On arriving at Pieter Maritzburg I put up for a day or two at the Royal

Hotel which I found to be comfortable enough. I had been told that the

Club was a good club but that it had not accommodation for sleeping. I

arrived late on Saturday evening, and on the Sunday morning I went, of

course, to hear Bishop Colonso preach. Whatever might be the Bishop’s

doctrine, so much at any rate was due to his fame. The most innocent and

the most trusting young believer in every letter of the Old Testament

would have heard nothing on that occasion to disturb a cherished

conviction or to shock a devotional feeling. The church itself was all

that a church ought to be, pretty, sufficiently large and comfortable.

It was, perhaps, not crowded, but was by no means deserted. I had

expected that either nobody would have been there, or else that it would

have been filled to inconvenience,--because of the Bishop’s alleged

heresies. A stranger who had never heard of Bishop Colenso would have

imagined that he had entered a simple church in which the service was

pleasantly performed,--all completed including the sermon within an hour

and a half,--and would have had his special attention only called to the

two facts that one of the clergymen wore lawn sleeves, and that the

other was so singularly like Charles Dickens as to make him expect to

hear the tones of that wonderful voice whenever a verse of the Bible was

commenced.

Pieter Maritzburg is a town covering a large area of ground but is

nevertheless sufficiently built up and perfected to prevent that look of

scattered failure which is so common to colonial embryo cities. I do not

know that it contains anything that can be called a handsome

building;--but the edifices whether public or private are neat,

appropriate, and sufficient. The town is surrounded by hills, and is

therefore, necessarily, pretty. The roadways of the street are good, and

the shops have a look of established business. The first idea of Pieter

Maritzburg on the mind of a visitor is that of success, and this idea

remains with him to the last. It contains only a little more than 4,000

white inhabitants, whereas it would seem from the appearance of the

place, and the breadth and length of the streets, and the size of the

shops, and the number of churches of different denominations, to require

more than double that number of persons to inhabit it. Observation in

the streets, however, will show that the deficiency is made up by

natives, who in fact do all the manual and domestic work of the place.

Their number is given as 2,500; but I am disposed to think that a very

large number come in from the country for their daily occupations in the

town. The Zulu adherents to Pieter Maritzburg are so remarkable that I

must speak separately of them in a separate chapter. The white man in

the capital as in Durban is not the working man, but the master, or

boss, who looks after the working man.

I liked Pieter Maritzburg very much,--perhaps the best of all South

African towns. But whenever I would express such an opinion to a Pieter

Maritzburger he would never quite agree with me. It is difficult to get

a Colonist to assent to any opinion as to his own Colony. If you find

fault, he is injured and almost insulted. The traveller soon learns that

he had better abstain from all spoken criticism, even when that often

repeated, that dreadful question is put to him,--which I was called upon

to answer sometimes four or five times a day,--“Well, Mr. Trollope, what

do you think of----,”--let us say for the moment, “South Africa?” But

even praise is not accepted without contradiction, and the peculiar

hardships of a Colonist’s life are insisted upon almost with indignation

when colonial blessings are spoken of with admiration. The Government at

home is doing everything that is cruel, and the Government in the Colony

is doing everything that is foolish. With whatever interest the

gentleman himself is concerned, that peculiar interest is peculiarly

ill-managed by the existing powers. But for some fatuous maddening law

he himself could make his own fortune and almost that of the Colony. In

Pieter Maritzburg everybody seemed to me very comfortable, but everybody

was ill-used. There was no labour,--though the streets were full of

Zulus, who would do anything for a shilling and half anything for

sixpence. There was no emigration from England provided for by the

country. There were not half soldiers enough in Natal,--though Natal

has luckily had no real use for soldiers since the Dutch went away. But

perhaps the most popular source of complaint was that everything was so

dear that nobody could afford to live. Nevertheless I did not hear that

any great number of the inhabitants of the town were encumbered by debt,

and everybody seemed to live comfortably enough.

“You must begin,” said one lady to me, “by computing that £400 a year in

England means £200 a year here.” To this I demurred before the

lady,--with very little effect, as of course she had the better of me in

the argument. But I demur again here, with better chance of success, as

I have not the lady by to contradict me.

The point is one on which it is very difficult to come to a direct and

positive conclusion. The lady began by appealing to wages, rent, the

price of tea and all such articles as must be imported, the price of

clothes, the material of which must at least be imported, the price of

butter and vegetables, the price of schooling, of medical assistance and

of law, which must be regulated in accordance with the price of the

articles which the schoolmaster, doctors, and lawyers consume,--and the

price of washing. In all such arguments the price of washing is brought

forward as a matter in which the Colonist suffers great hardships. It

must be acknowledged that the washing is dear,--and bad, atrociously

bad;--so bad that the coming home of one’s linen is a season for tears

and wailing. Bread and meat she gave up to me. Bread might be about the

same as in Europe, and meat no doubt in Pieter Maritzburg was to be had

at about half the London prices. She defied me to name another article

of consumption which was not cheaper at home than in the Colony.

I did not care to go through the list with her, though I think that a

London butler costs more than a Zulu boy. I found the matter of wages

paid to native servants to be so inexplicable as to defy my enquiries. A

boy,--that is a Zulu man--would run almost anywhere for a shilling with

a portmanteau on his head. I often heard of 7s. a month as the amount of

wages paid by a farmer,--with a diet exclusively of mealies or of Kafir

corn. And yet housekeepers have told me that they paid £5 and £6 a month

wages for a man, and that they considered his diet to cost them 15s. a

week. In the heat of argument exceptional circumstances are often taken

to prove general statements. You will be assured that the Swiss are the

tallest people in Europe because a Swiss has been found seven feet high.

A man will teach himself to think that he pays a shilling each for the

apples he eats, because he once gave a shilling for an apple in Covent

Garden. The abnormally dear Zulu servants of whom I have heard have been

I think like the giant Swiss and the shilling apple. Taking it all round

I feel sure that Zulu service in Natal is very much cheaper than English

service in England,--that it does not cost the half. I have no doubt

that it is less regular,--but then it is more good humoured, and what it

lacks in comfort is made up in freedom.

But I would not compare items with my friend; nor do I think that any

true result can be reached by such comparison. Comfort in living depends

not so much on the amount of good things which a man can afford to

consume, but on the amount of good things which those with whom he

lives will think that he ought to consume. It may be true,--nay, it

certainly is true,--that for every square foot of house room which a

householder enjoys he pays more in Pieter Maritzburg than a householder

of the same rank and standing pays in London for the same space. But a

professional man, a lawyer let us say, can afford to live, without being

supposed to derogate from his position, in a much smaller house in Natal

than he can in England. It may cost sixpence to wash a shirt in Natal,

and only threepence in England; but if an Englishman be required by the

exacting fastidiousness of his neighbours to put on a clean white shirt

every day, whereas the Natalian can wear a flannel shirt for three days

running, it will be found, I think, that the Natalian will wash his

shirts a penny a day cheaper than the Englishman. A man with a family,

living on £400 a year, cannot entertain his friends very often either in

London or in Pieter Maritzburg;--but, of the two, hospitality is more

within the reach of the latter because the Colonist who dines out

expects much less than the Englishman. We clothe ourselves in broadcloth

instead of fustian because we are afraid of our neighbours, but the

obligation on us is imperative. In a country where it is less so, money

spent in clothing will of course go further. I do not hesitate to say

that a gentleman living with a wife and children on any income

between £400 and £1,000 would feel less of the inconveniences of

poverty in Natal than in England. That he would experience many

drawbacks,--especially in regard to the education of his children,--is

incidental to all colonial life.

I find the following given in a list of prices prevailing at Pieter

Maritzburg in March 1876, and I quote from it as I have seen no list so

general of later date. Meat 6d. per pound. Wheat 13s. per cwt. Turkeys

from 8s. upwards. Fowls 2s. 4d. each. Ham Is. 1d. per lb. Bacon 8d.

Butter, fresh, 1s. 2d. to 1s. 6d. This is an article which often becomes

very much dearer, and is always too bad to be eaten. Coals £3 6s. 8d.

per ton. Good coal could not be bought for this; but coal is never used

in houses. Little fuel is needed except for cooking, and for that wood

is used--quoted at 1s. 4d. per cwt. Potatoes 4s. to 6s. per cwt. Onions

16s. per cwt. A horse can be kept at livery at 17s. 6d. a week. The same

clothes would be dearer in Pieter Maritzburg than in London, but the

same clothes are not worn. I pay £2 2s. for a pair of trowsers in

London. Before I left South Africa I found myself wearing garments that

a liberal tradesman in the Orange Free State, six hundred miles away

from the sea, had sold me for 16s.--although they had been brought ready

made all the way from England. This purchase had not taken place when I

was discussing the matter with the lady, or perhaps I might have been

able to convince her. I bought a hat at the Diamond Fields cheaper than

my friend Scott would sell it me at the corner of Bond Street.

While in Pieter Maritzburg a public dinner was given to which I had the

honour of receiving an invitation. After dinner, as is usual on such

occasions, a great many speeches were made,--which differed very much

from such speeches as are usually spoken at public dinners in England,

by being all worth hearing. I do not know that I ever heard so many

good speeches made before on a so-called festive occasion. I think I may

say that at home the two or three hours after the health of Her Majesty

has been drunk are generally two or three hours of misery,--sometimes

intensified to such a degree as to induce the unfortunate one to fly for

support to the wine which is set before him. I have sometimes fancied

that this has come, not so much from the inability of the speakers to

make good speeches,--because as a rule able men are called upon on such

occasions,--as from a feeling of shame on the part of the orators. They

do not like to seem to wish to shine on an occasion so trivial. The “Nil

admirari” school of sentiment prevails. To be in earnest about anything,

except on a very rare occasion, would almost be to be ridiculous.

Consequently man after man gets up and in a voice almost inaudible

mumbles out a set of platitudes, which simply has the effect of

preventing conversation. Here, at Pieter Maritzburg, I will not say that

every speaker spoke his best. I do not know to what pitch of excellence

they might have risen. But they spoke so that it was a pleasure to hear

them. The health of the Chief Justice was given, and it is a pity that

every word which he used in describing the manner in which he had

endeavoured to do his duty to the public and the bar, and the pleasure

which had pervaded his life because the public had been law-abiding, and

the bar amenable, should not have been repeated in print. Judges at home

have not so much to say about their offices. There was a tradesman

called to his legs with reference to the commerce of Natal who poured

forth such a flood of words about the trade of the Colony as to make me

feel that he ought not to be a tradesman at all. Probably, however, he

has made his fortune, which he might not have done had he become a

member of Parliament. It was here that the gentleman protested against

drinking the health of The Bar at Durban, to the infinite delight of his

hearers. Napier Broome, who was known to many of us in London, is now

Colonial Secretary at Natal. I don’t remember that he ever startled us

by his eloquence at home; but on this occasion he made a speech which if

made after a London public dinner would be a great relief. Everybody had

something to say, and nobody was ashamed to say it.

I found 1,200 British soldiers in Pieter Maritzburg, for the due

ordering of whom there was assembled there the rather large number of

eight or nine Field Officers. But in Natal military matters have had a

stir given to them by the necessity of marching troops up to

Pretoria,--at a terrible cost, and now an additional stir by Zulu

ambition. An Englishman in these parts, when he remembers the almost

insuperable difficulty of getting a sufficient number of men in England

to act as soldiers, when he tells himself what these soldiers cost by

the time they reach their distant billets, and reminds himself that they

are supported by taxes levied on a people who, man for man, are very

much poorer than the Colonists themselves, that they are maintained in

great part out of the beer and tobacco of rural labourers who cannot

earn near as much as many a Kafir,--the Englishman as he thinks of all

this is apt to question the propriety of their being there. He will say

to himself that at any rate the Colony should pay for them. A part of

the cost is paid for by the Colony, but only a small part. In 1876

£4,596 9s. 11d. was so expended, and in 1877 £2,318 2s. 7d.

Other countries, Spain most notoriously and Holland also, have held the

idea that they should use their Colonies as a source of direct wealth to

themselves,--that a portion of the Colonists’ earnings, or findings,

should periodically be sent home to enrich the mother country. England

has disavowed that idea and has thought that the Colonies should be for

the Colonists. She has been contented with the advantage to her own

trade which might come from the creating of new markets for her goods,

and from the increase which accrued to her honour from the spreading of

her language, her laws and her customs about the world. Up to a certain

point she has had to manage the Colonies herself as a mother manages her

child; and while this was going on she had imposed on her the necessary

task of spending Colonial funds, and might spend them on soldiers or

what not as seemed best to her. But when the Colonies have declared

themselves able to manage themselves and have demanded the privilege of

spending their own moneys, then she has withdrawn her soldiers. It has

seemed monstrous to her to have to send those luxuries,--which of all

luxuries are in England the most difficult to be had,--to Colonies which

assume to be able to take care of themselves with their own funds. But

the act of withdrawing them has been very unpopular. New South Wales has

not yet quite forgiven it, nor Tasmania. For a time there was a question

whether it might not drive New Zealand into rebellion. But the soldiers

have been withdrawn,--from all parliamentary Colonies, I think, except

the Cape. Natal is not a parliamentary Colony in the proper sense, and

cannot therefore in this matter be put on quite the same footing as the

Cape Colony. But she spends her own revenues and according to the theory

which prevails on the subject, she should provide for her own defence.

Australia wants no soldiers, nor does New Zealand in spite of the

unsubdued Maoris who are still resident within her borders. They fear no

evil from aboriginal races against which their own strength will not

suffice for them. At the Cape and in Natal it is very different. It has

to be acknowledged, at any rate as to Natal, that an armed European

force in addition to any that the Colony can supply for itself, has to

be maintained for its protection against the black races. But who should

pay the bill? I will not say that assuredly the Colony should do so,--or

else not have the soldiers. What is absolutely necessary in the way of

soldiers must be supplied, whoever pays for them. England will not let

her Colonies be overcome by enemies, black or white, even though she

herself must pay the bill. But it seems to me that a Colony should

either pay its bill or else be ruled from home. I cannot admit that a

Colony is in a position to levy, collect, and spend its own taxes, till

it is in a position to pay for whatever it wants with those taxes. Were

there many Colonies situated as are those of South Africa it would be

impossible for England to continue to send her soldiers for their

protection. In the mean time it is right to say that the Colony keeps a

colonial force of 150 mounted police who are stationed at three

different places in the Colony,--the Capital, Eastcourt, and Greyton.

In these places there are barracks and stables, and the force as far as

it goes is very serviceable.

The Colony is governed by a Lieutenant-Governor,--who however is not in

truth Lieutenant to any one but simply bears that sobriquet, and an

Executive Council consisting I think of an uncertain number. There is a

Colonial Secretary, a Secretary for Native Affairs, a Treasurer, and an

Attorney-General. The Commandant of the Forces is I think also called to

the Council, and the Superintendent of Public Works. The Governor is

impowered also to invite two members of the Legislative Council. They

meet as often as is found necessary and in fact govern the Colony. Laws

are of course passed by the Legislative Council of twenty-eight members,

of which, as I have stated before, fifteen are elected and thirteen

nominated. New laws are I think always initiated by the Government, and

the action of the Council, if hostile to the Government, is confined to

repudiating propositions made by the Government. But the essential

difference between such a government as that of Natal, and parliamentary

government such as prevails in Canada, the Australias, New Zealand and

in the Cape Colony, consists in this--that the Prime Minister in these

self-governing Colonies is the responsible head of affairs and goes in

and out in accordance with a parliamentary majority, as do our Ministers

at home; whereas in Natal the Ministers remain in,--or go out if they do

go out,--at the dictation of the Crown. Though the fifteen elective

members in Natal were to remain hostile to the Government on every point

year after year, there would be no constitutional necessity to change a

single Minister of the Colony. The Crown,--or Governor,--would still

govern in accordance with its or his prevailing ideas. There might be a

deadlock about money. There might be much that would be disagreeable.

But the Governor would be responsible for the government, and no one

would necessarily come in or go out. Such a state of things, however, is

very improbable in a Colony in which the Crown nominates so great a

minority as thirteen members out of a Chamber of twenty-eight. It is not

probable that the fifteen elected members will combine themselves

together to create a difficulty.

In 1876 the Revenue of the Colony was £265,551. In 1846 it was only

£3,095. In 1876 the expenditure was £261,933. What was the expenditure

in 1846 I do not know, but certainly more than the Revenue,--as has

often been the case since. The Colony owes an old funded debt of

£331,700, and it has now borrowed or is in the act of borrowing

£1,200,000 for its railways. The borrowed money will no doubt all be

expended on public works. When a country has but one harbour, and that

harbour has such a sandbank as the bar at Durban, it has to spend a

considerable sum of money before it can open the way for its commerce.

Upon the whole it may be said that the financial affairs of the Colony

are now in a good condition.

When I had been a day or two in the place the Governor was kind enough

to ask me to his house and extended his hospitality by inviting me to

join him in an excursion which he was about to make through that portion

of his province which lies to the immediate North of Pieter Maritzburg,

and thence, eastward, down the coast through the sugar districts to

Durban. It was matter of regret to me that my arrangements were too far

fixed to enable me to do all that he suggested; but I had a few days at

my disposal and I was very glad to take the opportunity of seeing, under

such auspices, as much as those few days would allow. An active Colonial

Governor will be so often on the move as to see the whole of the

territory confided to his care and to place himself in this way within

the reach of almost every Colonist who may wish to pay his respects or

may have ought of which to complain. This is so general that Governors

are very often away from home, making semi-regal tours through their

dominions, not always very much to their own comfort, but greatly to the

satisfaction of the male Colonist who always likes to see the

Governor,--very much indeed to the satisfaction of the lady Colonist who

likes the Governor to call upon her.

Upon such occasions everything needed upon the road has to be carried,

as, except in towns, no accommodation can be found for the Governor and

his suite. In Natal for instance I imagine that Durban alone would be

able to put the Governor up with all his followers. He lives as he goes

under canvas, and about a dozen tents are necessary. Such at least was

the case on this trip. Cooks, tentpitchers, butlers, guards,

aides-de-camp, and private secretary are all necessary. The progress was

commenced by the despatch of many waggons with innumerable oxen. Then

there followed a mule waggon in which those men were supposed to sit who

did not care to remain long on horseback. While I remained the mule

waggon was I think presided over by the butler and tenanted by his

satellites, the higher persons preferring the more animated life of the

saddle. I had been provided with a remarkably strong little nag, named

Toby Tub, who seemed to think nothing of sixteen stone for six or seven

hours daily and who would canter along for ever if not pressed beyond

eight miles an hour. The mode of our progress was thus;--as the slow

oxen made their journeys of twelve or fourteen miles a day the Governor

deviated hither and thither to the right and the left, to this village

or to that church, or to pay a visit to some considerable farmer; and

thus we would arrive at the end of our day’s journey by the time the

tents were pitched,--or generally before. There was one young officer

who used to shoot ahead about three in the afternoon, and it seemed that

everything in the way of comfort depended on him. My own debt of

gratitude to him was very great, as he let me have his own peculiar

indiarubber tub every morning before he used it himself. Tubbing on such

occasions is one of the difficulties, as the tents cannot be pitched

quite close to the spruits, or streams, and the tubs have to be carried

to the water instead of the water to the tubs. Bathing would be

convenient, were it not that the bather is apt to get out of a South

African spruit much more dirty than he went into it. I bathed in various

rivers during my journey, but I did not generally find it satisfactory.

We rode up to many farms at which we were of course received with the

welcome due to the Governor, and where in the course of the interview

most of the material facts as to the farmer’s enterprise,--whether on

the whole he had been successful or the reverse, and to what cause his

success or failure had been owing,--would come out in conversation. An

English farmer at home would at once resent the questionings which to a

Colonial farmer are a matter of course. The latter is conscious that he

has been trying an experiment and that any new comer will be anxious to

know the result. He has no rent to pay and does not feel that his

condition ought to remain a secret between him and his landlord alone.

One man whom we saw had come from the East Riding of Yorkshire more than

twenty years ago, and was now the owner of 1,200 acres,--which however

in Natal is not a large farm. But he was well located as to land, and

could have cultivated nearly the whole had labour been abundant enough,

and cheap enough. He was living comfortably with a pleasant wife and

well-to-do children, and regaled us with tea and custard. His house was

comfortable, and everything no doubt was plentiful with him. But he

complained of the state of things and would not admit himself to be well

off. O fortunati nimium sua si bona norint Agricolæ. He had no rent to

pay. That was true. But there were taxes,--abominable taxes. This was

said with a side look at the Governor. And as for labour,--there was no

making a Zulu labour. Now you could get a job done, and now you

couldn’t. How was a man to grow wheat in such a state of things, and

that, too, with the rust so prevalent? Yes;--he had English neighbours

and a school for the children only a mile and a half off. And the land

was not to say bad. But what with the taxes and what with the Zulus,

there were troubles more than enough. The Governor asked, as I thought

at the moment indiscreetly, but the result more than justified the

question,--whether he had any special complaint to make. He had paid the

dog tax on his dogs,--5s. a dog, I think it was;--whereas some of his

neighbours had escaped the imposition! There was nothing more. And in

the midst of all this the man’s prosperity and comfort were leaking out

at every corner. The handsome grown-up daughter was telling me of the

dancing parties around to which she went, and there were the pies and

custards all prepared for the family use and brought out at a moment’s

notice. There were the dining room and drawing room, well furnished and

scrupulously clean,--and lived in, which is almost more to the purpose.

There could be no doubt that our Yorkshire friend had done well with

himself in spite of the Zulus and the dog tax.

An Englishman, especially an English farmer, will always complain, where

a Dutchman or a German will express nothing but content. And yet the

Englishman will probably have done much more to secure his comfort than

any of his neighbours of another nationality. An English farmer in Natal

almost always has a deal flooring to his living rooms; while a Dutchman

will put up with the earth beneath his feet. The one is as sure to be

the case as the other. But the Dutchman rarely grumbles,--or if he

grumbles it is not at his farm. He only wants to be left alone, to live

as he likes on his earthen floor as his fathers lived before him, and

not to be interfered with or have advice given to him by any one.

In the course of our travels we came to a German village,--altogether

German, and were taken by the Lutheran parson to see the Lutheran church

and Lutheran school. They were both large and betokened a numerous

congregation. That such a church should have been built and a clergyman

supported was evidence of the possession of considerable district funds.

I am not sure but that I myself was more impressed by the excellence of

the Lutheran oranges, grown on the spot. It was very hot and the pastor

gave us oranges just picked from his own garden to refresh us on our

journey. I never ate better oranges. But an orange to be worth eating

should always be just picked from the tree.

Afterwards as we went on we came to Hollanders, Germans, Dutchmen, and

Englishmen, all of whom were doing well, though most of them complained

that they could not grow corn as they would wish to do because the

natives would not work. The Hollander and the Dutchman in South Africa

are quite distinct persons. The Hollander is a newly arrived emigrant

from Holland, and has none of the Boer peculiarities, of which I shall

have to speak when I come to the Transvaal and the Free State. The

Dutchman is the descendant of the old Dutch Colonist, and when living on

his farm is called a Boer,--the word having the same signification as

husbandman with us. It flavours altogether of the country and country

pursuits, but would never be applied to any one who worked for wages.

They are rare in the part of the country we were then visiting, having

taken themselves off, as I have before explained, to avoid English rule.

There is however a settlement of them still left in the northern part

of the Colony, about the Klip River and in Weenen.

One Hollander whom we visited was very proud indeed of what he had done

in the way of agriculture and gave us, not only his own home-grown

oranges, but also his own home-grown cigars. I had abandoned smoking,

perhaps in prophetical anticipation of some such treat as this. Others

of the party took the cigars,--which, however, were not as good as the

oranges. This man had planted many trees, and had done marvels with the

land round his house. But the house itself was deficient,--especially in

the article of flooring.

Then we came to a German farmer who had planted a large grove about his

place, having put down some thousands of young trees. Nothing can be

done more serviceable to the country at large than the planting of

trees. Though there is coal in the Colony it is not yet accessible,--nor

can be for many years because of the difficulty of transport. The land

is not a forest-land,--like Australia. It is only on the courses of the

streams that trees grow naturally and even then the growth is hardly

more than that of shrubs. Firewood is consequently very dear, and all

the timber used in building is imported. But young trees when planted

almost always thrive. It has seemed to me that the Governments of South

Africa should take the matter in hand,--as do the Governments of the

Swiss Cantons and of the German Duchies, which are careful that timber

shall be reproduced as it is cut down. In Natal it should be produced;

and Nature, though she has not given the country trees, has manifestly

given it the power of producing them. The German gentleman was full of

the merits of the country, freely admitting his own success, and

mitigating in some degree the general expressions against the offending

Native. He could get Zulus to work--for a consideration. But he was of

opinion that pastoral pursuits paid better than agriculture.

We came to another household of mixed Germans and Dutch, where we

received exactly the same answers to our enquiries. Farming answered

very well,--but cattle or sheep were the articles which paid. A man

should only grow what corn he wanted for himself and his stock. A farmer

with 6,000 acres, which is the ordinary size of a farm, should not

plough at the most above 40 acres,--just the patches of land round his

house. For simply agricultural purposes 6,000 acres would of course be

unavailable. The farming capitalists in England who single-handed plough

6,000 acres might probably be counted on the ten fingers. In Natal,--and

in South Africa generally,--when a farm is spoken of an area is

signified large enough for pastoral purposes. This may be all very well

for the individual farmer, but it is not good for a new country, such as

are the greater number of our Colonies. In Australia the new coming

small farmer can purchase land over the heads of the pastoral Squatters

who are only tenants of the land under Government. But in South Africa

the fee of the land has unfortunately been given away.

On many of these farms we found that Zulus had “locations.” A small

number,--perhaps four or five families,--had been allowed to make a

kraal,--or native village,--on condition that the men would work for

wages. The arrangement is not kept in any very strict way, but is felt

to be convenient by farmers who have not an antipathy to the Zulus. The

men will work, unless they are particularly anxious just then to be

idle;--which is, I think, as much as can be expected from them just at

present. Throughout this country there are other “locations”--very much

larger in extent of land and numerously inhabited,--on which the Natives

reside by their own right, the use of the soil having been given to them

by the Government.

At Greyton the capital of the district I met an English farmer, a

gentleman living at a little distance whose residence and station I did

not see, and found him boiling over with grievances. He found me walking

about the little town at dawn, and took out of his pocket a long letter

of complaint, addressed to some one in authority, which he insisted on

reading to me. It was a general accusation against the Zulus and all

those who had the management of the Zulus. He was able to do nothing

because of the injuries which the vagabond Natives inflicted upon him.

He would not have had a Zulu near him if he could have helped it. I

could not but wish that he might be deserted by Zulus altogether for a

year,--so that he might have to catch his own horse, and kill his own

sheep, and clean his own top boots--in which he was dressed when he

walked about the streets of Greyton that early morning reading to my

unwilling ears his long letter of complaint.

At his camp in the neighbourhood of Greyton I bade adieu to the

Governor and his companions and went back to Pieter Maritzburg by the

mail cart. I had quite convinced myself that the people whom I had seen

during my little tour had done well in settling themselves in Natal, and

had prospered as Colonists, in spite of the dog tax and the wickedness

of the Zulus to the unfortunate owner of the top boots.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE ZULUS.

Upon entering Natal we exchange the Kafir for the Zulu,--who conceives

himself to be a very superior sort of man--not as being equal to the

white man whom he reverences, but as being greatly above the other black

races around him. And yet he is not a man of ancient blood, or of long

established supremacy. In the early part of this century,--beyond which

I take it Zulu history goeth not,--there was a certain chief of the

Zulus whom we have spoken of as King Chaka. To spell the name aright

there should be a T before the C, and an accent to mark the peculiar

sound in the Kafir language which is called a click. To the uninstructed

English ear Chaka will be intelligible and sufficient. He was King of

the Zulus, but the tribe was not mighty before his time. He was a great

warrior and was brave enough and gradually strong enough to “eat up” all

the tribes around him; and then, according to Kafir fashion, the tribes

so eaten amalgamated themselves with the eaters, and the Zulus became a

great people. But Chaka was a bloody tyrant and if the stories told be

true was nearly as great an eater of his own people as of his enemies.

In his early days the territory which we now call Natal was not

inhabited by Zulus but by tribes which fell under his wrath, and which

he either exterminated or assimilated,--which at any rate he “ate up.”

Then the Zulus flocked into the land, and hence the native population

became a Zulu people. But Zulu-land proper, with which we Britons have

no concern and where the Zulus live under an independent king of their

own, is to the North of Natal, lying between the Colony and the

Portuguese possession called Delagoa Bay.

It may be as well to say here a few words about the Zulus on their own

land. I did not visit their country and am not therefore entitled to say

much, but from what I learned I have no doubt that had I visited the

nation I should have been received with all courtesy at the Court of his

dreaded Majesty King Cetywayo,--who at this moment, January, 1878, is I

fear our enemy. The spelling of this name has become settled, but

Cetch-way-o is the pronunciation which shews the speaker to be well up

in his Zulu. King Chaka, who made all the conquests, was murdered by his

brother Dingaan[16] who then reigned in his stead. Dingaan did not add

much territory to the territories of his tribe as Chaka had done, but he

made himself known and probably respected among his Zulu subjects by

those horrible butcheries of the Dutch pioneers of which I have spoken

in my chapter on the early history of the Colony. The name of Dingaan

then became dreadful through the land. It was not only that he

butchered the Dutch, but that he maintained his authority and the dread

of his name by the indiscriminate slaughter of his own people. If the

stories told be true, he was of all South African Savages the most

powerful and the most savage. But as far as I can learn English

missionaries were safe in Zulu-land even in Dingaan’s time.

Then Dingaan was murdered and his brother Panda became Chief. Neither

Chaka or Dingaan left sons, and there is extant a horrible story to the

effect that they had their children killed as soon as born, thinking

that a living son would be the most natural enemy to a reigning father.

Panda was allowed to live and reign, and seems to have been a fat

do-nothing good-natured sort of King,--for a Zulu. He died some years

since,--in his bed if he had one,--and now his son Cetywayo reigns in

his stead.

Cetywayo has certainly a bad reputation generally, though he was till

quite lately supposed to be favourable to the English as opposed to the

Dutch. When dealing with the troubles of the Transvaal I shall have to

say something of him in that respect. He has probably been the indirect

cause of the annexation of that country. In Natal there are two opinions

about the Zulu monarch. As the white man generally dislikes the black

races by whom he is surrounded and troubled in South Africa,--not averse

by any means to the individual with whom he comes in immediate contact,

but despising and almost hating the people,--Cetywayo and his subjects

are as a rule evil spoken of among the Europeans of the adjacent

Colony. He is accused of murdering his people right and left according

to his caprices. That is the charge brought against him. But it is

acknowledged that he does not murder white people, and I am not at all

sure that there is any conclusive evidence of his cruelty to the blacks.

He has his white friends as I have said, and although they probably go a

little too far in whitewashing him, I am inclined to believe them when

they assert that the spirit of European clemency and abhorrence from

bloodshed has worked its way even into the Zulu Court and produced a

respect for life which was unknown in the days of Chaka and Dingaan. It

is no doubt the case that some of the missionaries who had been settled

in Zulu-land have in the year that is last past,--1877,--left the

country as though in a panic. I presume that the missionaries have gone

because two or three of their converts were murdered. Two or three

certainly have been murdered, but I doubt whether it was done by order

of the Chief. The converts have as a rule been safe,--as have the

missionaries,--not from any love borne to them by Cetywayo, but because

Cetywayo has thought them to be protected by English influence. Cetywayo

has hitherto been quite alive to the expediency of maintaining peace

with his white neighbours in Natal, though he could afford to despise

his Dutch neighbours in the Transvaal. It has yet to be seen whether we

shall be able to settle questions as to a line of demarcation between

himself and us in the Transvaal without an appeal to force.

When I was at Pieter Maritzburg a young lady who was much interested in

the welfare of the Zulus and who had perhaps a stronger belief in the

virtues of the black people than in the justice of the white, read to me

a diary which had just been made by a Zulu who had travelled from Natal

into Zulu-land to see Cetywayo, and had returned not only in safety but

with glowing accounts of the King’s good conduct to him. The diary was

in the Zulu language and my young friend, if I may call her so, shewed

her perfect mastery over that and her mother tongue by the way in which

she translated it for me. That the diary was an excellent literary

production, and that it was written by the Zulu in an extremely good

running hand, containing the narrative of his journey from day to day in

a manner quite as interesting as many published English journals, are

certainly facts. How far it was true may be a matter of doubt. The lady

and her family believed it entirely,--and they knew the man well. The

bulk of the white inhabitants of Pieter Maritzburg would probably not

have believed a word of it. I believed most of it, every now and then

arousing the gentle wrath of the fair reader by casting a doubt upon

certain details. The writer of the journal was present, however,

answering questions as they were asked; and, as he understood and spoke

English, my doubts could only be expressed when he was out of the room.

“There is a touch of romance there,” I would say when he had left us

alone. “Wasn’t that put in specially for you and your father?” I asked

as to another passage. But she was strong in support of her Zulu, and

made me feel that I should like to have such an advocate if ever

suspected myself.

The personal adventures of the narrator and the literary skill displayed

were perhaps the most interesting features of the narrative;--but the

purport was to defend the character of Cetywayo. The man had been told

that being a Christian and an emissary from Natal he would probably be

murdered if he went on to the Chief’s Kraal; but he had persevered and

had been brought face to face with the King. Then he had made his

speech. “I have come, O King, to tell you that your friend Langalibalele

is safe.” For it was supposed in Zulu-land that Langalibalele, who shall

have the next chapter of this volume devoted to him, had been made away

with by the English. At this the King expressed his joy and declared his

readiness to receive his friend into his kingdom, if the Queen of

England would so permit. “But, O King,” continued the audacious herald,

“why have you sent away the missionaries, and why have you murdered the

converts? Tell me this, O King, because we in Natal are very unhappy at

the evil things which are said of you.” Then the King, with great

forbearance and a more than British absence of personal tyranny,

explained his whole conduct. He had not sent the missionaries away. They

were stupid people, not of much use to any one as he thought, who had

got into a fright and had gone. He had always been good to them;--but

they had now run away without even the common civility of saying

good-bye. He seemed to be very bitter because they had “trekked” without

even the ceremony of leaving a P.P.C. card. He had certainly not sent

them away; but as they had left his dominions after that fashion they

had better not come back again. As for the murders he had had nothing

to do with them. There was a certain difficulty in ruling his subjects,

and there would be bad men and violent men in his kingdom,--as in

others. Two converts and two only had been murdered and he was very

sorry for it. As for making his people Christians he thought it would be

just as well that the missionaries should make the soldiers in Pieter

Maritzburg Christians before they came to try their hand upon the Zulus.

I own I thought that the highly polished black traveller who was sitting

before me must have heard the last little sarcasm among his white

friends in Natal and had put the sharp words into the King’s mouth for

effect. “I think,” said my fair friend, “that Cetywayo had us there,”

intending in her turn to express an opinion that the poor British

soldier who makes his way out to the Colony is not always all that he

should be. I would not stop to explain that the civilization of the

white and black men may go on together, and that Cetywayo need not

remain a Savage because a soldier is fond of his beer.

Such was the gist of the diary,--which might probably be worth

publishing as shewing something of the manners of the Zulus, and

something also of the feeling of these people towards the English.

Zulu-land is one of the problems which have next to be answered. Let my

reader look at his map. Natal is a British Colony;--so is now the

Transvaal. The territory which he will see marked as Basuto Land has

been annexed to the Cape Colony. Kafraria, which still nominally belongs

to the natives, is almost annexed. The Kafrarian problem will soon be

solved in spite of Kreli. But Zulu-land, surrounded as it is by British

Colonies and the Portuguese settlement at Delagoa Bay, is still a native

country,--in which the king or chief can live by his own laws and do as

his soul lusts. I am very far from recommending an extension of British

interference; but if I know anything of British manners and British

ways, there will be British interference in Zulu-land before long.

In the meantime our own Colony of Natal is peopled with Zulus whom we

rule, not very regularly, but on the whole with success. They are, to my

thinking, singularly amenable; and though I imagine they would vote us

out of the country if a plebiscite were possible, they are individually

docile and well-mannered, and as Savages are not uncomfortable

neighbours. That their condition as a people has been improved by the

coming of the white man there can be no doubt. I will put out of

consideration for a moment the peculiar benefits of Christianity which

have not probably reached very many of them, and will speak only of the

material advantages belonging to this world. The Zulu himself says of

himself that he can now sleep with both eyes shut and both ears,

whereas, under tribal rule, it was necessary that he should ever have

one eye open and one ear, ready for escape. He can earn wages if he

pleases. He is fed regularly, whereas it was his former fate,--as it is

of all Savages and wild beasts,--to vacillate between famine and a

gorge. He can occupy land and know it for his own, so that no Chief

shall take away his produce. If he have cattle he can own them in

safety. He cannot be “smelt out” by the witchfinder and condemned, so

that his wealth be confiscated. He is subjected no doubt to thraldom,

but not to tyranny. To the savage subject there is nothing so terrible

as the irresponsible power of a savage ruler. A Dingaan is the same as a

Nero,--a ruler whose heart becomes impregnated by power with a lust for

blood. “No emperor before me,” said Nero, “has known what an emperor

could do.” And so said Dingaan. Cetywayo would probably have said the

same and done the same had he not been checked by English influences.

The Zulu of Natal knows well what it is to have escaped from such

tyranny.

He is a thrall, and must remain so probably for many a year to come. I

call a man a thrall when he has to be bound by laws in the making of

which he has no voice and is subject to legislators whom he does not

himself choose. But the thraldom though often irrational and sometimes

fantastic is hardly ever cruel. The white British ruler who is always

imperious,--and who is often irrational and sometimes fantastic,--has

almost always at his heart an intention to do good. He has a conscience

in the matter--with rare exceptions, and though he may be imperious and

fantastic, is not tyrannical. He rules the Zulu after a fashion which to

a philanthropist or to a stickler for the rights of man, is abominable.

He means to be master, and knowing the nature of the Zulu, he stretches

his power. He cannot stand upon scruples or strain at gnats. If a blow

will do when a word has not served he gives the blow,--though the blow

probably be illegal. There are certain things which he is entitled to

demand, certain privileges which he is entitled to exact; but he cannot

stop himself for a small trifle. There are twenty thousand whites to be

protected amidst three hundred thousand blacks, with other hundreds of

thousands crowding around without number, and he has to make the Zulu

know that he is master. And he quite understands that he has to keep the

philanthropist and Exeter Hall,--perhaps even Downing Street and

Printing House Square,--a little in the dark as to the way he does it.

But he is not wilfully cruel to the Zulu, and not often really unkind.

I was riding, when in Natal, over a mountain with a gentleman high in

authority when we met a Zulu with his assegai and knobkirrie.[17] It is

still the custom of a Zulu to carry with him his assegai and knobkirrie,

though the assegai is unlawful wherever he may be, and the knobkirrie is

forbidden in the towns. My companion did not know the Zulu, but found it

necessary, for some official reason, to require the man’s presence on

the following morning at the place from which we had ridden, which was

then about ten miles distant. The purport of the required attendance I

now forget,--if I ever knew it,--but it had some reference to the

convenience of the party of which I made one. The order was given and

the Zulu, assenting, was passing on. But a sudden thought struck my

companion. He spoke a word in the native tongue desiring that the

assegai and knobkirrie might be given up to him. With a rueful look the

weapons were at once surrendered and the unarmed Zulu passed on. “He

knows that I do not know him,” said my companion, “and would not come

unless I had a hold upon him;”--meaning that the Zulu would surely come

to redeem his assegai and knobkirrie.

Then I enquired into this practice, and perhaps expostulated a little.

“What would you have done,” I asked, “if the man had refused to give up

his property?” “Such a thing has never yet occurred to me,” said the

gentleman in authority. “When it does I will tell you.” But again I

remonstrated. “The things were his own, and why should they have been

taken away from him?” The gentleman in authority smiled, but another of

our party remarked that the weapons were illegal, and that the

confiscation of them was decidedly proper. But the knobkirrie on the

mountain side was not illegal, and even the assegai was to be restored

when the man shewed himself at the appointed place. They were not taken

because they were illegal, but as surety for the man’s return. I did not

press the question, but I fear that I was held to have enquired too

curiously on a matter which did not concern me. I thought that it

concerned me much, for it told me plainer than could any spoken

description how a savage race is ruled by white men.

The reader is not to suppose that I think that the assegai and

knobkirrie should not have been taken from the man. On the other hand I

think that my companion knew very well what he was about, and that the

Zulu generally is lucky to have such men in the land. I say again that

we must have resort to such practices, or that we must leave the

country. But I have told the tale because it exemplifies what I say as

to the manner in which savage races are ruled by us. We were all

shocked the other day because an Indian servant was struck by a white

master, and died from the effects of the blow. The man’s death was an

unfortunate accident which probably caused extreme anguish to the

striker, but cannot be said to have increased at all the criminality of

his act. The question is how far a white master is justified in striking

a native servant. The idea of so doing is to us at home abominable;--but

I fear that we must believe that it is too common in India to create

disgust. It is much the same in Zulu-land. Something is done

occasionally which should not be done, but the rule generally is

beneficent.

Of all the towns in South Africa Pieter Maritzburg is the one in which

the native element is the most predominant. It is not only that the

stranger there sees more black men and women in the streets than

elsewhere, but that the black men and women whom he sees are more

noticeable. While I was writing of “The Colony,” as the Cape Colony is

usually called in South Africa, I spoke of Kafirs. Now I am speaking of

Zulus,--a comparatively modern race of savages as I have already said. I

have seen a pedigree of Chaka their king, but his acknowledged ancestors

do not go back far. Chaka became a great man, and the Zulus swallowed

all the remainder of the conquered tribes, and became so dominant that

they have given their name to the natives of this part of the continent.

The Zulus as seen in Maritzburg are certainly a peculiar people, and

very picturesque. I have said of the Kafir that he is always dressed

when seen in town, but that he is dressed like an Irish beggar. I

should have added, however, that he always wears his rags with a grace.

The Zulu rags are perhaps about equal to the Kafir rags in raggedness,

but the Zulu grace is much more excellent than the Kafir grace. Whatever

it be that the Zulu wears he always looks as though he had chosen that

peculiar costume, quite regardless of expense, as being the one mode of

dress most suitable to his own figure and complexion. The rags are

there, but it seems as though the rags have been chosen with as much

solicitude as any dandy in Europe gives to the fit and colour of his

raiment. When you see him you are inclined to think, not that his

clothes are tattered, but “curiously cut,”--like Catherine’s gown. One

fellow will walk erect with an old soldier’s red coat on him and nothing

else, another will have a pair of knee breeches and a flannel shirt

hanging over it. A very popular costume is an ordinary sack, inverted,

with a big hole for the head, and smaller holes for the arms, and which

comes down below the wearer’s knees. This is serviceable and decent, and

has an air of fashion about it too as long as it is fairly clean. Old

grey great coats with brass buttons, wherever they may come from, are in

request, and though common always seem to confer dignity. A shirt and

trowsers worn threadbare, so ragged as to seem to defy any wearer to

find his way into them, will assume a peculiar look of easy comfort on

the back and legs of a Zulu. An ordinary flannel shirt, with nothing

else, is quite sufficient to make you feel that the black boy who is

attending you, is as fit to be brought into any company as a powdered

footman. And then it is so cheap a livery! and over and above their

dress they always wear ornaments. The ornaments are peculiar, and might

be called poor, but they never seem amiss. We all know at home the

detestable appearance of the vulgar cad who makes himself odious with

chains and pins,--the Tittlebat Titmouse from the counter. But when you

see a Zulu with his ornaments you confess to yourself that he has a

right to them. As with a pretty woman at home, whose attire might be

called fantastic were it not fashionable, of whom we feel that as she

was born to be beautiful, graceful, and idle, she has a right to be a

butterfly,--and that she becomes and justifies the quaint trappings

which she selects, so of the Zulu do we acknowledge that he is warranted

by the condition of his existence in adorning his person as he pleases.

Load him with bangle, armlet, ear-ring and head-dress to any extent, and

he never looks like a hog in armour. He inserts into the lobes of his

ears trinkets of all sorts,--boxes for the conveyance of his snuff and

little delights, and other pendants as though his ears had been given to

him for purposes of carriage. Round his limbs he wears round shining

ornaments of various material, brass, ivory, wood and beads. I once took

from off a man’s arm a section of an elephant’s tooth which he had

hollowed, and the remaining rim of which was an inch and a half thick.

This he wore, loosely slipping up and down and was apparently in no way

inconvenienced by it. Round their heads they tie ribbons and bandelets.

They curl their crisp hair into wonderful shapes. I have seen many as to

whom I would at first have sworn that they had supplied themselves with

miraculous wigs made by miraculous barbers. They stick quills and bones

and bits of wood into their hair, always having an eye to some peculiar

effect. They will fasten feathers to their back hair which go waving in

the wind. I have seen a man trundling a barrow with a beautiful green

wreath on his brow, and have been convinced at once that for the proper

trundling of a barrow a man ought to wear a green wreath. A Zulu will

get an old hat,--what at home we call a slouch hat,--some hat probably

which came from the corner of Bond Street and Piccadilly three or four

years ago, and will knead it into such shapes that all the

establishments of all the Christys could not have done the like. The

Zulu is often slow, often idle, sometimes perhaps hopelessly useless,

but he is never awkward. The wonderfully pummelled hat sits upon him

like a helmet upon Minerva or a furred pork pie upon a darling in Hyde

Park in January. But the Zulu at home in his own country always wears on

his head the “isicoco,” or head ring, a shining black coronet made hard

with beaten earth and pigments,--earth taken from the singular ant hills

of the country,--which is the mark of his rank and virility and to

remove which would be a stain.

I liked the Zulu of the Natal capital very thoroughly. You have no cabs

there,--and once when in green ignorance I had myself carried from one

end of the town to another in a vehicle, I had to pay 10s. 6d. for the

accommodation. But the Zulu, ornamented and graceful as he is, will

carry your portmanteau on his head all the way for sixpence. Hitherto

money has not become common in Natal as in British Kafraria, and the

Zulu is cheap. He will hold your horse for you for an hour, and not

express a sense of injury if he gets nothing;--but for a silver

threepence he will grin at you with heartfelt gratitude. Copper I

believe he will not take,--but copper is so thoroughly despised in the

Colony that no one dares to shew it. At Maritzburg I found that I could

always catch a Zulu at a moment’s notice to do anything. At the hotel or

the club, or your friend’s house you signify to some one that you want a

boy, and the boy is there at once. If you desired him to go a journey of

200 miles to the very boundary of the Colony, he would go instantly, and

be not a whit surprised. He will travel 30 or 40 miles in the

twenty-four hours for a shilling a day, and will assuredly do the

business confided to him. Maritzburg is 55 miles from Durban and an

acquaintance told me that he had sent down a very large wedding cake by

a boy in 24 hours. “But if he had eaten it?” I asked. “His Chief would

very soon have eaten him,” was the reply.

But there is a drawback to all these virtues. A Zulu will sometimes

cross your path with so strong an injury to your nose as almost to make

you ill. I have been made absolutely sick by the entrance of a

good-natured Zulu into my bedroom of a morning, when he has come near me

in his anxiety about my boots or my hot water. In this respect he is

more potent than any of his brethren of the negro race who have come in

my way. Why it is or whence I am unable to say, or how it comes to pass

that now and again there is one who will almost knock you down, while a

dozen others shall cross you leaving no more than a mere flavour of

Zuluism on your nasal organs. I do not think that dirt has anything to

do with it. They are a specially clean people, washing themselves often

and using soap with a bountiful liberality unknown among many white men.

As the fox who leaves to the hounds the best scent is always the fox in

the strongest health, so I fancy is it with the Zulu,--whereas dirt is

always unhealthy. But there is the fact; and any coming visitor to Natal

had better remember it, and be on his guard.

Almost all domestic service is done by the Zulu or Kafir race in Natal.

Here and there may be found a European servant,--a head waiter at an

hotel, or a nurse in a lady’s family, or a butler in the establishment

of some great man. But all menial work is as a rule done by the natives

and is done with fidelity. I cannot say that they are good servants at

all points. They are slow, often forgetful, and not often impressed with

any sense of awe as to their master, who cannot eat them up or kill them

as a black master might do. But they are good-humoured, anxious to

oblige, offended at nothing, and extremely honest. Their honesty is so

remarkable that the white man falls unconsciously into the habit of

regarding them in reference to theft as he would a dog. A dog, unless

very well mannered, would take a bit of meat, and a Zulu boy might help

himself to your brandy if it was left open within his reach. But your

money, your rings, your silver forks, and your wife’s jewels,--if you

have a wife and she have jewels,--are as safe with a Zulu servant as

with a dog. The feeling that it is so comes even to the stranger after

a short sojourn in the land. I was travelling through the country by a

mail cart, and had to stay at a miserable wayside hut which called

itself an hotel, with eight or ten other passengers. Close at hand, not

a hundred yards from the door, were pitched the tents of a detachment of

soldiers, who were being marched up to the border between Natal and the

Transvaal. Everybody immediately began to warn his neighbour as to his

property because of the contiguity of the British soldier. But no one

ever warns you to beware of a Zulu thief though the Zulus swarm round

the places at which you stop. I found myself getting into a habit of

trusting a Zulu just as I would trust a dog.

I have already said something of Zulu labour when speaking of the sugar

districts round Durban. It is the question upon which the prosperity of

South Africa and the civilization of the black races much depend. If a

man can be taught to want, really to desire and to covet the good things

of the world, then he will work for them and by working he will be

civilized. If, when they are presented to his notice, he still despises

them,--if when clothes and houses and regular meals and education come

in his way, he will still go naked, and sleep beneath the sky, and eat

grass or garbage and then starve, and remain in his ignorance though the

schoolmaster be abroad, then he will be a Savage to the end of the

chapter. It is often very hard to find out whether the good things have

been properly proffered to the Savage, and whether the man’s neglect of

them has come from his own intellectual inability to appreciate them or

from the ill manner in which they have been tendered to him. The

aboriginal of Australia has utterly rejected them, as I fear we must say

the North American Indian has done also,--either from his own fault or

from ours. The Maori of New Zealand seemed to be in the way of accepting

them when it was found out that the reception of them was killing him.

He is certainly dying whether from that or other causes. The Chinaman

and the Indian Coolie are fully alive to the advantages of earning

money, and are consequently not to be classed among Savages. The South

Sea Islander has as yet had but few chances of working; but when he is

employed he works well and saves his wages. With the Negro as imported

into the West Indies the good things of the world have, I fear, made but

little way. He despises work and has not even yet learned to value the

advantages which work will procure for him. The Negro in the United

States, who in spite of his prolonged slavery has been brought up in a

better school, gives more promise; but even with him the result to be

desired,--the consciousness that by work only can he raise himself to an

equality with the white man,--seems to be far distant. I cannot say that

it is near with the Kafir or the Zulu;--but to the Kafir and the Zulu

the money market has been opened comparatively but for a short time.

They certainly do not die out under the yoke, and they are not

indifferent to the material comforts of life. Therefore I think there is

a fair hope that they will become a laborious and an educated people.

At present no doubt throughout Natal there is a cry from the farmer that

the Zulu will not work. The farmer cannot plough his land and reap it

because the Zulu will not come to him just when work is required. It

seems hard to the farmer that, with 300,000 of a labouring class around,

the 20,000 white capitalists,--capitalists in a small way,--should be

short of labour. That is the way in which the Natal farmer looks at it,

when he swears that the Zulu is trash, and that it would be well if he

were swept from the face of the earth. It seems never to occur to a

Natal farmer that if a Zulu has enough to live on without working he

should be as free to enjoy himself in idleness as an English lord. The

business of the Natal farmer is to teach the Zulu that he has not enough

to live on, and that there are enjoyments to be obtained by working of

which the idle man knows nothing.

But the Zulu does work, though not so regularly as might be desirable. I

was astonished to find at how much cheaper a rate he works than does the

Kafir in British Kafraria or in the Cape Colony generally. The wages

paid by the Natal farmer run from 10s. down to 5s. a month, and about 3

lbs. of mealies or Indian corn a day for diet. I found that on road

parties,--where the labour is I am sorry to say compulsory, the men

working under constraint from their Chiefs,--the rate is 5s. a month, or

4d. a day for single days. The farmer who complains of course expects to

get his work cheap, and thinks that he is injuring not only himself but

the community at large if he offers more than the price which has been

fixed in his mind as proper. But in truth there is much of Zulu

agricultural work done at a low rate of wages, and the custom of such

work is increasing.

As to other work, work in towns, work among stores, domestic work,

carrying, carting, driving, cleaning horses, tending pigs, roadmaking,

running messages, scavengering, hod bearing and the like, the stranger

is not long in Natal before he finds, not only that all such work is

done by Natives, but that there are hands to do it more ready and easy

to find than in any other country that he has visited.

CHAPTER XVIII.

LANGALIBALELE.

The story of Langalibalele is one which I must decline to tell with any

pretence of accuracy, and as to the fate of the old Zulu,--whether he

has been treated wrongly or rightly I certainly am not competent to give

an opinion with that decision which a printed statement should always

convey. But in writing of the Colony of Natal it is impossible to pass

Langalibalele without mention. It is not too much to say that the doings

of Langalibalele have altered the Constitution of the Colony; and it is

probable that as years run on they will greatly affect the whole

treatment of the Natives in South Africa. And yet Langalibalele was

never a great man among the Zulus and must often have been surprised at

his own importance.

Those who were concerned with the story are still alive and many of them

are still sore with the feeling of unmerited defeat. And to no one in

the whole matter has there been anything of the triumph of success. The

friends of Langalibalele, and his enemies, seem equally to think that

wrong has been done,--or no better than imperfect justice. And the case

is one the origin and end of which can hardly now be discovered, so

densely are they enveloped in Zulu customs and past Zulu events.

Whether a gentleman twenty years ago when firing a pistol intended to

wound or only frighten? Such, and such like, are the points which the

teller of the story would have to settle if he intended to decide upon

the rights and wrongs of the question. Is it not probable that a man

having been called on for sudden action, in a great emergency, may

himself be in the dark as to his own intention at so distant a

period,--knowing only that he was anxious to carry out the purpose for

which he was sent, that purpose having been the establishment of British

authority? And then this matter was one in which the slightest possible

error of judgment, the smallest deviation from legal conduct where no

law was written, might be efficacious to set everything in a blaze. The

natives of South Africa, but especially the natives of Natal, have to be

ruled by a mixture of English law and Zulu customs, which mixture, I

have been frequently told, exists in its entirety only in the bosom of

one living man. It is at any rate unwritten,--as yet unwritten though

there now exists a parliamentary order that this mixture shall be

codified by a certain fixed day. It is necessarily irrational,--as for

instance when a Zulu is told that he is a British subject but yet is

allowed to break the British law in various ways, as in the matter of

polygamy. It must be altogether unintelligible to the subject race to

whom the rules made by their white masters, opposed as they are to their

own customs, must seem to be arbitrary and tyrannical,--as when told

that they must not carry about with them the peculiar stick or

knobkirrie which has been familiar to their hands from infancy. It is

opposed to the ideas of justice which prevail in the intercourse

between one white man and another, as when the Zulu, whom the white man

will not call a slave, is compelled through the influence of his Chief

to do the work which the white man requires from him;--as an instance of

which I may refer to those who are employed on the roads, who are paid

wages, indeed, but who work not by their own will, but under restraint

from their Chiefs. It must I think be admitted that when a people have

to be governed by such laws mistakes are to be expected,--and that the

best possible intentions, I may almost say the best possible practice,

may be made matter of most indignant reproach from outraged

philanthropists.

The white man who has to rule natives soon teaches himself that he can

do no good if he is overscrupulous. They must be taught to think him

powerful or they will not obey him in anything. He soon feels that his

own authority, and with his authority the security of all those around

him, is a matter of “prestige.” Prestige in a highly civilized community

may be created by virtue,--and is often created by virtue and rank

combined. The Archbishop of Canterbury is a very great man to an

ordinary clergyman. But, with the native races of South Africa, prestige

has to be created by power though it may no doubt be supported and

confirmed by justice. Thus the white ruler of the black man knows that

he must sometimes be rough. There must be a sharp word, possibly a blow.

There must be a clear indication that his will, whatsoever it may be,

has to be done,--that the doing of his will has to be the great result

let the opposition to it be what it may. He cannot strain at a gnat in

the shape of a little legal point. If he did so the Zulus would cease

to respect him, and would never imagine that their ruler had been turned

from his way by a pang of conscience. The Savage, till he has quite

ceased to be savage, expects to be coerced, and will no more go straight

along the road without coercion, than will the horse if you ride him

without reins. And with a horse a whip and spurs are necessary,--till he

has become altogether tamed.

The white ruler of the black man feels all this, and knows that without

some spur or whip he cannot do his work at all. His is a service,

probably, of much danger, and he has to work with a frown on his brow in

order that his life may be fairly safe in his hand. In this way he is

driven to the daily practice of little deeds of tyranny which abstract

justice would condemn. Then, on occasion, arises some petty

mutiny,--some petty mutiny almost justified by injustice but which must

be put down with a strong hand or the white man’s position will become

untenable. In nineteen cases the strong hand is successful and the

matter goes by without any feeling of wrong on either side. The white

man expects to be obeyed, and the black man expects to be coerced, and

the general work goes on prosperously in spite of a small flaw. Then

comes the twentieth case in which the one little speck of original

injustice is aggravated till a great flame is burning. The outraged

philanthropist has seen the oppression of his black brother, and evokes

Downing Street, Exeter Hall, Printing House Square, and all the Gospels.

The savage races from the East to the West of the Continent, from the

mouth of the Zambesi to the Gold Coast, all receive something of

assured protection from the effort;--but, probably, a great injustice is

done to the one white ruler who began it all, and who, perhaps, was but

a little ruler doing his best in a small way. I am inclined to think

that the philanthropist at home when he rises in his wrath against some

white ruler of whose harshness to the blacks he has heard the story

forgets that the very civilization which he is anxious to carry among

the savage races cannot be promulgated without something of

tyranny,--some touch of apparent injustice. Nothing will sanctify

tyranny or justify injustice, says the philanthropist in his wrath. Let

us so decide and so act;--but let us understand the result. In that case

we must leave the Zulus and other races to their barbarities and native

savagery.

In what I have now said I have not described the origin of the

Langalibalele misfortune, having avoided all direct allusion to any of

its incidents,--except that of the firing of a pistol twenty years ago.

But I have endeavoured to make intelligible the way in which untoward

circumstances may too probably rise in the performance of such a work as

the gradual civilization of black men without much fault on either side.

And my readers may probably understand how, in such a matter as that of

Langalibalele, it would be impossible for me as a traveller to unravel

all its mysteries, and how unjust I might be were I to attempt to prove

that either on this side or on that side wrong had been done. The doers

of the wrong, if wrong there was, are still alive; and the avengers of

the wrong,--whether a real or a fancied wrong,--are still keen. In what

I say about Langalibalele I will avoid the name of any white man,--and

as far as possible I will impute no blame. That the intentions on both

sides have been good and altogether friendly to the black man I have no

doubt whatsoever.

Langalibalele was sent for and did not come. That was the beginning of

the whole. Now it is undoubted good Kafir law in Natal,--very well

established though unwritten,--that any Kafir or Zulu is to come when

sent for by a white man in authority. The white man who holds chief

authority in such matters is the Minister for Native Affairs, who is one

of the Executive Council under the Governor, and probably the man of

greatest weight in the whole Colony. He speaks the Zulu language, which

the Governor probably has not time to learn during his period of

governorship. He is a permanent officer,--as the Ministry does not go in

and out in Natal. And he is in a great measure irresponsible because the

other white men in office do not understand as he does that mixture of

law and custom by which he rules the subject race, and there is

therefore no one to judge him or control him. In Natal the Minister for

Native Affairs is much more of a Governor than his Excellency himself,

for he has over three hundred thousand natives altogether under his

hand, while his Excellency has under him twenty thousand white men who

are by no means tacitly obedient. Such is the authority of the Minister

for Native Affairs in Natal, and among other undoubted powers and

privileges is that of sending for any Chief among the Zulu races

inhabiting the Colony, and communicating his orders personally.

Naturally, probably necessarily, this power is frequently delegated to

others as the Minister cannot himself see every little Chief to whom

instructions are to be given. As the Secretary of State at home has

Under Secretaries, so has the Minister for Native Affairs under

Ministers. In 1873 Langalibalele was sent for but Langalibalele would

not come.

He had in years long previous been a mutinous Chief in Zulu-land,--where

he was known as a “rain-maker,” and much valued for his efficacy in that

profession;--but he had quarrelled with Panda who was then King of

Zulu-land and had run away from Panda into Natal. There he had since

lived as the Chief of the Hlubi tribe, a clan numbering about 10,000

people, a proportion of whom had come with him across the borders from

Zulu-land. For it appears that these tribes dissolve themselves and

reunite with other tribes, a tribe frequently not lasting as a tribe

under one great name for many years. Even the great tribe of the Zulus

was not powerful till the time of their Chief Chaka, who was uncle of

the present King or Chief Cetywayo. Thus Langalibalele who had been

rainmaker to King Panda, Cetywayo’s father, became head of the Hlubi

tribe in Natal, and lived under the mixture of British law of which I

have spoken. But he became mutinous and would not come when he was sent

for.

When a Savage,--the only word I know by which to speak of such a man as

a Zulu Chief so that my reader shall understand me; but in using it of

Langalibalele I do not wish to ascribe to him any specially savage

qualities;--when a Savage has become subject to British rule and will

not obey the authority which he understands,--it is necessary to reduce

him to obedience at almost any cost. There are three hundred and twenty

thousand Natives in Natal, with hundreds of thousands over the borders

on each side of the little Colony, and it is essential that all these

should believe Great Britain to be indomitable. If Langalibalele had

been allowed to be successful in his controversy every Native in and

around Natal would have known it;--and in knowing it every Native would

have believed that Great Britain had been so far conquered. It was

therefore quite essential that Langalibalele should be made to come. And

he did more than refuse to obey the order. A messenger who was sent for

him,--a native messenger,--was insulted by him. The man’s clothes were

stripped from him,--or at any rate the official great coat with which he

had been invested and which probably formed the substantial part of his

raiment. It has been the peculiarity of this case that whole books have

been written about its smallest incidents. The Langalibalele literature

hitherto written,--which is not I fear as yet completed,--would form a

small library. This stripping of the great coat, or jazy[18] as it is

called,--the word ijazi having been established as good Zulu for such an

article,--has become a celebrated incident. Langalibalele afterwards

pleaded that he suspected that weapons had been concealed, and that he

had therefore searched the Queen’s messenger. And he justified his

suspicion by telling how a pistol had been concealed and had been fired

sixteen years before. And then that old case was ripped up, and thirty

or forty native messengers were examined about it. But Langalibalele

after taking off the Queen’s messenger’s jazy turned and fled, and it

was found to be necessary that the Queen’s soldiers should pursue him.

He was pursued,--with terrible consequences. He turned and fought and

British blood was shed. Of course the blood of the Hlubi tribe had to

flow, and did flow too freely. It was very bad that it should be

so;--but had it not been so all Zululand, all Kafirland, all the tribes

of Natal and the Transvaal would have thought that Langalibalele had

gained a great victory, and our handful of whites would have been unable

to live in their Colony.

Then Langalibalele was caught. As to matters that had been done up to

that time I am not aware that official fault of very grave nature has

been found with those who were concerned; but the trial of Langalibalele

was supposed to have been conducted on unjust principles and before

judges who should not have sat on the judgment seat. He was tried and

was condemned to very grave punishment, and his tribe and his family

were broken up. He was to be confined for his life, without the presence

of any of his friends, in Robben Island, which, as my reader may

remember, lies just off Capetown, a thousand miles away from Natal,--and

to be reached by a sea journey which to all Zulus is a thing of great

terror. The sentence was carried out and Langalibalele was shipped away

to Robben Island.

It may be remembered how the news of Langalibalele’s rebellion, trial

and punishment gradually reached England, how at first we feared that a

great rebel had arisen, to conquer whom would require us to put out all

our powers, and then how we were moved by the outraged philanthropist to

think that a grievous injustice had been done. I cannot but say that in

both matters we allowed ourselves to be swayed by exaggerated reports

and unwarranted fears and sympathies. Langalibalele did rebel and had to

be punished. His trial was no doubt informal and overformal. Too much

was made of it. The fault throughout has been that too much has been

made of the whole affair. Partisans arose on behalf of the now notorious

and very troublesome old Pagan, and philanthropy was outraged. Then came

the necessity of doing something to set right an acknowledged wrong. It

might be that Langalibalele had had cause for suspicion when he stripped

the Queen’s Messenger. It might be that the running away was the natural

effect of fear, and that the subsequent tragedies had been simply

unfortunate. The trial was adjudged to have been conducted with

overstrained rigour and the punishment to have been too severe.

Therefore it was decided in England that he should be sent back to the

mainland from the island, that he should be located in the neighbourhood

of Capetown,--and that his tribe should be allowed to join him.

That was promising too much. It was found to be inconvenient to settle a

whole tribe of a new race in the Cape Colony. Nor was it apparent that

the tribe would wish to move after its Chieftain. Then it was decided

that instead of the tribe the Chieftain’s family should follow him with

any of his immediate friends who might wish to be transported from

Natal. Now Langalibalele had seventy wives and a proportionate

offspring. And it soon became apparent that whoever were sent after him

must be maintained at the expense of Government. Moreover it could

hardly be that Exeter Hall and the philanthropists should desire to

encourage polygamy by sending such a flock of wives after the favoured

prisoner. Complaint was made to me that only two wives and one man were

sent. With them Langalibalele was established in a small house on the

sea shore near to Capetown, and there he is now living at an expense of

£500 per annum to the Government.

But this unfortunately is not the end. He has still friends in Natal,

white friends, who think that not nearly enough has been done for him. A

great many more wives ought to be allowed to join him, or the promise

made to him will not have been kept. He is languishing for his wives,

and all should be sent who would be willing to go. I saw one of them

very ill,--dying I was told because of her troubles, and half a dozen

others, all of them provided with food gratis, but in great

tribulation,--so it was said,--because of this cruel separation. The

Government surely should send him three or four more wives, seeing that

to a man who has had seventy less than half a dozen must be almost worse

than none. But his friends are not content with asking for this further

grace, but think also that the time has come for forgiveness and that

Langalibalele should be restored to his own country. He has still fame

as a rain-maker and Cetywayo the Zulu King would be delighted to have

him in Zulu-land. The prayer is much the same as that which is

continually being put forward for the pardon of the Fenians. I myself in

such matters am loyal, but, I fear, hard-hearted. I should prefer that

Langalibalele should be left to his punishment, thinking that would-be

rebels, whether Zulu or Irish, will be best kept quiet by rigid

adherence to a legal sentence. Such is the story of Langalibalele as I

heard it.

On my return to Capetown I visited the captured Chieftain at his farm

house on the flats five or six miles from the city, having obtained an

order to that effect from the office of the Secretary for Native

Affairs. I found a stalwart man, represented to be 65 years of age, but

looking much younger, in whose appearance one was able to recognise

something of the Chieftain. He had with him three wives, a grown-up son,

and a nephew; besides a child who has been born to him since he has been

in the Cape Colony. The nephew could talk a little English, and acted as

interpreter between us.

The prisoner himself was very silent, hardly saying a word in answer to

the questions put to him,--except that he should like to see his

children in Natal. The two young men were talkative enough, and did not

scruple to ask for sixpence each when we departed. I and a friend who

was with me extended our liberality to half a crown a piece,--with which

they expressed themselves much delighted.

CHAPTER XIX.

PIETER MARITZBURG TO NEWCASTLE.

When starting from Pieter Maritzburg to Pretoria I have to own that I

was not quite at ease as to the work before me. From the moment in which

I had first determined to visit the Transvaal, I had been warned as to

the hard work of the task. Friends who had been there, one or two in

number,--friends who had been in South Africa but not quite as far as

the capital of the late Republic, perhaps half a dozen,--and friends

very much more numerous who had only heard of the difficulties, combined

either in telling me or in letting me understand that they thought that

I was,--well--much too old for the journey. And I thought so myself. But

then I knew that I could never do it younger. And having once suggested

to myself that it would be desirable, I did not like to be frightened

out of the undertaking. As far as Pieter Maritzburg all had been easy

enough. Journeys by sea are to me very easy,--so easy that a fortnight

on the ocean is a fortnight at any rate free from care. And my inland

journeys had not as yet been long enough to occasion any inconvenience.

But the journey now before me, from the capital of Natal to the capital

of the Transvaal and thence round by Kimberley, the capital of the

Diamond Fields, to Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange Free State,

and back thence across the Cape Colony to Capetown, exceeding 1,500

miles in length, all of which had to be made overland under very rough

circumstances, was awful to me. Mail conveyances ran the whole way, but

they ran very roughly, some of them very slowly, generally travelling as

I was told, day and night, and not unfrequently ceasing to travel

altogether in consequence of rivers which would become unpassable, of

mud which would be nearly so, of dying horses,--and sometimes of dying

passengers! A terrible picture had been painted. As I got nearer to the

scene the features of the picture became more and more visible to me.

One gentleman on board the ship which took me out seemed to think it

very doubtful whether I should get on at all, but hospitably recommended

me to pass by his house, that I might be sure at least of one quiet

night. At Capetown where I first landed a shower of advice fell upon me.

And it was here that the awful nature of the enterprise before me first

struck my very soul with dismay. There were two schools of advisers,

each of which was sternly strenuous in the lessons which it inculcated.

The first bade me stick obdurately to the public conveyances. There was

no doubt very much against them. The fatigue would be awful, and quite

unfitted for a man of my age. I should get no sleep on the journey, and

be so jolted that not a bone would be left to me. And I could carry

almost no luggage. It must be reduced to a minimum,--by which a

toothbrush and a clean shirt were meant. And these conveyances went but

once a week, and it might often be the case that I might not be able to

secure a place. But the post conveyances always did go, and I should at

any rate be able to make my way on;--if I could live and endure the

fatigue.

The other school recommended a special conveyance. The post carts would

certainly kill me. They generally did kill any passengers, even in the

prime of life, who stuck to them so long as I would have to do. If I

really intended to encounter the horrors of the journey in question I

must buy a cart and four horses, and must engage a coloured driver, and

start off round the world of South Africa under his protection. But

among and within this school of advisers there was a division which

complicated the matter still further. Should they be horses or should

they be mules;--or, indeed, should they be a train of oxen as one friend

proposed to me? Mules would be slow but more hardy than horses. Oxen

would be the most hardy, but would be very slow indeed. Horses would be

more pleasant but very subject in this country to diseases and death

upon the roads. And then where should I buy the equipage,--and at what

price,--and how should I manage to sell it again,--say at half price?

For my friends on the mail cart side of the question had not failed to

point out to me that the carriage-and-horses business would be

expensive,--entailing an outlay of certainly not less than £250, with

the probable necessity of buying many subsidiary horses along the road,

and the too probable impossibility of getting anything for my remaining

property when my need for its use was at an end.

One friend, very experienced in such matters, assured me that my only

plan was to buy the cart in Capetown and carry it with me by ship round

the coast to Durban, and to remain there till I could fit myself with

horses. And I think that I should have done thus under his instructions,

had I not given way to the temptations of procrastination. By going on

without a cart I could always leave the ultimate decision between the

private and the public conveyance a little longer in abeyance. Thus when

I reached Durban I had no idea what I should do in the matter. But

finding an excellent public conveyance from Durban to Pieter Maritzburg,

I took advantage of that, and arrived in the capital of Natal,

embarrassed as yet with no purchased animals and impeded by no property,

but still with my heart very low as to the doubts and perils and fatigue

before me.

At East London I had made the acquaintance of a gentleman of

about a third of my own age, who had been sent out by a great

agricultural-implement-making firm with the object of spreading the use

of ploughs and reaping machines through South Africa, and thus of

carrying civilization into the country in the surest and most direct

manner. He too was going to Pretoria, and to the Diamond Fields,--and to

the Orange Free State. He was to carry ploughs with him,--that is to say

ploughs in the imagination, ploughs in catalogues, ploughs upon paper,

and ploughs on his eloquent and facile tongue; whereas it was my object

to find out what ploughs had done, and perhaps might do, in the new

country. He, too, thought that the public conveyance would be a

nuisance, that his luggage would not get itself carried, and that from

the mail conveyances he would not be able to shoot any of the game with

which the country abounds. When we had travelled together as far as

Pieter Maritzburg we put our heads together,--and our purses, and

determined upon a venture among the dealers in carts, horses, and

harness.

I left the matter very much to him, merely requiring that I should see

the horses before they were absolutely purchased. A dealer had turned up

with all the articles wanted,--just as though Providence had sent

him,--with a Cape cart running on two wheels and capable of holding

three persons beside the driver, the four horses needed,--and the

harness. The proposed vendor had indeed just come off a long journey

himself, and was therefore able to say that everything was fit for the

road. £200 was to be the price. But when we looked at the horses, their

merits, which undoubtedly were great, seemed to consist in the work

which they had done rather than in that which they could immediately do

again. In this emergency I went to a friendly British major in the town

engaged in the commissariat department, and consulted him. Would he look

at the horses? He not only did so, but brought a military veterinary

surgeon with him, who confined his advice to three words, which,

however, he repeated thrice, “Physical energy deficient!” The words were

oracular, and the horses were of course rejected.

I was then about to start from Pieter Maritzburg on a visit of

inspection with the Governor and was obliged to leave my young friend to

look out for four other horses on his own responsibility--without the

advice of the laconic vet whom he could hardly ask to concern himself a

second time in our business. And I must own that while I was away I was

again down at heart. For he was to start during my absence, leaving me

to follow in the post cart as far as Newcastle, the frontier town of

Natal. This was arranged in order that three or four days might be

saved, and that the horses might not be hurried over their early

journey. When I got back to Pieter Maritzburg I found that he had gone,

as arranged, with four other horses;--but of the nature of the horses no

one could tell me anything.

The mail cart from the capital to Newcastle took two and a half days on

the journey, and was on the whole comfortable enough. One moment of

discord there was between myself and the sable driver, which did not,

however, lead to serious results. On leaving Pieter Maritzburg I found

that the vehicle was full. There were seven passengers, two on the box

and five behind,--the sixth seat being crowded with luggage. There was

luggage indeed everywhere, above below and around us,--but still we had

all of us our seats, with fair room for our legs. Then came the question

of the mails. The cart to Newcastle goes but once a week; and though

subsidiary mails are carried by Zulu runners twice a week over the whole

distance,--175 miles,--and carried as quickly as by the cart, the

heavier bulk, such as newspapers, books, &c., are kept for the mail

conveyance. The bags therefore are, in such a vehicle, somewhat heavy.

When I saw a large box covered with canvas brought out I was alarmed,

and I made some enquiry. It was, said the complaisant postmaster’s

assistant who had come out into the street, a book-post parcel; somewhat

large as he acknowledged, and not strictly open at the ends as required

by law. It was, he confessed, a tin box and he believed that it

contained--bonnets. But it was going up to Pretoria, nearly 400 miles,

at book-parcel rate of postage,--the total cost of it being, I think he

said, 8s. 6d. Now passengers’ luggage to Pretoria is charged 4s. a

pound, and the injustice of the tin box full of bonnets struck my

official mind with horror. There was a rumour for a moment that it was

to be put in among us, and I prepared myself for battle. But the day was

fine, and the tin box was fastened on behind with all the mails,--merely

preventing any one from getting in or out of the cart without climbing

over them. That was nothing, and we went away very happily, and during

the first day I became indifferent to the wrong which was being done.

But when we arrived for breakfast on the second morning the clouds began

to threaten, and it is known to all in those parts that when it rains in

Natal it does rain. The driver at once declared that the bags must be

put inside and that we must all sit with our legs and feet in each

other’s lap. Then we looked at each other, and I remembered the tin box.

I asked the conscientious mail-man what he would do with the bag which

contained the box, and he immediately replied that it must come behind

himself, inside the cart, exactly in the place where my legs were then

placed. I had felt the tin box and had found that the corners of it were

almost as sharp as the point of a carving knife. “It can’t come here,”

said I. “It must,” said the driver surlily. “But it won’t,” said I

decidedly. “But it will,” said the driver angrily. I bethought myself a

moment and then declared my purpose of not leaving the vehicle, though I

knew that breakfast was prepared within. “May I trouble you to bring a

cup of tea to me here,” I said to one of my fellow victims. “I shall

remain and not allow the tin box to enter the cart.” “Not allow!” said

the custodian of the mails. “Certainly not,” said I, with what authority

I could command. “It is illegal.” The man paused for a moment awed by

the word and then entered upon a compromise, “Would I permit the mail

bags to be put inside, if the tin box were kept outside?” To this I

assented, and so the cart was packed. I am happy to say that the clouds

passed away, and that the bonnets were uninjured as long as I remained

in their company. I fear from what I afterwards heard that they must

have encountered hard usage on their way from Newcastle to Pretoria.

The mail cart to Newcastle was, I have said, fairly comfortable, but

this incident and other little trifles of the same kind made me glad

that I had decided on being independent. Three of my fellow passengers

were going on to Pretoria and I found that they looked forward with

great dread to their journey,--not even then expecting such hardships as

did eventually befall them.

The country from Pieter Maritzburg to Newcastle is very hilly,--with

hills which are almost mountains on every side, and it would be

picturesque but for the sad want of trees. The farm homesteads were few

and far between, and very little cultivation was to be seen. The land

is almost entirely sold,--being, that is, in private possession, having

been parted with by the governing authorities of the Colony. I saw

cattle, and as I got further from Maritzburg small flocks of sheep. The

land rises all the way, and as we get on to the colder altitudes is

capable of bearing wheat. As I went along I heard from every mouth the

same story. A farmer cannot grow wheat because he has no market and no

labour. The little towns are too distant and the roads too bad for

carriage;--and though there be 300,000 natives in the Colony, labour

cannot be procured. I must remark that through this entire district the

Kafirs or Zulus are scarce,--from a complication of causes. No doubt it

was inhabited at one time; but the Dutch came who were cruel tyrants to

the natives,--which is not surprising, as they had been most

disastrously handled by them. And Chaka too had driven from this country

the tribes who inhabited it before his time. In other lands, nearer to

the sea or great rivers, and thus lying lower, the receding population

has been supplied by new comers; but the Zulus from the warmer regions

further north seem to have found the high grounds too cold for them. At

any rate in these districts neither Kafirs or Zulus are now

numerous,--though there are probably enough for the work to be done if

they would do it.

At Howick, twelve miles from Maritzburg, are the higher falls on the

Umgeni,--about a dozen miles from other falls on the same river which I

had seen on my way to Greyton. Here they fall precipitously about 300

feet, and are good enough to make the fortune of a small hotel, if they

were anywhere in England. At Estcourt, where we stopped the first

night, we found a comfortable Inn. After that the accommodation along

the road was neither plenteous nor clean. The second night was passed

under very adverse circumstances. Ten of us had to sleep in a little

hovel with three rooms including that in which we were fed, and as one

of us was a lady who required one chamber exclusively to herself, we

were somewhat pressed. I was almost tempted to think that if ladies will

travel under such circumstances they should not be so particular. As I

was recognized to be travelling as a stranger, I was allowed to enjoy

the other bedroom with only three associates, while the other five laid

about on the table and under the table, as best they could, in the

feeding room.

Immediately opposite to this little hovel there was on that night a

detachment of the 80th going up to join its regiment at Newcastle. The

soldiers were in tents, ten men in a tent, and when I left them in the

evening seemed to be happy enough. It poured during the whole night and

on the next morning the poor wretches were very miserable. The rain had

got into their tents and they were wet through in their shirts. I saw

some of them afterwards as they got into Newcastle, and more miserable

creatures I never beheld. They had had three days of unceasing

rain,--and, as they said, no food for two days. This probably was an

exaggeration;--but something had gone wrong with the commissariat and

there had been no bread where bread was expected. When they reached

Newcastle there was a river between them and their camping ground. In

fine weather the ford is nearly dry; but now the water had risen up to a

man’s middle, and the poor fellows went through with their great coats

on, too far gone in their misery to care for further troubles.

All along the road the little Inns and stores at which we stopped were

kept by English people;--nor till I had passed Newcastle into the

Transvaal did I encounter a Dutch Boer; but I learned that the farms

around were chiefly held by them, and that the country generally is a

Dutch country. Newcastle is a little town with streets and squares laid

out, though the streets and squares are not yet built. But there is a

decent Inn, at which a visitor gets a bedroom to himself and a tub in

the morning;--at least such was my fate. And there is a billiard room

and a table d’hote, and a regular bar. In the town there is a post

office, and there are stores, and a Court House. There is a Dutch church

and a Dutch minister,--and a clergyman of the Church of England, who

however has no church, but performs service in the Court House.

Newcastle is the frontier town of the Natal Colony, and is nearly

half-way between Pieter Maritzburg and Pretoria, the capital of the

Transvaal. It is now being made a military station,--with the double

purpose of overawing the Dutch Boers who have been annexed, and the

Zulus who have not. The Zulus I think will prove to be the more

troublesome of the two. A fort is being planned and barracks are being

built, but as yet the army is living under canvas. When we were there

250 men constituted the army; but the number was about to be increased.

The poor fellows whom I had seen so wet through on the road were on

their way to fill up deficiencies. We had hardly been an hour in the

place before one of the officers rode down to call and to signify to

us,--after the manner of British officers,--at what hour tiffin went on

up at the mess, and at what hour dinner. There was breakfast also if we

could cross the river and get up on the hill early enough. And, for the

matter of that, there was a tent also, ready furnished, if we chose to

occupy it. And there were saddle horses for us whenever we wanted them.

The tiffins and the dinners and the saddle horses we took without stint.

Everything was excellent; but that on which the mess prided itself most

was the possession of Bass’s bitter beer. An Englishman in outlandish

places, when far removed from the luxuries to which he has probably been

accustomed, sticks to his Bass more constantly than to any other home

comfort. A photograph of his mother and sister,--or perhaps some other

lady,--and his Bass, suffice to reconcile him to many grievances.

We stayed at Newcastle over a Sunday and went up to service in the camp.

The army had its chaplain, and 150 men collected themselves under a

marquee to say their prayers and hear a short sermon in which they were

told to remember their friends at home, and to write faithfully to their

mothers. I do not know whether soldiers in London and in other great

towns are fond of going to church, but a church service such as that we

heard is a great comfort to men when everything around them is desolate,

and when the life which they lead is necessarily hard. We were only

three nights at Newcastle, but when we went away we seemed to be leaving

old friends under the tents up on the hill.

I had come to the place on the mail cart, and on my arrival was very

anxious to know what my travelling companion had done in the way of

horse-buying. All my comfort for the next six weeks, and perhaps more

than my comfort, depended on the manner in which he had executed his

commission. It seemed now as though the rainy season had begun in very

truth, for the waters for which everybody had been praying since I had

landed in South Africa came down as though they would never cease to

pour. On the day after our arrival I had got up to see the departure of

the mail cart for Pretoria, and a more melancholy attempt at a public

vehicle I had never beheld. Prophecies were rife that the horses would

not be able to travel and that the miseries to be surmounted by the

passengers before they reached their destination would be almost

unendurable. When I saw the equipage I felt that the school of friends

who had warned me against a journey to Pretoria in the mail carts had

been right. I was extremely happy, therefore, when all the quidnuncs

about the place, the butcher who had been travelling about the Colony in

search of cattle for the last dozen years, the hotel-keeper who was

himself in want of horses to take him over the same road, the

commissariat employés, and all the loafers about the place,

congratulated me on the team of which I was now the joint proprietor.

There was a cart and four horses,--one of which however was a wicked

kicker,--and complete harness, with a locker full of provisions to eke

out the slender food to be found on the road,--all of which had cost

£220. And there was a coloured driver, one George, whom everybody

seemed to know, and who was able, as everybody said, to drive us

anywhere over Africa. George was to have £5 a month, his passage paid

back home, his keep on the road, and a douceur on parting, if we parted

as friends.

Remembering what I might have had to suffer,--what I might have been

suffering at that very moment,--I expressed my opinion that the affair

was very cheap. But my young friend indulged in grander financial views

than my own. “It will be cheap,” said he, “if, we can sell it at the end

of the journey for £150.” That was a contingency which I altogether

refused to entertain. It had become cheap to me without any idea of a

resale, as soon as I found what was the nature of the mail cart from

Newcastle to Pretoria,--and what was the nature of the mail cart horses.

Before leaving the Colony of Natal I must say that at this

Newcastle,--as at other Newcastles,--coal is to be found in abundance. I

was taken down to the river side where I could see it myself. There can

be no doubt but that when the country is opened up coal will be one of

its most valuable products. At present it is all but useless. It cannot

be carried because the distances are so great and the roads so bad; and

it cannot be worked because labour has not been organised.

THE END OF VOL. I.

PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO., LIMITED, CITY ROAD, LONDON.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The name was probably taken from some sound in their language which

was of frequent occurrence. They seem to have been called “Ottentoos,”

“Hotnots,” “Hottentotes,” “Hodmodods,” and “Hadmandods” promiscuously.

[2] The first record we have of the Kafirs refers to the years 1683-84,

when we are told the Dutch were attacked by the Kafirs, who, however,

quickly ran away before the firearms of the strangers.

[3] A Kafir thief who had stolen an axe was rescued by a band of Kafirs

on his way to jail.

[4] This is so far accurate that it certainly does not overstate the

coloured population. No doubt the coloured people are more numerous. I

have seen 800,000 stated as the black population of the Transvaal. But

as the limits of the territory are not settled, any estimate must be

vague.

[5] It must at least have seemed so when the Permissive Bill for South

African Confederation was passed. The present disturbance will no doubt

lead to the annexation of these districts.

[6]

Cape Colony 150,000

Orange Free State 30,000

The Transvaal 40,000

-------

220,000

[7] I do not intend to suggest that any man should be excluded by his

colour from the hustings. I am of opinion that no allusion should be

made to colour in defining the franchise for voters in any British

possession. But in colonies such as those of South Africa,--in which

the bulk of the population is coloured,--the privilege should be

conferred on black and white alike, with such a qualification as will

admit only those who are fit.

[8] So called from a block of granite lying on the mountain over the

town, to which has been given the name of The Pearl.

[9] Mr. Esselin told us that since he had been at Worcester he had had

a few but only a very few Kafir children in his schools.

[10] This did not come at all from any property of the water but simply

from the foulness of the place.

[11] At the present time about a hundredth part of the area of the

Cape Colony is under cultivation. The total area comprises 20,454,602

morgen, whereas only 217,692 morgen are cultivated. The morgen is a

little more than two acres. Of the proportion cultivated, nearly a half

is under wheat.

[12] It should be understood that the places described in the last

three chapters were not visited till after my return from Natal, the

Transvaal, the Diamond Fields, and the Orange Free State.

[13] This conversation occurred and the above words were written before

the disturbance of 1877. But the Kafirs here spoken of are the very

Gaikas who have been expected to join the Galekas in their rebellion,

but who have not as yet done so. Nor, as I think, will they do so.

[14] “The form of Constitutional Government existing in the Colony of

Natal considered,” by John Bird. Mr. Bird’s object is to shew that

Natal is not in a condition to be benefitted by a parliamentary form

of government, and his arguments are well worthy of the attention of

gentlemen in Downing Street. He thoroughly understands his subject,

and, as I think, proves his conclusion. Mr. Bird is now Colonial

Treasurer in Natal.

[15] My narrative of the facts of this period is based chiefly on the

story as told in Judge Cloete’s five lectures on the Emigration of the

Dutch farmers into Natal.

[16] He was murdered either by Dingaan or by another brother named

Umolangaan who was then murdered by Dingaan. Dingaan at any rate became

Chief of the tribe.

[17] A knobkirrie is a peculiar bludgeon with a thin stick and a large

knob which in the hands of an expert might be very deadly. An assegai,

as my reader probably knows, is a short spear with a sharp iron head.

[18] I have seen it asserted that this word comes from “jersey”--a

flannel under shirt; but I seem to remember the very sound as

signifying an old great coat in Ireland, and think that it was so used

long before the word “jersey” was introduced into our language.