was going on the customary attempts were made to

civilize and improve both the colonists and the natives. Schools,

libraries, and public gardens were founded, and missionaries settled

themselves among the Kafirs and other coloured people. The public

institutions were not very good, nor were the missionaries very

wise;--but some good was done. The Governors who were sent out were of

course various in calibre. Lord Charles Somerset, who reigned for nearly

twelve consecutive years, is said to have been very arbitrary; but the

Colony prospered in spite of Kafir wars. From time to time further

additions were made to our territories, always of course at the expense

of the native races. In 1819 the Kafirs were driven back behind the

Keiskamma River; where is the region now called British Kafraria,--which

was then allowed to be Kafirs’ land. Since that they have been

compressed behind the Kei River, where lies what is now called Kafraria

Proper. Whether it will continue “proper” to the Kafirs is hardly now

matter of doubt. I may say that a considerable portion of it has been

already annexed.

In 1820 it was determined to people the districts from which the natives

had last been driven by English emigrants. The fertility of the land and

the salubrity of the climate had been so loudly praised that there was

no difficulty in procuring volunteers for the purpose. The applications

from intending emigrants were numerous, and from these four thousand

were selected, and sent out at the expense of Government to Algoa

Bay;--where is Port Elizabeth, about four hundred miles east of

Capetown. Hence have sprung the inhabitants of the Eastern Province,

which is as English as the Western Province is Dutch. And hence has come

that desire for separation,--for division into an Eastern and a Western

Colony, which for a long time distracted the Colonial Authorities both

at home and abroad. The English there have prospered better than their

old Dutch neighbours,--at any rate as far as commerce is concerned. The

business done in Algoa Bay is of a more lively and prosperous kind than

that transacted at Capetown. Hence have arisen jealousies, and it may

easily be understood that when the question of Colonial Parliaments

arose, the English at Algoa Bay thought it beneath them to be carried

off, for the purpose of making laws, to Capetown.

It was from the coming of these people that the English language began

to prevail in the Colony. Until 1825 all public business was done in

Dutch. Proceedings in the law courts were carried on in that language

even later than that,--and it was not till 1828 that the despatches of

Government were sent out in English. The language of social and

commercial life can never be altered by edicts, but gradually, from this

time the English began to be found the most convenient. Now it is

general everywhere in the Colony, though of course Dutch is still spoken

by the descendants of the Dutch among themselves: and church services in

the Lutheran churches are performed in Dutch. It will probably take

another century to expel the language. In 1825 the despotism of the

Governors was lessened by the appointment of a Council of seven, which

may be regarded as the first infant step towards Parliamentary

institutions; and in 1828 the old Dutch courts of Landdrosts and

Neemraden were abolished, and resident magistrates and justices were

appointed.

But in the same year a much greater measure was accomplished. A very

small minority of liberal-minded men in the Colony, headed by Dr.

Philip, the missionary, bestirred themselves on behalf of the

Hottentots, who were in a condition very little superior to that of

absolute slavery. The question was stirred in England, and was taken up

by Mr. Buxton, who gave notice of a motion in the House of Commons on

the subject. But the Secretary of State for the Colonies was beforehand

with Mr. Buxton, and declared in the House that the Government would

grant all that was demanded. The Hottentots were put on precisely the

same footing as the Europeans,--very much to the disgust of the

Colonists in general and of the rulers of the Colony. So much was this

understood at home, and so determined was the Home Government that the

colonial feeling on the matter should not prevail, that a clause was

added to the enactment declaring that it should not be competent for any

future Colonial Government to rescind its provisions.

To argue as to the wisdom and humanity of such a measure now would be

futile. The question has so far settled itself that no one dreams of

supposing that a man’s social rights should be influenced by colour or

race. But these Dutchmen and Englishmen knew very well that a Hottentot

could not be made to be equal in intelligence or moral sense to a

European, and they should I think be pardoned for the ill will with

which they accepted the change. And this becomes the more clear to us

when we remember that slavery was at the time still an institution of

the country, and that the slaves, who were an imported people from the

Straits and the Guinea Coast, were at any rate equal in intelligence to

the Hottentots.

Six years afterwards, in 1834, slavery itself was abolished in all lands

subject to the British flag,--and this created even a greater animosity

among the Dutch than the enactments in favour of the Hottentots. Perhaps

no one thing has so strongly tended to alienate the Boer from us as this

measure and the way in which it was carried out. In the first place the

institution of slavery recommended itself entirely to the Dutch mind.

Taking him altogether we shall own that he was not a cruel slave owner;

but he was one to whom slavery of itself was in no way repugnant. That

he as the master should have a command of labour seemed to him to be

only natural. To throw away this command for the sake of putting the

slave into a condition which,--as the Dutchman thought,--would be worse

for the slave himself was to him an absurdity. He regarded the matter as

we regard the doctrine of equality. The very humanitarianism of it was

to him a disgusting pretence. The same feeling exists still. It strikes

one at every corner in the Colony. A ready mode to comfort, wealth, and

general prosperity was, as the Dutchman thinks,--and also some who are

not Dutch,--absolutely thrown away. Then came the question of

compensation. Some of us are old enough to remember the difficulty in

distributing the twenty millions which were voted for the slave owners.

The slaves of the Cape Colony were numbered at 35,745, and were valued

at £3,000,000. The amount of money which was allowed for them was

£1,200,000. But even this was paid in such a manner that much of it fell

into the hands of fraudulent agents before it reached the Boer. There

was delay and the orders for the money were negotiated at a great

discount. The sum expected dwindled down to so paltry a sum that some of

the farmers refused to accept what was due to them. Then there was

further trekking away from a land which in the minds of the emigrants

was so abominably mismanaged. But the slaves fell into the body of the

coloured population without any distinction, and were added of course to

the free labour of the country. The ordinary labourer in all countries

earns so little more than board lodging and clothes for himself and his

children, and it is so indispensable a necessity on the slave owner to

provide board lodgings and clothes for his slaves, that the loss of

slaves, when all owners lose them together, ought not to impoverish any

one. There may be local circumstances, as there were in Jamaica, which

upset the working of this rule. In the Cape Colony there were no such

circumstances; and it seems that those who remained and accepted the law

were not impoverished. There can be no doubt, however, that the

inhabitants of the Colony generally were disgusted. The measure was

brought into effect in 1838, an apprenticeship of four years having been

allowed.

But we must go back for a moment to the Kafir war of 1835,--the third

Kafir war, for there was a second, of which as being less material I

have spared the reader any special mention. Of all our Kafir wars this

was probably the most bitter. There had been continual contests, in all

of which the Kafirs had undoubtedly thought themselves to be ill used,

but in all of which the evils inflicted upon them had been perpetrated

in punishment and reprisal for thefts of cattle. The Kafir thefts were

in comparison small but were often repeated. Then the Europeans sent out

what were called “Commandos,”--which consisted of an armed levy of

mounted men intent upon seizing cattle by way of restitution. The reader

of the histories of the period is compelled to think that the

unfortunate cattle were always being driven backwards and forwards over

the borders. During the period, however, more than once cattle were

restored by the colonists to the Kafirs which were supposed to have been

taken from them in excess of just demands. In December 1834 this state

of things was brought to a crisis by an attempt which was made by a

party of Europeans to recover some stolen horses. Some cattle were

seized, and others were voluntarily surrendered, but the result was that

in December a large body of Kafirs invaded the European lands, and

massacred the farmers to their hearts’ content. They overran the border

country to the number of ten or twelve thousand, and then returned,

carrying with them an immense booty. It all reads as a story out of

Livy, in which the Volsci will devastate the Roman pastures and then

return with their prey to one of their own cities. The reader is sure

that the Romans are going to get the best of it at last;--but in the

meantime the Roman people are nearly ruined.

Sir Benjamin D’Urban was then Governor, and he took strong and

ultimately successful steps to punish the Kafirs. I have not space here

to tell how Hintsa, the Kafir chief, was shot down as he was attempting

to escape from the British whom he had undertaken to guide through his

country, or how the Kafirs were at last driven to sue for peace and to

surrender the sovereignty of their country. The war was not only bloody,

but ruinous to thousands. The cattle were of course destroyed, so that

no one was enriched. Ill blood, of which the effects still remain, was

engendered. Three hundred thousand pounds were spent by the British. But

at last the Kafirs were supposed to have been conquered, and Sir

Benjamin D’Urban supposed to be triumphant.

The triumph, however, to Sir Benjamin D’Urban was not long-lived. At

this time Lord Glenelg was Secretary of State for the Colonies in

England, and Lord Glenelg was a man subject to what I may perhaps not

improperly call the influences of Exeter Hall. When the full report of

the Kafir war reached him a certain party at home had been loud in

expressions of pity and perhaps of admiration for the South African

races. Hottentots and Kafirs had been taken home,--or at any rate a

Hottentot and a Kafir,--and had been much admired. No doubt Lord Glenelg

gave his best attention to the reports sent to him;--no doubt he

consulted those around him;--certainly without doubt he acted in

accordance with his conscience and with a full appreciation of the

greatness of the responsibility resting upon him;--but I think he acted

with very bad judgment. He utterly repudiated what Sir Benjamin D’Urban

had done, and asserted that the Kafirs had had “ample justification” for

the late war. He declared in his despatch that “they had a perfect right

to hazard the experiment of extorting by force that redress which they

could not expect otherwise to obtain,” and he caused to be returned to

the Kafirs the land from which they had been driven,--which land has

since that again become a part of the British Colony. There was a

correspondence in which Sir B. D’Urban supported his own views,--but

this ended in the withdrawal of the Governor in 1838, Lord Glenelg

declaring that he was willing to take upon himself the full

responsibility of what he had done, and of all that might come from it.

I think I am justified in saying that since that time public opinion has

decided against Lord Glenelg, and has attributed to his mistake the

further Kafir wars of 1846 and 1850. It is often very difficult in the

beginning of such quarrels to say who is in the right, the Savage or the

civilized invader of the country. The Savage does not understand the

laws as to promises, treaties, and mutual compacts which we endeavour to

impose upon him, and we on the other hand are determined to live upon

his land whether our doing so be just or unjust. In such a condition of

things we,--meaning the civilized intruders,--are obliged to defend our

position. We cannot consent to have our throats cut when we have taken

the land, because our title to possession is faulty. If ever a Governor

was bound to interfere for the military defence of his people, Sir

Benjamin D’Urban was so bound. If ever a Savage was taken red-handed in

treachery, Hintsa was so taken, and was so shot down. The full carrying

out of Lord Glenelg’s views would have required us to give back all the

country to the Hottentots, to compensate the Dutch for our interference,

and to go back to Europe. Surely no man was ever so sorely punished for

the adequate performance of a most painful public duty as Sir Benjamin

D’Urban.

In 1838 slavery was abolished;--and as one of the consequences of that

abolition, the Dutch farmers again receded. Their lands were occupied by

the English and Scotch who followed them, and in the hands of these men

the growth of wool began to prevail. Merino sheep were introduced, and

wool became the most important production of the colony.

During the whole of this period the practice was continued by the

old-fashioned farmers of receding from their farms in quest of new lands

in which they might live without interference. The Colony in spite of

Kafirs had prospered under English rule, whilst the Dutch farmers had no

doubt enjoyed the progress as well as their English neighbours. Their

condition was infinitely more free than it had ever been under Dutch

rule, and very much more comfortable. But still they were dissatisfied.

British ideas as to Hottentots and Kafirs and British ideas as to

slavery were in their eyes absurd, unmanly and disagreeable. And

therefore they went away across the Orange River; but we shall be able

to deal better with their further journeyings when we come to speak of

the colony of Natal, of the Orange Free State, and of the Transvaal

Republic.

In 1846 came another Kafir war, called the war of the axe,[3] which

lasted to the end of 1847. This too grew out of a small incident. A

Kafir prisoner was rescued and taken into Kafir land, and the Kafirs

would not give him up when he was demanded by the Authorities. It seems

that whenever any slight act of rebellion on their parts was successful,

the whole tribe and the neighbouring tribes would be so elated as to

think that now had come the time for absolutely subduing the white

strangers. They were at last beaten and starved into submission, but at

a terrible cost; and it seems to have been acknowledged at home that

Lord Glenelg had been wrong. Sir Harry Smith was sent out, and he again

extended the Colony to the Kei River, leaving the district between that

and the Keiskamma as a British home for Kafirs, under the name of

British Kafraria.

In 1849, when Earl Grey was at the Colonial Office, an attempt was made

to induce the Cape Colony to receive convicts, and a ship laden with

such a freight was sent to Table Bay. But they were never landed. With

an indomitable resolution which had about it much that was heroic the

inhabitants resolved that the convicts should not be allowed to set foot

on the soil of South Africa. The Governor, acting under orders from

home, no doubt was all powerful, and there was a military force at hand

quite sufficient to enforce the Governor’s orders. Nothing could have

prevented the landing of the men had the Governor persevered. But the

inhabitants of the place agreed among themselves that if the convicts

were landed they should not be fed. No stores of any kind were to be

sold to any one concerned should the convicts once be put on shore. The

remedy then seemed to be rebellious and has since been called

ridiculous;--but it was successful, and the convicts were taken away.

For four wretched months the ship with its miserable freight lay in the

bay, but not a man was landed. No such freight had ever been brought to

the Cape before since the coming of a party of criminals from the Dutch

East India possessions, who were sold as slaves,--and no such attempt

has been made since. Those who know anything of the history of our

Australian Colonies are aware that there is nothing to which the British

Colonist has so strong an objection as the presence of a convict from

the mother country. Whatever the mother country may send let it not send

her declared rascaldom. The use of a Colony as a prison is no doubt in

accordance with the Dutch theory that the paramount object of the

outlying settlement is the welfare of the parent state,--but it is not

at all compatible with the existing British idea that the paramount

object is the well-being of the Colonists themselves. It seems hard upon

England that with all her territories she can find no spot of ground for

the reception of her thieves and outcasts,--that she, with all her

population, sending out her honest folks over the whole world, should be

obliged to keep her too numerous rascals at home. But it seems that

where the population is which creates the crime, there the criminals

must remain. The Colonies certainly will not receive them.

Then came the fifth Kafir war, which of all these wars was the

bloodiest. It began in 1850, and seems to have been instigated by a

Kafir prophet. It would be impossible in a short sketch such as this to

give any individual interest to these struggles of the natives against

their invaders. Through them all we see an attempt, made at any rate by

the British rulers of the land, to bind these people by the joint

strength of treaties and good offices. “If you will only do as we bid

you, you shall be better off than ever you were. We will not hurt you,

and the land will be enough for both of us.” That is what we have said

all along with a clear intention of keeping our word. But it has been

necessary, if we were to live in the land at all, that we should bind

them to keep their word whether they did or did not understand what it

was to which they pledged themselves. Lord Glenelg’s theory required

that the British holders of the land should recognise and respect the

weakness of the Savage without using the strength of his own

civilization. Colonization in such a country on such terms is

impossible. He may have had abstract justice on his side. On that point

I say nothing here. But if so, and if Great Britain is bound to

reconcile her conduct to the rules which such justice requires, then she

must abandon the peculiar task which seems to have been allotted to her,

of peopling the world with a civilized race. In 1850 the fifth Kafir war

arose, and the inhabitants of one advanced military village after

another were murdered. This went on for nearly two years and a half, but

was at last suppressed by dint of hard fighting. It cost Great Britain

upwards of two millions of money, with the lives of about four hundred

fighting men. This was the last of the Kafir wars,--up to that of 1877,

if that is to be called a Kafir war.

After that, in 1857, occurred what seems to be the most remarkable and

most unintelligible of all the events known to us in Kafir history. At

this time Sir George Grey was Governor of the Colony,--a most remarkable

man, who had been Governor of South Australia and of New Zealand, who

had been once recalled from his office of Governor at the Cape and then

restored, who was sent back to New Zealand as Governor in the hottest of

the Maori warfare, and who now lives in that Colony and is at this

moment,--the beginning of 1878,--singularly enough Prime Minister in the

dependency in which he has twice been the Queen’s vicegerent. Whatever

he may be, or may have been, in New Zealand, he certainly left behind

him at the Cape of Good Hope a very great reputation. There can be no

doubt that of all our South African Governors he was the most

popular,--and probably the most high-handed. In his time there came up a

prophecy among the Kafirs that they were to be restored to all their

pristine glories and possessions not by living aid, but by the dead.

Their old warriors would return to them from the distant world, and they

themselves would all become young, beautiful, and invincible. But great

faith was needed. They would find fat cattle in large caves numerous as

their hearts might desire; and rich fields of flowing corn would spring

up for them as food was required. Only they must kill all their own

cattle, and destroy all their own grain, and must refrain from sowing a

seed. This they did with perfect faith, and all Kafirdom was well nigh

starved to death. The English and Dutch around them did what they could

for their relief;--had indeed done what they could to prevent the

self-immolation; but the more that the white men interfered the more

confirmed were the black men in their faith. It is said that 50,000 of

them perished of hunger. Since that day there has been no considerable

Kafir war, and the spirit of the race has been broken.

Whence came the prophecy? There is a maxim among lawyers that the

criminal is to be looked for among those who have profited by the crime.

That we the British holders of the South African soil, and we only, were

helped on in our work by this catastrophe is certain. No such

prophecy,--nothing like to it,--ever came up among the Kafirs before.

They have ever been a superstitious people, given to witchcraft and much

afraid of witches. But till this fatal day they were never tempted to

believe that the dead would come back to them, or to look for other food

than what the earth gave them by its natural increase. It is more than

probable that the prophecy ripened in the brain of an imaginative and

strong-minded Anglo-Saxon. This occurred in 1857 when the terrible

exigences of the Indian Mutiny had taken almost every redcoat from the

Cape to the Peninsula. Had the Kafirs tried their old method of warfare

at such a period it might have gone very hard indeed with the Dutch and

English farmers of the Eastern Province.

During the last twenty years of our government there have been but two

incidents in Colonial life to which I need refer in this summary,--and

both of them will receive their own share of separate attention in the

following chapters. These two are the finding of the Diamond Fields, and

the commencement of responsible government at the Cape Colony.

In 1867 a diamond was found in the hands of a child at the south side of

the Orange River. Near to this place the Vaal runs into the Orange, and

it is in the angle between the two that the diamonds have been found.

This particular diamond went through various hands and was at last sold

to Sir Philip Wodehouse, the Governor, for £500. As was natural, a

stream of seekers after precious stones soon flowed in upon the country,

some to enrich themselves, and many to become utterly ruined in the

struggle. The most manifest effect on the Colony, as it has always been

in regions in which gold has been found, has been the great increase in

consumption. It is not the diamonds or the gold which enrich the country

in which the workings of Nature have placed her hidden treasures, but

the food which the diggers eat, and the clothes which the diggers wear,

and, I fear, the brandy which the diggers drink. Houses are built; and a

population which flows in for a temporary purpose gradually becomes

permanent.

In 1872 responsible government was commenced at Capetown with a

Legislative Council and House of Assembly, with full powers of passing

laws and ruling the country by its majorities;--or at any rate with as

full powers as belong to any other Colony. In all Colonies the Secretary

of State at home has a veto; but such as is the nature of the

constitution in Canada or Victoria, such is it now in the Cape Colony.

For twenty years previous to this there had been a Parliament in which

the sucking legislators of the country were learning how to perform

their duties. But during those twenty years the Ministers were

responsible to the Governors. Now they are responsible to Parliament.

CHAPTER IV.

POPULATION AND FEDERATION.

In a former chapter I endeavoured to give a rough idea of the

geographical districts into which has been divided that portion of South

Africa which Europeans have as yet made their own. I will now attempt to

explain how they are at present ruled and will indulge in some

speculations as to their future condition.

How the Cape Colony became a Colony I have already described. The Dutch

came and gradually spread themselves, and then the English becoming

owners of the Dutch possessions spread themselves further. With the

natives,--Hottentots as they came to be called,--there was some trouble

but not very much. They were easily subjected,--very easily as compared

with the Kafirs,--and then gradually dispersed. As a race they are no

longer troublesome;--nor are they very profitable to the Cape Colony.

The labour of the Colony is chiefly done by coloured people, but by

people who have mainly been immigrants,--the descendants of those whom

the Dutch brought, and bastard Hottentots as they are called, with a

sprinkling of Kafirs and Fingos who have come from the East in quest of

wages. The Colony is divided into a Western and Eastern Province, and

these remarks refer to the whole of the former and to the western

portion of the latter district. In this large portion of the Colony

there is not now nor has there been for many years anything to be feared

from pugnacious natives. It is in the eastern half of the Eastern

Province that Kafirs have been and still are troublesome.

The division into Provinces is imaginary rather than real. There are

indeed at this moment twenty-one members of the Legislative Council of

which eleven are supposed to have been sent to Parliament by the Western

District, and ten by the Eastern;--but even this has now been altered,

and the members of the next Council will be elected for separate

districts,--so that no such demarcation will remain. I think that I am

justified in saying that the constitution knows no division. In men’s

minds, however, the division is sharp enough, and the political feeling

thus engendered is very keen. The Eastern Province desires to be

separated and formed into a distinct Colony, as Victoria was separated

from New South Wales, and afterwards Queensland. The reasons for

separation which it puts forward are as follows. Capetown, the capital,

is in a corner and out of the way. Members from the East have to make

long and disagreeable journeys to Parliament, and, when there, are

always in a minority. Capetown and the West with its mongrel population

is perfectly safe, whereas a large portion of the Eastern Province is

always subject to Kafir “scares” and possibly to Kafir wars. And yet the

Ministry in power is, and has been, and must be a Western Ministry,

spending the public money for Western objects and ruling the East

according to its pleasure. It was by arguments such as these that the

British Government was induced to sanction the happy separation of

Queensland from New South Wales. Then why not separate the Eastern from

the Western Province in the Cape Colony? But the western people, as a

matter of course, do not wish to see a diminution of their own

authority. Capetown would lose half its glory and more than half its

importance if it were put simply on a par with Grahamstown, which is the

capital of the East. And the western politicians have their arguments

which have hitherto prevailed. As to the expenditure of public money

they point to the fact that two railway enterprises have been initiated

in the East,--one up the country from Port Elizabeth, and the other from

East London,--whereas there is but the one in the West which starts from

Capetown. Of course it must be understood that in the Colonies railways

are always or very nearly always made by Government money. The western

people also say that the feeling produced by Kafir aggression in the

Eastern Province is still too bitter to admit of calm legislation. The

prosperity of South Africa must depend on the manner in which the Kafir

and cognate races, Fingos and Basutos, Pondos, Zulus and others are

amalgamated and brought together as subjects of the British Crown; and

if every unnecessary scare is to produce a mixture of fear and

oppression then the doing of the work will be much protracted. If the

Eastern Province were left alone to arrange its affairs with the natives

the chances of continual Kafir wars would be very much increased.

Arguments and feelings such as these have hitherto availed to prevent a

separation of the Provinces; but though a belief in this measure is

still the eastern political creed, action in that direction is no longer

taken. No eastern politician thinks that he will see simple separation

by a division of the Colony into two Colonies. But another action has

taken place in lieu of simple separation which, if successful, would

imply something like separation, and which is called Federation. Here

there has been ample ground for hope because it has been understood that

Federation is popular with the authorities of the Colonial Office at

home.

It will hardly be necessary for me to explain here what Federation

means. We have various Groups of Colonies and the question has arisen

whether it may not be well that each group should be bound together

under one chief or Federal Government, as the different States of the

American Union are bound. It has been tried, as we all believe

successfully, with British North America. It has been recommended in

regard to the Australian Colonies. It has been attempted, not as yet

successfully, in the West Indies. It has been talked of and become the

cause of very hot feeling in reference to Her Majesty’s possessions in

South Africa.

I myself have been in favour of such Federation since I have known

anything of our colonial possessions. The one fact that at present the

produce of a Colony, going into an adjacent district as closely

connected with it as Yorkshire is with Lancashire, should be subjected

to Custom duties as though it came from a foreign land, is a strong

reason for such union. And then the mind foresees that there will at

some future time be a great Australia, and probably a great South

Africa, in which a division into different governments will, if

continued, be as would be a Heptarchy restored in England. But it is

this very feeling,--the feeling which experience and foresight produce

among us in England,--which renders the idea of Federation unpalatable

in the Colonies generally. The binding together of a colonial group into

one great whole is regarded as a preparation for separation from the

mother country. It is as though we at home in England were saying to our

children about the world;--“We have paid for your infantine bread and

butter; we have educated you and given you good trades; now you must go

and do for yourselves.” There is perhaps no such feeling in the bosom of

the special Colonial Minister at home who may at this or the other time

be advocating this measure; but there must be an idea that some

preparation for such a possible future event is expedient. We do not

want to see such another colonial crisis as the American war of last

century between ourselves and an English-speaking people. But in the

Colonies there is a sort of loyalty of which we at home know nothing. It

may be exemplified to any man’s mind by thinking of the feeling as to

home which is engendered by absence. The boy or girl who lives always on

the paternal homestead does not care very much for the kitchen with its

dressers, or for the farmyard with its ricks, or the parlour with its

neat array. But let the boy or girl be banished for a year or two and

every little detail becomes matter for a fond regret. Hence I think has

sprung that colonial anger which has been entertained against Ministers

at home who have seemed to prepare the way for final separation from the

mother country.

Federation, though generally unpopular in the Colonies, has been

welcomed in the Eastern Province of South Africa, because it would be a

means of giving if not entire at any rate partial independence from

Capetown domination. If Federation were once sanctioned and carried out,

the Eastern Province thinks that it would enter the union as a separate

state, and that it would have such dominion as to its own affairs as New

York and Massachusetts have in the United States.

But there would be various other States in such a Federation besides the

two into which the Cape Colony might be divided, and in order that my

readers may have some idea of what would or might be the component parts

of such a union, I will endeavour to describe the different territories

which would be included, with some regard to their population.

At present that South African district of which the South African

politician speaks when he discusses the question of South African

Federation, contains by a rough but fairly accurate computation,[4]

2,276,000 souls, of whom 340,000 may be classed as white men and

1,936,000 as coloured men. There is not therefore one white to five

coloured men. And these coloured people are a strong and increasing

people,--by no means prone to die out and cease to be either useless or

useful, as are the Maoris in New Zealand and the Indians in North

America. Such as they are we have got to bring them into order, and to

rule them and teach them to earn their bread,--a duty which has not

fallen upon us in any other Colony. The population above stated may be

divided as follows:--

ESTIMATED POPULATION OF EUROPEAN SOUTH AFRICA.

+----------------------------+---------+----------+----------+

| Names of Districts. | White | Coloured | Total. |

| | persons.| persons. | |

+----------------------------+---------+----------+----------|

|Orange Free State | 30,000 | 15,000 | 45,000 |

|Transkeian districts | -- | 501,000 | 501,000 |

|The Cape Colony | 235,000 | 485,000 | 720,000 |

|Native districts belonging }| | | |

| to the Cape Colony }| -- | 335,000 | 335,000 |

|The Diamond Fields | 15,000 | 30,000 | 45,000 |

|Natal | 20,000 | 320,000 | 340,000 |

|Transvaal | 40,000 | 250,000 | 290,000 |

| +---------+----------+----------+

| Total | 340,000 |1,936,000 |2,276,000 |

+----------------------------+---------+----------+----------+

I must first remark in reference to this table that the district named

first,--the one containing by far the smallest number of native

inhabitants, called the Orange Free State--is not a British possession

nor, as far as I am aware, is it subject to British influences. It is a

Dutch Republic, well ruled as regards its white inhabitants, untroubled

by the native question and content with its own position. It is

manifest, however, that it has succeeded in making the natives

understand that they can live better outside its borders, and it has

continued by its practice to banish the black man and to rid itself of

trouble on that score. My reader if he will refer to the map will see

that now, since the annexation of the Transvaal by Great Britain, the

Free State is surrounded by British territory,--for Basuto land, which

lies to the west of the Free State between the Cape Colony and Natal,

is a portion of the Cape Colony. This being so I cannot understand how

the Orange Free State can be comprised in any political Confederation.

The nature of such a Confederation seems to require one Head, one flag,

and one common nationality. I cannot conceive that the Savoyards should

confederate with the Swiss,--let their interests be ever so

identical,--unless Savoy were to become a Swiss Canton. The Dutch

Republic is no doubt free to do as she pleases, which Savoy is not; but

the idea of Confederation presumes that she would give herself up to the

English flag. There may no doubt be a Confederation without the Orange

Free State, and that Confederation might offer advantages so great that

the Dutchmen of the Free State should ultimately feel disposed to give

themselves up to Great Britain; but the question for the present must be

considered as subject to considerable disturbance from the existence of

the Republic. The roads from the Cape Colony to the Transvaal and the

Diamond Fields lie through the Free State, and there would necessarily

arise questions of transit and of Custom duties which would make it

expedient that the districts should be united under one flag; but I can

foresee no pretext for compulsion.

In the annexation of the Transvaal there was at any rate an assignable

cause,--of which we were not slow to take advantage. In regard to the

Orange Free State nothing of the kind is to be expected. The population

is chiefly Dutch. The political influence is altogether Dutch. A

reference to the above table will show how the Dutchman

succeeds,--whether for good or ill,--in ridding himself of the coloured

man. The Free State is a large district; but it contains altogether only

45,000 inhabitants,--and there are on the soil no more than 15,000

natives.

I will next say a word as to the Transkeian districts, which also have

been supposed to be outside the dominion of the British Crown and which

therefore it would seem to be just to exclude were we to effect a

Confederation of our British South African Colonies.[5] But all these

districts would certainly be included in any Confederation, with great

advantage to the British Colonies, and with greater advantages to the

Kafirs themselves who live beyond the Kei. I must again refer my readers

to the map. They will see on the South Eastern Coast of the continent a

district called Kafraria,--as distinct from British Kafraria further

west,--the independence of which is signified by its name. Here they

will find the river Kei, which till lately was supposed to be the

boundary of the British territories,--beyond which the Kafir was

supposed to live according to his own customs, and in undisturbed

possession of independent rule. But this, even before the late Kafir

outbreak, was by no means the case. A good deal of British annexation

goes on in different parts of the world of which but little mention is

made in the British Parliament, and but little notice taken even by the

British press. It will be seen that in this territory there live 501,000

natives, and it is here, no doubt, that Kafir habits are to be found in

their fullest perfection. The red Kafir is here,--the man who dyes

himself and his blanket and his wives with red clay, who eschews

breeches and Christianity, and meditates on the coming happy day in

which the pestilent interfering European may be driven at length into

the sea. It is here that Kreli till lately reigned the acknowledged king

of Kafirdom as being the chief of the Galekas. Kreli had foughten and

been conquered and been punished by the loss of much of his

territory;--but still was allowed to rule over a curtailed empire. His

population is now not above 66,000. Among even these,--among the Pondos,

who are much more numerous than the Galekas, our influence is maintained

by European magistrates, and the Kafirs, though allowed to do much

according to their pleasures, are not allowed to do everything. The

Pondos number, I believe, as many as 200,000. In the remainder of

Kafraria British rule is nearly as dominant to the east as to the west

of the Kei. Adam Kok’s land,--or no man’s land, as it has been

called,--running up north into Natal, we have already annexed to the

Cape Colony, and no parliamentary critic at home is at all the wiser.

The Fingos hold much of the remainder, and wherever there is a Fingo

there is a British subject. There would now be no difficulty in sweeping

Kafraria into a general South African Confederation.

I will now deal with those enumerated in the above table who are at

present undoubtedly subjects of Her Majesty, and who are bound to comply

with British laws. The Cape Colony contains nearly three-quarters of a

million of people, and is the only portion of South Africa which has

what may be called a large white population; but that population,

though comparatively large,--something over a quarter of a million,--is

less in number than the inhabitants of the single city of Melbourne. One

colonial town in Australia, and that a town not more than a quarter of a

century old, gives a home to more white people than the whole of the

Cape Colony, which was colonized with white people two hundred years

before Melbourne was founded. And on looking at the white population of

the Cape Colony a further division must be made in order to give the

English reader a true idea of the Colony in reference to England. A

British colony to the British mind is a land away from home to which the

swarming multitudes of Great Britain may go and earn a comfortable

sustenance, denied to them in the land of their birth by the narrowness

of its limits and the greatness of its population, and may do so with

the use of their own language, and in subjection to their own laws. We

have other senses of the word Colony,--for we call military garrisons

Colonies,--such as Malta, and Gibraltar, and Bermuda. But the true

Colony has, I think, above been truly described; and thus the United

States of America have answered to us the purpose of a Colony as well as

though they had remained under British rule. We should, therefore,

endeavour to see how far the Cape Colony has answered the desired

purpose.

The settlement was Dutch in its origin, and was peopled by

Dutchmen,--with a salutary sprinkling of Protestant French who

assimilated themselves after a time to the Dutch in language and

religion. It is only by their religion that we can now divide the Dutch

and the English; and on enquiry I find that about 150,000 souls belong

to the Dutch Reformed and Lutheran Churches,--leaving 85,000 of English

descent in the Colony. If to these we add the 20,000 white persons

inhabiting Natal, and 15,000 at the Diamond Fields, we shall have the

total English population of South Africa;--for the Europeans of the

Transvaal, as of the Orange Free State, are a Dutch people. There are

therefore about 120,000 persons of British descent in these South

African districts,--the number being little more than that of the people

of the small unobtrusive Colony which we call Tasmania.

I hope that nobody will suppose from this that I regard a Dutch subject

of the British Crown as being less worthy of regard than an English

subject. My remarks are not intended to point in that direction, but to

show what is the nature of our duties in South Africa. Thus are there

about 220,000[6] persons of Dutch descent, though the emigrants from

Holland to that land during the present century have been but few;--so

few that I have found no trace of any batch of such emigrants; and there

are but 120,000 of English descent although the country has belonged to

England for three-quarters of a century! The enquirer is thus driven to

the conclusion that South Africa has hardly answered the purpose of a

British Colony.

And I hope that nobody will suppose from this that I regard the coloured

population of Africa as being unworthy of consideration. My remarks, on

the other hand, are made with the object of showing that in dealing with

South Africa the British Parliament and the British Ministers should

think,--not indeed exclusively,--but chiefly of the coloured people.

When we speak of Confederation among these Colonies and districts we

should enquire whether such Confederation will be good for those races

whom at home we lump under the name of Kafirs. As a Colony, in the

proper sense of the word, the Cape Colony has not been successful.

Englishmen have not flocked there in proportion to its area or to its

capabilities for producing the things necessary for life. The working

Englishman,--and it is he who populates the new lands,--prefers a

country in which he shall not have to compete with a black man or a red

man. He learns from some only partially correct source that in one

country the natives will interfere with him and that in another they

will not; and he prefers the country in which their presence will not

annoy him.

But then neither have Englishmen flocked to India, which of all our

possessions is the most important,--or to Ceylon, which as being called

a Colony and governed from the Colonial Office at home may afford us the

nearest parallel we can find to South Africa. No doubt they are in many

things unlike. No English workman takes his family to Ceylon because the

tropical sun is too hot for a European to work beneath it. South Africa

is often hot, but it is not tropical, and an Englishman can work there.

And again in Ceylon the coloured population have from the first British

occupation of the island been recognised as “the people,”--an

interesting and submissive but still foreign and coloured people, whom

she should not dream of inviting to govern themselves. It is a matter of

course that Ceylon should be governed as a Crown Colony,--with edicts

and laws from Downing Street, administered by the hand of a Governor. A

Cingalee Parliament would be an absurdity in our eyes. But in the Cape

Colony we have, as I shall explain in another chapter, all the

circumstances of parliamentary government. The real Governor is the

Colonial Prime Minister for the time, with just such restraints as

control our Prime Minister at home. Therefore Ceylon and the Cape Colony

are very unlike in their circumstances.

But the likeness is much more potential than the unlikeness. In each

country there is a vast coloured population subject to British

rule,--and a population which is menaced by no danger of coming

extermination. It must always be remembered that the Kafirs are not as

the Maoris. They are increasing now more quickly than ever because,

under our rule, they do not kill each other off in tribal wars. No doubt

the white men are increasing too,--but very slowly; so that it is

impossible not to accept the fact a few white men have to rule a great

number of coloured men, and that that proportion must remain.

A coloured subject of the Queen in the Cape Colony has all the

privileges possessed by a white subject,--all the political privileges.

The elective franchise under which the constituencies elect their

members of Parliament is given under a certain low property

qualification. A labourer who for a year shall have earned £25 in wages

and his diet may be registered as a voter, or if a man shall have held

for a year a house, or land, or land and house conjointly, worth £50, he

may be registered. It is certainly the case that even at present a very

large number of Kafirs might be registered. It has already been

threatened in more than one case that a crowd of Kafirs should be taken

to the poll to carry an election in this or that direction. The Kafirs

themselves understand but little about it,--as yet; but they will come

to understand. The franchise is one which easily admits of a simulated

qualification. It depends on the value of land,--and who is to value it?

If one Kafir were now to swear that he paid another Kafir 10s. a week

and fed him; no registrar would perhaps believe the oath. But it will

not be long before such oath might probably be true, or at any rate

impossible of rejection. The Registrar may himself be a Kafir,--as may

also be the member of Parliament. We have only to look at the Southern

States of the American Union to see how quickly the thing may run when

once it shall have begun to move. With two million and a quarter of

coloured people as against 340,000 white, all endowed with equal

political privileges, why should we not have a Kafir Prime Minister at

Capetown, and a Kafir Parliament refusing to pay salary to any but a

Kafir Governor?

There may be those who think that a Kafir Parliament and a Kafir

Governor would be very good for a Kafir country. I own that I am not one

of them. I look to the civilization of these people, and think that I

see it now being effected by the creation of those wants the desire for

supplying which has since the creation of the world been the one

undeviating path towards material and intellectual progress. I see them

habituating their shoulders to the yoke of daily labour,--as we have all

habituated ours in Europe, and I do not doubt the happiness of the

result. Nor do I care at present to go into the question of a far

distant future. I will not say but that in coming ages a Kafir may make

as good a Prime Minister as Lord Beaconsfield. But he cannot do so

now,--nor in this age,--nor for many ages to come. It will be sufficient

for us if we can make up our minds that at least for the next hundred

years we shall not choose to be ruled by him. But if so, seeing how

greatly preponderating is his number, how are we to deal with him when

he shall have come to understand the meaning of his electoral

privileges, but shall not yet have reached that intellectual equality

with the white man which the more ardent of his friends anticipate for

him? Such are the perils and such the political quagmire among which the

Southern States of the Union are now floundering. In arranging for the

future government of South Africa, whether with, or without, a

Confederation, we should I think be on the alert to guard against

similar perils and a similar quagmire there.

I have now spoken of the Queen’s subjects in the Cape Colony. Then come

on my list as given above the inhabitants of native districts which are

subject to the Cape Colony, either by conquest or by annexation in

accordance with their own wishes. These are so various and scattered

that I can hardly hope to interest my reader in the tribes individually.

The Basutos are probably the most prominent. They are governed by

British magistrates, pay direct and indirect taxes,--are a quiet orderly

people, not given to fighting since the days of their great King

Moshesh, and are about 127,000 in number. Then there are the Damaras and

Namaquas of the Western coast, people allied to the Hottentots, races of

whom no great notice is taken because their land has not yet been good

enough to tempt colonists. But a small proportion of these people as yet

live within electoral districts and therefore at present they have no

votes for members of Parliament. But were any scheme of Confederation

carried out their position would have to be assimilated to that of the

other natives.

The Diamond Fields are in a condition very little like that of South

Africa generally. They are now, so to say, in the act of being made a

portion of the Cape Colony, the bill for this purpose having been passed

only during the last Session. They were annexed to the British Dominions

in 1871, and have been governed since that time by a resident

Sub-Governor under the Governor and High Commissioner of the Cape

Colony. The district will now have a certain allotment of members of

Parliament, but it has not any strong bearing on the question we are

considering. The population of the district is of a shifting nature, the

greater portion of even the coloured people having been drawn there by

the wages offered by capitalists in search of diamonds. The English have

got into the way of calling this territory the Diamond Fields, but its

present proper geographical name is Griqualand West.

We then come to Natal with its little handful of white people,--20,000

Europeans among 320,000 Kafirs and Zulus. Natal at present is under a

separate Governor of its own and a separate form of government. There is

not a Parliament in our sense of the word, but a Legislative Council.

The Executive Officers are responsible to the Governor and not to the

Council. Natal is therefore a Crown Colony, and is not yet afflicted

with any danger from voting natives. I can understand that it should be

brought into a Confederation with other Colonies or Territories under

the same flag without any alteration in its own Constitution,--but in

doing so it must consent to take a very subordinate part. Where there is

a Parliament, and the clamour and energy and strife of parliamentary

life, there will be the power. If there be a Confederation with a

central Congress,--and I presume that such an arrangement is always

intended when Confederation is mentioned,--Natal would demand the right

to elect members. It would choose its own franchise, and might perhaps

continue to shut out the coloured man; but it would be subjected to and

dominated by the Institutions of the Cape Colony, which, as I have

endeavoured to show, are altogether different from its own. The smaller

States are generally those most unwilling to confederate, fearing that

they will be driven to the wall. The founders of the American

Constitution had to give Rhode Island as many Senators as New York

before she would consent to Federation.

There remains the Transvaal, which we have just annexed with its 40,000

Dutchmen and its quarter of a million of native population,--a number

which can only be taken as a rough average and one which will certainly

be greatly exceeded as our borders stretch themselves in their

accustomed fashion. Here again we have for the moment a Crown Colony,

and one which can hardly get itself into working order for Confederation

within the period allowed by the Permissive Bill of last Session. The

other day there was a Dutch Parliament,--or Volksraad,--in which the

Dutchman had protected himself altogether from any voting interference

on the part of the native. Downing Street can make the Transvaal

confederate if she so please, but can hardly do so without causing Dutch

members to be sent up to the general Parliament. Now these Dutchmen do

not talk English, and are supposed to be unwilling to mix with

Englishmen. I fear that many years must pass by before the Transvaal can

become an operative part of an Anglo-South African Confederation.

I have here simply endeavoured to point at the condition of things as

they may affect the question of Confederation;--not as intending to

express an opinion against Confederation generally. I am in doubt

whether a Confederation of the South African States can be carried in

the manner proposed by the Bill. But I feel sure that if such a measure

be carried the chief object in view should be the amelioration of the

coloured races, and that that object cannot be effected by inviting the

coloured races to come to the polls. Voting under a low suffrage would

be quite as appropriate to the people of the Indian Provinces and of

Ceylon as it is at the present moment to the people of South Africa. The

same evil arose in Jamaica and we know what came from it there.

THE CAPE COLONY.

CHAPTER V.

CAPETOWN; THE CAPITAL.

I had always heard that the entrance into Capetown, which is the capital

of the Cape Colony, was one of the most picturesque things to be seen on

the face of the earth. It is a town lying close down on the seashore,

within the circumference of Table Bay so that it has the advantage of an

opposite shore which is always necessary to the beauty of a seashore

town; and it is backed by the Table Mountain with its grand upright

cliffs and the Lion with its head and rump, as a certain hill is called

which runs from the Table Mountain round with a semicircular curve back

towards the sea. The “Lion” certainly put me in mind of Landseer’s

lions, only that Landseer’s lions lie straight. All this has given to

Capetown a character for landscape beauty, which I had been told was to

be seen at its best as you enter the harbour. But as we entered it early

on one Sunday morning neither could the Table Mountain nor the Lion be

seen because of the mist, and the opposite shore, with its hills towards

The Paarl and Stellenbosch, was equally invisible. Seen as I first saw

it Capetown was not an attractive port, and when I found myself standing

at the gate of the dockyard for an hour and a quarter waiting for a

Custom House officer to tell me that my things did not need

examination,--waiting because it was Sunday morning,--I began to think

that it was a very disagreeable place indeed. Twelve days afterwards I

steamed out of the docks on my way eastward on a clear day, and then I

could see what was then to be seen, and I am bound to say that the

amphitheatre behind the place is very grand. But by that time the

hospitality of the citizens had put me in good humour with the city and

had enabled me to forget the iniquity of that sabbatical Custom House

official.

But Capetown in truth is not of itself a prepossessing town. It is hard

to say what is the combination which gives to some cities their peculiar

attraction, and the absence of which makes others unattractive. Neither

cleanliness, nor fine buildings, nor scenery, nor even a look of

prosperity will effect this,--nor will all of them combined always do

so. Capetown is not specially dirty,--but it is somewhat ragged. The

buildings are not grand, but there is no special deficiency in that

respect. The scenery around is really fine, and the multiplicity of

Banks and of Members of Parliament,--which may be regarded as the two

most important institutions the Colonies produce,--seemed to argue

prosperity. But the town is not pleasing to a stranger. It is as I have

said ragged, the roadways are uneven and the pavements are so little

continuous that the walker by night had better even keep the road. I did

not make special enquiry as to the municipality, but it appeared to me

that the officers of that body were not alert. I saw a market out in the

open street which seemed to be rather amusing than serviceable. To this

criticism I do not doubt but that my friends at the Cape will

object;--but when they do so I would ask whether their own opinion of

their own town is not the same as mine. “It is a beastly place you

know,” one Capetown gentleman said to me.

“Oh no!” said I in that tone which a guest is obliged to use when the

mistress of a house speaks ill of anything at her own table. “No, no;

not that.”

But he persisted. “A beastly place,”--he repeated. “But we have plenty

to eat and plenty to drink, and manage to make out life very well. The

girls are as pretty as they are any where else, and as kind;--and the

brandy and water as plentiful.” To the truth of all these praises I bear

my willing testimony,--always setting aside the kindness of the young

ladies of which it becomes no man to boast.

The same thing may be said of so many colonial towns. There seems to be

a keener relish of life than among our steadier and more fastidious folk

at home, with much less to give the relish. So that one is driven to ask

oneself whether advanced Art, mechanical ingenuity, and luxurious modes

of living do after all add to the happiness of mankind. He who has once

possessed them wants to return to them,--and if unable to do so is in a

far worse position than his neighbours. I am therefore disposed to say

that though Capetown as a city is not lovely, the Capetowners have as

good a time of it as the inhabitants of more beautiful capitals.

The population is something over 30,000,--which when we remember that

the place is more than two centuries old and that it is the capital of

an enormous country, and the seat of the colonial legislature, is not

great. Melbourne which is just two hundred years younger than Capetown

contains above a quarter of a million of inhabitants. Melbourne was of

course made what it is by gold;--but then so have there been diamonds to

enhance the growth of Capetown. But the truth, I take it, is that a

white working population will not settle itself at any place where it

will have to measure itself against coloured labour. A walk through the

streets of Capetown is sufficient to show the stranger that he has

reached a place not inhabited by white men,--and a very little

conversation will show him further that he is not speaking with an

English-speaking population. The gentry no doubt are white and speak

English. At any rate the members of Parliament do so, and the clergymen,

and the editors--for the most part, and the good-looking young

ladies;--but they are not the population. He will find that everything

about him is done by coloured persons of various races, who among

themselves speak a language which I am told the Dutch in Holland will

hardly condescend to recognise as their own. Perhaps, as regards labour,

the most valuable race is that of the Malays, and these are the

descendants of slaves whom the early Dutch settlers introduced from

Java. The Malays are so-called Mahommidans, and some are to be seen

flaunting about the town in turbans and flowing robes. These, I

understand, are allowed so to dress themselves as a privilege in reward

for some pious work done,--a journey to Mecca probably. Then there is a

Hottentot admixture, a sprinkling of the Guinea-coast negro, and a

small but no doubt increasing Kafir element. But all this is leavened

and brought into some agreement with European modes of action and

thought by the preponderating influence of Dutch blood. So that the

people, though idle, are not apathetic as savages, nor quite so

indifferent as Orientals. But yet there is so much of the savage and so

much of the oriental that the ordinary Englishman does not come out and

work among them. Wages are high and living, though the prices of

provisions are apt to vary, is not costly. Nor is the climate averse to

European labourers, who can generally work without detriment in regions

outside the tropics. But forty years ago slave labour was the labour of

the country, and the stains, the apathy, the unprofitableness of slave

labour still remain. It had a curse about it which fifty years have not

been able to remove.