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Title: South Africa, vol. II.
Author: Anthony Trollope
Release Date: September 19, 2021 [eBook #66343]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOUTH AFRICA, VOL. II. ***
SOUTH AFRICA.
VOL. II.
SOUTH AFRICA.
BY
ANTHONY TROLLOPE.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
_FOURTH EDITION._
LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
1878.
(_All rights reserved._)
LONDON:
PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO., LIMITED,
CITY ROAD.
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
THE TRANSVAAL.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
THE TRANSVAAL.--NEWCASTLE TO PRETORIA 3
CHAPTER II.
THE TRANSVAAL.--ITS HISTORY 26
CHAPTER III.
THE TRANSVAAL.--ANNEXATION 50
CHAPTER IV.
THE TRANSVAAL.--PRETORIA 67
CHAPTER V.
THE TRANSVAAL.--ITS CONDITION AND PRODUCTS 89
CHAPTER VI.
THE TRANSVAAL.--PRETORIA TO THE DIAMOND FIELDS 112
GRIQUALAND WEST.
CHAPTER VII.
GRIQUALAND WEST--WHY WE TOOK IT 137
CHAPTER VIII.
THE STORY OF THE DIAMOND FIELDS 161
CHAPTER IX.
KIMBERLEY 185
THE ORANGE FREE STATE.
CHAPTER X.
THE ORANGE FREE STATE.--ITS EARLY HISTORY 209
CHAPTER XI.
THE ORANGE FREE STATE.--PRESENT CONDITION 232
CHAPTER XII.
THE ORANGE FREE STATE.--BLOEMFONTEIN 256
NATIVE TERRITORIES.
CHAPTER XIII.
THABA ’NCHO 275
CHAPTER XIV.
KRELI AND HIS KAFIRS 286
CHAPTER XV.
THE BASUTOS 310
CHAPTER XVI.
NAMAQUALAND 320
CHAPTER XVII.
CONCLUSION 327
THE TRANSVAAL.
SOUTH AFRICA.
CHAPTER I.
THE TRANSVAAL.--NEWCASTLE TO PRETORIA.
THE distance from Newcastle to Pretoria is 207 miles. About 20 miles
north from Newcastle we crossed the borders of what used to be the
Transvaal Republic, but which since the 12th August last,--1877,--forms
a separate British Colony under the dominion of Her Majesty. The
geographical configuration here is remarkable as at the point of contact
between Natal and the Transvaal the boundary of the Orange Free State is
not above two or three miles distant, and that of Zulu Land, which is at
present but ill defined, not very far off;--so that in the event of the
Transvaal being joined to Natal the combined Colonies would hang
together by a very narrow neck of land.
Of all our dominions the Transvaal is probably the most remote. Its
Capital is 400 miles from the sea, and that distance is not annihilated
or even relieved by any railway. When I left home my main object perhaps
was to visit this remote district, of which I had never heard much and
in which I had been interested not at all, till six months before I
started on my journey. Then the country had been a foreign Republic,
not very stable as was supposed, and assimilated in my mind with some of
the South American Republics which so often change their name and their
condition and in which the stanchest lovers of the Republican form of
Government hardly put much faith. Now I was in the country and was not
only assured myself as to its future security,--but was assured also of
the assurance of all who were concerned. Whether Great Britain had done
right or wrong to annex the Transvaal, every sod of its soil had
instantly been made of double value to its proprietor by the deed which
had been done.
Here I was in the Transvaal through which at a period long since that of
my own birth lions used to roam at will, and the tribes of the Swazies
and Matabeles used to work their will against each other, unconscious of
the coming of the white man. Now there are no lions in the land,--and,
as far as I could see as I made my journey, very few Natives in the
parts which had really been inhabited by the Dutch.
I cannot say that the hotels along the road were very good. By the
ordinary travelling Englishman the accommodation would have been
considered very bad;--but we did find places in which we could shelter
ourselves, and beds of some kind were provided for us. A separate
bedroom had become a luxury dear to the imagination and perpetuated by
memory. We were a week on the road from Newcastle and pulled off our
clothes but once,--when we were under the hospitable roof of Mrs.
Swickhard, who keeps a store about half way at a place called Standers
Drift. At one or two places there were little Inns, always called
hotels, and at others we were taken in by farmers or storekeepers.
Sometimes the spot on which we were invited to lie down was so
uninviting as to require the summoning up of a special courage. Twice I
think we were called upon to occupy the same bed,--on which occasions my
age preserved me from the hard ground on which my younger companion had
to stretch himself. He had stories to tell of nocturnal visitors to
which I have ever been inhospital and useless,--the only wild beast that
has ever attacked me being the musquito. Of musquitoes in the Transvaal
I had no experience, and was told that even in summer they are not
violent. We were travelling in September, which is equal in its
circumstances to our March at home. So much for our beds. On our route
we banqueted at times like princes,--but these were the times in which
we camped out in the veld,--the open field side,--and consumed our own
provisions. Never was such tea made as we had. And yet the tea in all
the houses was bad,--generally so bad as to be undrinkable. We had
bought our tea, as other Colonists buy theirs, at Pieter Maritzburg, and
I do not think that the grocer had done anything peculiar for us. But we
were determined that the water should boil, that the proper number of
tea-spoon-fulls should be afforded, and that the tea should have every
chance. We certainly succeeded. And surely never was there such bacon
fried, or such cold tongues extracted from tin pots. It happened more
than once that we were forced by circumstances to breakfast at houses on
the road,--but when we did so we always breakfasted again a few miles
off by the side of some spruit,--Anglice brook,--where our horses could
get water and eat their forage.
The matter of forage is the main question for all travellers through
these parts of South Africa. Let a man sleep where he may and eat what
he will, he can go on. Let him sleep not at all and eat but little, he
can have himself dragged to his destination. The will within him to
reach a given place carries him safely through great hardships. But it
is not so with your horse,--and is less so in the Transvaal than in any
other country in which I have travelled. We soon learned that our chief
care must be to provide proper food for our team, if we wished to reach
Pretoria,--let alone those further towns, Kimberley and Bloemfontein.
Now there are three modes in which a horse may be fed on such a journey.
He may nibble the grass,--or cut his own bread and butter,--as horses do
successfully in Australia; but if left to that resource he will soon
cease to drag the vehicle after him in South Africa. Or he may be fed
upon mealies. I hope my reader has already learned that maize or Indian
corn is so called in South Africa. Mealies are easily carried, and are
almost always to be purchased along the road. But horses fed upon them
while at fast work become subject to sickness and die upon the journey.
If used at all they should be steeped in water and dried, but even then
they are pernicious except in small quantities. Forage is the only
thing. Now forage consists of corn cut green, wheat or oats or
barley,--dried with the grain in it and preserved in bundles, like hay.
It is cumbrous to carry and it will frequently happen that it cannot be
bought on the road side. But you must have forage, or you will not get
to your journey’s end. We did manage to supply ourselves, sometimes
carrying a large roll of it inside the cart as well as a sack filled
with it outside. Every farmer grows a little of it through the country;
and the storekeepers along the road, who buy it at 3d. a bundle sell it
for a shilling or eighteen pence in accordance with their conscience.
But yet we were always in alarm lest we should find ourselves without
it. A horse requires about six bundles a day to be adequately fed for
continual work. “Have you got forage?” was the first question always
asked when the cart was stopped and one of us descended to enquire as to
the accommodation that might be forthcoming.
We travelled something over thirty miles a day, always being careful not
to allow the horses to remain at their work above two hours and a half
at a time. Then we would “out-span,”--take the horses out from the
carriage, knee-hobble them and turn them loose with their forage spread
upon the ground. Then all our energies would be devoted to the tea
kettle and the frying pan.
As we travelled most heartrending accounts reached us of the fate of my
companions from Pieter Maritzburg to Newcastle, who had pursued their
journey by the mail cart to Pretoria. This conveyance is not supposed
absolutely to travel night and day;--nor does it go regularly by day and
stop regularly by night in a Christian fashion, but makes its progress
with such diminished periods of relaxation as the condition of the
animals drawing it may create. If the roads and animals be good, four or
six hours in the twenty-four may be allowed to the weary
passengers;--but if not,--if as at this time they both be very bad, the
periods of relaxation are only those necessary for taking up the mail
bags and catching the animals which are somewhere out on the veld,
hobbled, and biding their time. For the mail cart the road was very bad
indeed, while by our happy luck, for us it was very good. They travelled
through two days and nights of uninterrupted rain by which the roads and
rivers were at once made almost equally impassable; while for us, so
quick are the changes effected, everything had become dry and at the
same time free from dust. From place to place we heard of them,--how the
three unfortunates had walked into one place fifteen miles in advance of
the cart, wet through, carrying their shoes and stockings in their
hands, and had then slept upon the ground till the vehicle had come up,
the mules had been caught, and they had been carried on a mile or two
when they had again been forced to walk. They were at this period two
days late and had been travelling on these conditions for four days and
four nights with the journey yet unfinished before them. Had I been one
of them I think they would have been forced to leave me behind them on
the way side. On the road we met their conveyance coming back. It had
carried them to a certain point and had thence returned. It was a
miserable box on wheels with two mules whose wretched bones seemed to
come through their skin. They could not raise a trot though they had no
load but the black driver, and I presume some mail bags.
Nor was any one to blame for all this,--except the late Government. For
two years and a half the Contractor had done the work without receiving
his pay. That he should have gone on and done it at all is the
marvel;--but he had persevered spending all that he could make elsewhere
upon the effort. When the annexation came he was paid his arrears in
lump,--very much no doubt to his comfort; but then there were new
tenders and a new contract and it was hardly to be expected that he
should lay out his happily recovered money in providing horses and
conveyances for a month or two.
I was assured, and I believe truly, that this special journey,--which I
did not take,--was the most unfortunate that had ever occurred on this
unfortunate road. The animals had of course gone down the hill from bad
to worse, and then had come the heavy rain. It seemed to be almost a
direct Providence which had rescued me from its misery.
As I passed along the road I took every opportunity that came in my way
of entering the houses of the Dutch. I had heard much of the manners of
the Boers, and of their low condition of life. I had been told that they
were altogether unprogressive,--that the Boer farmer of this day was as
his father had been, that so had been the grandfather and the great
grandfather, and that so was the son about to be; that they were
uneducated, dirty in their habits, ignorant of comforts, and
parsimonious in the extreme. These are the main accusations brought
against the Boers as a race, and they are supported by various
allegations in detail;--as that they do not send their children to
school; that large families live in two roomed houses, fathers mothers
sons and daughters sleeping in one chamber; that they never wash, and
wear their clothes day and night without changing them; that they will
live upon the carcases of wild beasts and blesboks which they can shoot
upon the lands so as to reduce their expenditure on food to a
minimum;--that they are averse to neighbours, and that they will pay for
no labour, thus leaving their large farms untilled and to a great extent
unpastured. And added to all this it is said that the Boer is
particularly averse to all change, resolving not only to do as his
father has done before him, but also that his son shall do the like for
the future.
The reader will probably perceive that these charges indicate an absence
of that civilization which is produced in the world by the congregated
intelligences of many persons. Had Shakespeare been born on a remote
South African farm he would have been Shakespeare still; but he would
not have worn a starched frill to his shirt. The Dutch Boer is what he
is, not because he is Dutch or because he is a Boer, but because
circumstances have isolated him. The Spaniards had probably reached as
luxurious a mode of living as any European people when they achieved
their American possessions, but I have no hesitation in saying that the
Spaniards who now inhabit the ranches and remote farms of Costa Rica or
Columbia are in a poorer condition of life than the Dutch Boers of the
Transvaal. I have seen Germans located in certain unfortunate spots
about the world who have been reduced lower in the order of humanity
than any Dutchmen that I have beheld. And I have been within the houses
of English Free Settlers in remote parts of Australia which have had
quite as little to show in the way of comfort as any Boer’s homestead.
Such comparisons are only useful as showing that distance from crowded
centres will produce the same falling off in civilization among one
people as among another. The two points of interest in the matter
are,--first the actual condition of these people who have now become
British subjects, and secondly how far there is a prospect of
improvement. I am now speaking of my journey from Natal up to Pretoria.
When commencing that journey, though I had seen many Dutchmen in South
Africa I had seen none of the Boer race; and I was told that those
living near to the road would hardly be fair specimens of their kind.
There was very little on the road to assist in civilizing them and that
little had not existed long. From what I afterwards saw I am inclined to
think that the impressions first made upon me were not incorrect.
The farmers’ houses generally consisted of two main rooms, with probably
some small excrescence which would serve some of the family as a
sleeping apartment. In the living room there would be a fire-place, and
outside the house, probably at thirty or forty yards’ distance, there
would be a huge oven built. The houses would never be floored, the
uneven ground being sufficiently solid and also sufficiently clean for
the Dutchman’s purposes. There would seldom be a wall-paper or any
internal painting of the woodwork. Two solid deal tables, with solid
deal settees or benches,--not unfrequently with a locker under
them,--would be the chief furniture. There might be a chair or two, but
not more than one or two. There would always be a clock, and a not
insufficient supply of cups, saucers, and basins. Knives, forks, and
spoons would be there. The bed room of course would be a sanctum; but
my curiosity,--or diligence in the performance of the duty on which I
was intent,--enables me to say that there is always a large bedstead,
with a large feather bed, a counterpane, and apparently a pair of
sheets. The traveller in Central America will see but little of such
decencies among the Spanish farmers there.
Things in the Boer’s house no doubt are generally dirty. An earthen
floor will make everything dirty,--whether in Ireland or in the
Transvaal. The Boer’s dress is dirty,--and also, which is more
important, that of the Boeress. The little Boerlings are all dirty;--so
that, even when they are pretty, one does not wish to kiss them. The
Boers are very prolific, marrying early and living a wholesome, and I
think, a moral life. They are much given to marrying, the widow or the
widower very speedily taking another spouse, so that there will
sometimes be three or four families in the one house. The women have
children very early in life,--but then they have children very late
also; which seems to indicate that their manner of living is natural and
healthy. I have heard them ridiculed for their speedy changes of marital
affection, but it seems to me natural that a man or a woman living far
apart from neighbours should require the comfort of a companion.
I am quite convinced that they are belied by the allegation which denies
to them all progress in civilization. The continued increase in the
number of British and German storekeepers in the country, who grow rich
on their trade with the Boers, is sufficient of itself to tell one this.
Twenty years since I am assured that it was a common thing for a Boer
to be clad in skins. Now they wear woollen clothing, with calico. I
fancy that the traveller would have to travel very far before he found a
skin-clad Boer. No doubt they are parsimonious;--it might perhaps be
more fair to call them prone to save. I, personally, regard saving as a
mistake, thinking that the improvement of the world generally is best
furthered by a free use of the good things which are earned,--and that
they who do not themselves earn them should, as a rule, not have them.
It is a large question, which my readers would not thank me to discuss
here. But there are two sides to it,--and the parsimony of the Boer who
will eat up the carcase of a wild beast till it be rotten so that he
need not kill a sheep, and may thus be enabled to stock a farm for his
son, will have its admirers in Great Britain,--if not among fathers at
any rate among sons. These people are not great consumers, as are our
farmers. They wear their clothes longer, and stretch their means
further; but that the Boer of to-day consumes very much more than his
father there can be no doubt;--and as little that his sons and daughters
will consume more.
As to their educational condition I found it very difficult to ascertain
facts. The distance of these homesteads one from another makes school
teaching in many instances impossible. In some cases I found that great
efforts were made, the mother or perhaps the mother’s sister teaching
the children to read. Here and there I heard of boys and girls who were
sent long distances,--at an expense not only for teaching but for
boarding. It has, however, to be acknowledged that the education of the
country is at present very deficient. The country is now ours and when
the first rudiments of stability have been fixed, so that laws may be
administered and taxes collected, then I trust that the rulers of the
Transvaal may find themselves able to do something towards bringing
education nearer to the Boers.
I have heard the Boers spoken of as a dishonest people. I was once among
certain tradesmen of the Transvaal who asserted that it was impossible
to keep them from pilfering in the shops, one or two of them alleging
that no Boer would make a considerable purchase without relieving the
grief which was natural to him at parting with his money by pocketing
some little article gratis,--a knife, or a tobacco pipe, or perhaps a
few buttons. It was an accusation grievous to hear;--but there arose in
the company one man, also a dealer and an Englishman, who vindicated
their character, alleging that in all parts of the world petty
shop-lifting was so common an offence that the shopkeeper was forced to
take it into account in his calculations, and asserting that the
thieving Boers, few though they might be in number, would leave more
impression on the shopkeeping mind than the very many Boers who would
come in and out without perpetrating any dishonesty. I have heard the
Boers also charged with immorality,--which always means loose conduct
among the women. I am inclined to think,--though I believe but few will
share my opinion,--that social morality will always stand higher in
towns, where people are close to each other and watch narrowly the
conduct one of another, than in far-stretching pastoral districts, where
there is no one to see what is done and to question a neighbour’s
conduct. I do not suppose that feminine delicacy can stand very high
among the Boers of the Transvaal. But on the other hand, as far as I
could learn, illegitimacy is not common; and surely there never was a
people more given to the honourable practice of matrimony.
I fear that the Boer families have but few recognised amusements. In the
little towns or villages the people are given to dancing, and when they
dance they are very merry; but the Boers do not live in the villages.
The villages are but few in number over a country which is as large as
Great Britain and Ireland put together, and the Boer’s daughter who
lives six or eight miles from her nearest neighbour can have but little
dancing. The young people flirt together when they meet in the Transvaal
as they do in all the parts of the world which I have visited. Their
manner of flirting would probably be thought to be coarse by English
mothers and daughters; but then,--if my readers will remember,--so was
the manner of flirting ascribed to those most charming young ladies
Rosalind and Celia. We can hardly be entitled to expect more refinement
to-day among the Boers of South Africa than among the English of the
time of Queen Elizabeth. They are very great at making love, or
“freying” as they call it, and have their recognised forms for the
operation. A most amusing and clever young lady whom I met on my way up
to Pretoria was kind enough to describe to me at length the proper way
to engage or to attempt to engage the affections of a Boer’s daughter.
The young Boer who thinks that he wants a wife and has made up his mind
to look for one begins by riding round the country to find the article
that will suit him. On this occasion he does not trouble himself with
the hard work of courtship, but merely sees what there is within the
circle to which he extends his inspection. He will have dressed himself
with more than ordinary care so that any impression which he may make
may be favourable, and it is probable that the young ladies in the
district know what he is about. But when he has made his choice, then he
puts on his very best, and cleans his saddle or borrows a new one, and
sticks a feather in his cap, and goes forth determined to carry his
purpose. He takes with him a bottle of sugar plums,--an article in great
favour among the Boers and to be purchased at every store,--with which
to soften the heart of the mother, and a candle. Everything depends upon
the candle. It should be of wax, or of some wax-like composition; but
tallow will suffice if the proposed bride be not of very high standing.
Arrived at the door he enters, and his purpose is known at once. The
clean trowsers and the feather declare it; and the sugar plums which are
immediately brought forth,--and always consumed,--leave not a shadow of
doubt. Then the candle is at once offered to the young lady. If she
refuse it, which my informant seemed to think was unusual, then the
swain goes on without remonstrating and offers it to the next lady upon
his list. If she take it, then the candle is lighted, and the mother
retires, sticking a pin into the candle as an intimation that the young
couple may remain together, explaining their feelings to each other,
till the flame shall have come down to the pin. A little salt, I was
assured, is often employed to make the flame weak and so prolong the
happy hour. But the mother, who has perhaps had occasion to use salt in
her own time, may probably provide for this when arranging the distance
for the pin. A day or two afterwards the couple are married,--so that
there is nothing of the “nonsense” and occasional heartbreak of long
engagements. It is thus that “freying” is carried on among the Boers of
the Transvaal.
At home in England, what little is known about the Boers of South
Africa,--or I might perhaps more correctly say what little has been told
about them,--has tended to give a low notion of them as a race. And
there is also an impression that the Boer and the English Colonist are
very hostile to each other. I fear that the English Colonist does
despise the Boer, but I have not found reason to think that any such
hostility exists. Let an Englishman be where he may about the surface of
the globe, he always thinks himself superior to other men around him. He
eats more, drinks more, wears more clothes, and both earns and spends
more money. He,--and the American who in this respect is the same as an
Englishman,--always consume the wheat while others put up with the rye.
He feeds on fresh meat, while dried or salt flesh is sufficient for his
neighbours. He expects to be “boss,” while others work under him. This
is essentially so in South Africa where he is constantly brought into
contact with the Dutchman,--and this feeling of ascendancy naturally
produces something akin to contempt. There is no English farmer in South
Africa, who would not feel himself to be vilified by being put on a par
with a Dutch farmer. When an Englishman marries a Boer’s daughter, the
connexion is spoken of almost as a mésalliance. “He made a mistake and
married a Dutchwoman,” I have heard more than once. But, nevertheless,
the feeling does not amount to hostility. The Boer in a tacit way
acknowledges his own inferiority, and is conscious that the Briton is
strong enough and honest enough to do him some service by his proximity.
The man whom the Dutch Boer does hate is the Hollander, and he is the
man who does in truth despise the Boer. In the Transvaal a Hollander is
the immigrant who has come out new from Holland, whereas the Dutchman is
the descendant of those who came out two centuries since. The Dutchman
is always an Africander, or one who has been born in Africa from white
parents, and he has no sympathy whatever, no feeling of common country,
with the new comer from the old country of his forefathers. The
Hollander who thus emigrates is probably a man of no family, whereas the
old Colonist can go back with his pedigree at least for two centuries
and who thinks very much of his ancestors. The Hollander is educated and
is said to be pedantic and priggish before those who speak his own
language. And in the matter of language these new Dutchmen or Hollanders
complain much of the bad Dutch they hear in the Colony and give great
offence by such complaints.
The Boers are at present much abused for cowardice, and stories without
end are current in the country as to the manner in which they have
allowed themselves to be scared by the smallest opposition. You will be
told how a posse of twenty men sent to arrest some rebel turned and fled
wildly when the rebel drew forth from his breast and presented to them
a bottle of soda-water;--how they have got one Kafir to fight another on
their behalf and how they have turned and run when it has been expected
that they should support the Kafir and do some fighting on their own
behalf. I fear that of late there has been truth in these stories and
that the pluck shewn by them when they made good their hold upon the
country, has been greatly dimmed by the quiet uneventful tenor of their
present lives. But no one complains so bitterly of the cowardice of the
Boers as the Hollander fresh from Holland. I once ventured to take the
part of the Boers in a discussion on the subject, and referred back to
the courage of Retief, of Potgieter, and of Maritz. There was a
gentleman from Holland in the company, and I own that I thought that
politeness required me to make some defence of his Dutch brethren in his
hearing. But I found myself to be altogether in the wrong. “They are the
vilest set of worthless cowards that the world has ever produced,” said
the Dutchman angrily. I think I may say that there is no sympathy
whatsoever between the old Dutch Colonist, and the newly-arrived
immigrant from Holland.
We crossed the Vaal river at a place called Standerton or Stander’s
Drift,--drift being Dutch for a ford the word has by common usage become
English in South Africa,--as also has the word spruit for a stream. Here
there resides one General Standers from whom the place is called, an old
man who commanded a party of the Dutch at the battle of Boom Platz,
which was fought between the Boers and the British at a place so called
in the Orange Free State in 1848. If the stories told by the English be
true the Boers did not distinguish themselves by courage on the
occasion. The General is a fine old man, as upright as a maypole and
apparently as strong as an oak, about 80 years of age. He is now a most
loyal subject of the British throne, though there have been days in his
career in which the British name has not been very dear to him. He was
finely courteous to us, and asked us to drink coffee, as do all Boers
when they intend to be civil to their visitors. It should be understood
by travellers that their courtesy is very superior to their coffee. No
allusion is here made to the General’s establishment as we had not time
to partake of his hospitality. At Standerton we found coal burnt, which
had been dug about 30 miles from the place. It was good coal, burning
clearly and without much ash.
Rising up from the Vaal river to the height of about 500 feet the land
ceases to be hilly and becomes a vast rolling plain for many miles,
without a single tree, and almost without a single enclosure. We saw
numerous herds of deer, the large blesbok and the smaller springbok,
which were near enough to be reached by a rifle. They would stand at
about 400 yards from us and gaze at us. My friend had a smooth-bore gun
with large shot; but could not get near enough to them to make such a
weapon available. The country was very uninteresting,--but capable of
bearing wheat on almost every acre. Wheat however there was none, and
only here and there at very long distances a batch of arable ground
tilled for the purpose of growing forage. I have said that there were
but few enclosures. Enclosures for arable or even pastoral purposes
there were none. Perhaps three or four times in a day a Boer’s farm
would be seen from the road side, distinguished by a small group of
trees, generally weeping willows. This would look like a very small
oasis in a huge desert. Round the house or on one side of it there would
be from six to a dozen acres of land ploughed, with probably a small
orchard and sometimes an attempt at a kitchen garden. There would too be
some ditching and draining and perhaps some slight arrangement for
irrigation. The Boer’s farm-house I have already described. When
questioned the farmer invariably declared that it would not pay him to
extend his agriculture, as he had no labour on which to depend and no
market to which he could carry his wheat. Questions on such subjects
were always answered with the greatest courtesy, and I may almost say
with eagerness. I do not remember that I ever entered a Boer’s house in
which he did not seem glad to see me.
A farm in the Transvaal is supposed to contain six thousand acres. This
is so much a matter of course that when a man holds less he describes
himself as possessing half a farm, or a quarter of a farm. The land is
all private property,--or nearly so, very little of it remaining in the
hands of the Government on behalf of the people generally,--and having
been divided into these large sections, cannot now be split up into
smaller sections except by sale or inheritance. The consequence has been
and still is very prejudicial to the interests of the country. The farms
are much too large for profitable occupation, and the farmers by the
very extent of their own dominions are kept without the advantages of
neighbourhood. The people are isolated in regard to schools, churches,
and all the amenities of social life. They cannot assist each other in
the employment of labour, or create markets for the produce of one
another by their mutual wants. The boorishness of the Boer is
attributable in a great degree to the number of acres of which he is the
lord.
As we went along the road we met a detachment of the 13th regiment
marching back from Pretoria to Newcastle. There seemed to be going on a
great moving of troops hither and thither, which no doubt had been made
necessary by the annexation. And these marchings were never made without
accidents of flood and field. On this occasion sixteen waggon-oxen had
died on the road. The soldiers had to carry their tents and belongings
with them, and the bullocks therefore were essential to these movements.
When I saw the big waggons, and the dead oxen, and remembered that every
man there in a red coat had been extracted from our population at home
with the greatest difficulty, and brought to that spot at an enormous
cost, and that this had been done for no British purpose, I own that I
asked myself some questions as to the propriety of our position in the
Transvaal which I found it difficult to answer;--as for instance whether
it is necessary that the troubles of the world at large should be
composed and set to rights by the soldiers of a nation so very little
able to provide an army as Great Britain. But the severity of these
thoughts was much mitigated when the two officers in command walked
across to us while we were outspanning in the veld, and offered us
bitter beer. The Transvaal would never have known even the taste of
bitter beer had it not been for the British army. Talk of a fountain in
the desert! What fountain can be compared to that kettle full of Bass
which the orderly who followed our two new friends carried in his hand.
“Do not look at it,” said the donor as the beverage was poured out. “The
joltings of the journey have marred its brightness. But you will find
that the flavour is all there.”
The only place on the road worthy to be called a town is Heidelberg and
this does not contain above two or three hundred inhabitants. It is the
capital of a district of the same name of which the entire population is
about 2,000. The district is larger than an ordinary English county,
comprising a compact area about 80 miles long by 60 broad, and yet it is
returned as having no other village within its boundaries except the so
called town of Heidelberg. But the place has an air of prosperity about
it and contains two or three mercantile firms which are really doing a
large business. In these places the shops, or stores, are very much more
extensive than would be any such depôts in English villages of the same
size;--so much so that comfortable fortunes may be made in a
comparatively short time. As the Boers are the chief customers, it is
evident that they are learning to spend their money, and are gradually
departing from the old Boer law that the farm should supply everything
needed for life.
At Heidelberg we found a good Inn,--a good Inn that is for the
Transvaal:--but the landlord at once told us that he had got no forage.
Our first work therefore was to go about into the town and beg. This we
did successfully, a merchant of the place consenting to let us have
enough for our immediate requirements, out of his private store. But for
this we must have used the reserve supply we carried with us, and have
gone on upon our road to look for more.
The Inn I have said was good. There was a large room in which a public
table was kept and at which a very good dinner was provided at half-past
six, and a very good breakfast at eight the next morning. There was a
pretty little sitting room within which any lady might make herself
comfortable. The bed and bedroom were clean and sweet. But there was
only one bed tendered for the use of two of us, and a slight feeling
seemed to exist that we were fastidious in requiring more. As more was
not forthcoming my unfortunate companion had to lie upon the ground.
At Heidelberg we were nearly on the highest table ground of the
Transvaal. From thence there is a descent to Pretoria,--not great indeed
for Pretoria is 4,450 feet above the sea,--but sufficient to produce an
entire change of climate. On the High Veld, as it is called, the
characteristics of the country are all those belonging to the temperate
zone,--such, indeed, as are the characteristics of our own country at
home. Wheat will grow if planted in the late autumn and will ripen in
the summer. But as the hill is turned, down to Pretoria, tropical
influences begin to prevail. Apples are said to thrive well, but so also
do oranges. And wheat will not live through the droughts of the winter
without irrigation. Irrigation for wheat must be costly, and
consequently but little wheat is grown. Wheat sown in the spring is, I
am told, subject to rust. Mealies, or Indian corn, will thrive here,
and almost all kinds of fruit. The gardens produce all kinds of
vegetables, when irrigation is used.
We descended into Pretoria through a “poort” or opening between the
hills and the little town with its many trees smiled upon us in the sun.
It lies in a valley on a high plateau, just as Grahamstown does, and is
surrounded by low hills. As we were driven into the town I congratulated
myself on having come to the end of my journey. To reach Pretoria had
been my purpose, and now I was at Pretoria. My further troubles would be
confined to my journey home which I intended to commence after a week’s
delay at the capital of our new Colony. Hitherto my work had been not
very uncomfortable and certainly not unprosperous.
CHAPTER II.
THE TRANSVAAL.--ITS HISTORY.
The Transvaal as its name plainly indicates is the district lying north
or beyond the Vaal river. The Orange river as it runs down to the sea
from the Diamond Fields through the inhospitable and little known
regions of Bushmansland and Namaqualand used to be called the Gariep and
is made up of two large rivers which, above their junction, were known
as the Gariep Kye and the Knu Gariep,--the tawny and the orange
coloured. The former which is the larger of the two is now known as the
Vaal, and the latter as the Orange. The Vaal rises in the Drakenberg
mountains and is the northern border of the Orange Free State or
Republic. The country therefore beyond that river received its present
name very naturally.
This southern boundary of the Transvaal has always been marked clearly
enough, but on every other side there are and have been doubts and
claims which are great difficulties to the administrator of the new
Colony. To the west are the Zulus who are, at this moment, claiming
lands which we also claim. Then above them, to the north-west are the
Portuguese who are not perhaps likely to extend their demands for inland
territory, but who are probably quite as much in doubt as we are as to
any defined boundary between them and the natives.[1] To the north I
think I may say that no one yet knows how far the Transvaal goes. The
maps give the Limpopo river as a boundary, but I think Sir Theophilus
Shepstone will own that Great Britain cannot, should she wish to do so,
make good her claim to lordship over the native races up to the Limpopo
without a considerable amount of ---- arrangement with the tribes. And
yet the matter is one that must be settled with accuracy because of the
hut tax. From the natives living under the protection of the British
Crown in the other colonies of South Africa a direct tax is
levied,--10s. or 14s.,--on each hut occupied, and it is indispensable to
the Government of the new Colony that the same system shall be
introduced there. We cannot govern the country without a revenue, and
from our black subjects this is the only means of collecting a
revenue,--till we begin to make something out of their taste for strong
drinks. It was inaccuracy as to their northern and north-eastern
boundaries which brought the South African or Transvaal Republic to that
ruin which induced us to seize it;--or, in other words, the lands which
the Dutch claimed the natives claimed also, and these claims were so
ambiguous, so progressive, so indefinite, that to have yielded to them
would have been to give up the whole country. Sicocoeni who was the
Chief most specially hostile to the Republic in its last days claimed
even the site on which stood Pretoria the capital, where the Volksraad
or Parliament of the Republic sat. In dealing with the Natives as to
boundaries nothing can be got by yielding. Nor does it seem possible to
trust to abstract justice. Between Sicocoeni and Mr. Burgers, the last
President of the Republic, it would have been impossible for abstract
justice to have drawn a true line so confused had the matter become. It
can only be done by a strong hand, and can only be done well by a strong
hand guided by a desire equally strong to do what is right. As an
Englishman I feel sure that we shall have the one, and, again as
Englishman, I trust that we shall have the other. The habitations of
hundreds of thousands of Natives are concerned. I find that the coloured
population of our new Colony is variously stated at numbers ranging from
250,000 to 800,000. It is all guess work;--but there is no doubt that
the multitude of human beings concerned is very great. Were we to annex
everything included in the Dutch maps of the Transvaal, the true number
would probably be much greater than the larger of those above given.
You, my readers, probably think that the more we include the better for
them, even though they should be made to pay a tax of 10s. a hut. So do
I. But they don’t. They want to be independent,--as are the Zulus down
on the sea coast. It is therefore impossible not to perceive a
difficulty. A line to the North and North-East must be drawn;--but no
possible line will satisfy the natives. To the West and North-West the
matter is probably as doubtful, though not as difficult. The numbers are
fewer and the people less warlike. But to the South-West there is
another problem to be solved. There is a territory North by West of the
Vaal river, including the little town of Bloomhof, which we, by British
award declared to be independent. Governor Keate of Natal was appointed
as arbitrator to draw a line between the Republic and the natives, and
he declared this territory to be a portion of Bechuanaland. But the
Transvaal, rejecting Governor Keate’s award, took the territory and
governed it. Are we now to reject it and give it back to the Bechuanas,
or are we to keep it as part of the annexed Colony? This also will add
something to the difficulty of defining our new possession.
The history of the European occupation of the Transvaal is the same as
the history of all South Africa during this century. The Dutch have been
ever running away from the English, and the English have sometimes
pursued them and sometimes determined that they should go whither they
would and be no longer accounted as British subjects. They have
certainly been a most stiff-necked people with whom to deal,--and we by
their inability to amalgamate with ourselves have been driven into
vacillations which have not always been very creditable to our good
sense. We have been too masterful and yet not masterful enough. In Natal
as we have seen, we would not allow them to form a Republic or to throw
off their British allegiance. Across the Orange river we have fought
them and reduced them,--at Boom Plaats, as I shall describe when giving
the little history of the Orange Free State,--and then have bid them go
their own way and shift for themselves.
The Dutch of South Africa have hated our ways, though I do not think
that they have hated us. What they have practically said to us is as
follows. “No doubt you are very fine fellows, and very strong. We do not
intend to pit ourselves against you. We first took and cultivated and
civilized this Cape Colony. But as you want it in God’s name take it and
use it, and do with it as you list. But let us go and do as we list
elsewhere. You don’t like slavery. We do. Let us go and have our slaves
in a new land. We must encounter endless troubles and probably death in
the attempt. But anything will be better to us than your laws and your
philanthropy.” We could not hinder them from going. There was at one
time a desire to hinder them, and the Colonial Attorney General in 1836
was consulted as to the law on the subject. There was an old Dutch law,
he said, forbidding the Colonists to cross the border; but that could
hardly be brought in force to prevent persons from seeking their
fortunes in other lands. We have already seen in regard to Natal, how
Lieut.-Governor Stockenstrom, when appealed to, declared that he knew of
no law which prevented His Majesty’s subjects from leaving His Majesty’s
dominions and settling elsewhere. That these people must be allowed to
go away with their waggons wheresoever they might choose was evident
enough; but the British rulers could not quite make up their minds
whether it was or was not their duty to go after the wanderers.
When the Dutch first made their way into the country now called the
Transvaal they were simply on their road to Natal. News had reached them
of the good land of Natal and they endeavoured to get to it by going
northwards across the Orange river. While pursuing their way through
what is now the Free State they encountered a terrible savage named
Mazulekatze, who was at the head of a tribe called the Matabele, with
whom they had to fight to the death. This warrior was a Zulu and had
fought under Chaka the king of the Zulus;--but had quarrelled with his
lord and master and fled out of Zulu Land westwards. Here he seems to
have created the tribe called Matabele, some of whom were Zulus and some
natives and some warriors who had joined him, as being a great fighting
Chief, from other tribes. He was as terrible a savage as Chaka himself,
and altogether “ate up” the less warlike Bechuanas who up to his time
possessed the land thereabouts. This seems to have been the way with
these tribes. They were like water running furiously in a torrent which
in its course is dashed over a rock. The stream is scattered into
infinite spray the particles of which can hardly be distinguished from
the air. But it falls again and is collected into this stream or the
other, changing not its nature but only its name. The Zulus, the
Bechuanas, the Matabeles, and the Kafirs seem to have been formed and
reformed after this fashion without any long dated tribal consistency
among them. When the Dutch came to the Vaal river, groping their way to
Natal, they found Mazulekatze and his Matabeles who was still at war
with some of these Bechuana tribes south of the Vaal river. This was in
1837, the year before the final abolition of slavery which by the law of
1834 was arranged to take place in 1838. The Dutch were nearly
exterminated, but they succeeded in driving Mazulekatze out of the
land. Then there was a quarrel among themselves whether they should
remain in that land or go eastward to the more promising soil of Natal.
They went eastward, and how they fared in Natal has already been told.
For ten or eleven years after this the “trekking” of the Dutchmen into
the Transvaal was only the onward movement of the most hardy of the
class, the advanced pioneers of freedom, who would prefer to live on
equal terms with the Savage,--if that were necessary,--than to have any
dealings with English law. These were men at that time subject to no
rule. Some were established north and west of the Vaal where
Potchefstrom and Klerksdorp now are; others south and east of the Vaal.
As to the latter there came an order for the appointment over them of
British magistrates from Sir Henry Smith who was then the Governor of
the Cape Colony. This was an offence which could not be borne. Andreas
Pretorius, that most uncompromising, most stiff-necked and self-reliant
of all the Dutchmen, had left Natal in disgust with this Governor and
had settled himself in these parts. He instigated a rebellion against
British authority,--not with the view of at that moment claiming land
north of the Vaal, but of asserting the independence of those who lived
to the south of it. Then came the battle of Boom Plaats and the Orange
Sovereignty,--as will be told in the section of my Work devoted to the
history of the Orange Free State. It was when flying from this battle,
in 1848, that Pretorius crossed the Vaal. “For you there is safety,” he
said to his companions as he started. “For me there is none.” Then he
fled away across the river and a reward of £2,000 was set upon his head.
This I think may be regarded as the beginning of the occupation of the
Transvaal territory by a European or Dutch population.
A sort of Republic was at once established of which Pretorius was at
first the acknowledged rather than the elected Chief. The most perfect
freedom for the white man,--which was supposed to include perfect
equality,--was to be maintained by a union of their forces against the
Natives of the country. Mazulekatze had been ejected, and the Bechuanas
were again coming in upon their old land. Then there were new troubles
which seemed always to end in the subjection of a certain number of the
Natives to the domestic institutions of the Dutch. The children of those
who rebelled, and who were taken as prisoners, were bound as apprentices
in the families of the Dutch farmers,--and as such were used as slaves.
There can be no doubt that such was the case. All the evidence that
there is on the subject goes to prove it, and the practice was one
entirely in accordance with Dutch sympathies and Dutch manners. It is
often pointed out to an enquirer that the position of the little urchins
who were thus brought into contact with civilization was thereby much
improved. Such an argument cannot be accepted as worth anything until
the person using it is brought to admit that the child so apprenticed is
a slave, and the master a slave-owner. Then the argument is brought back
to the great question whether slavery as an institution is beneficial or
the reverse. But even a Dutchman will generally avoid that position.
Such was the condition of the territory when the English determined that
they would signify to their runaway subjects that they were regarded as
free to manage themselves as they pleased across the Vaal. Of what use
could it be to follow these Dutchmen beyond that distant river, when, if
so persecuted, they would certainly “trek” beyond the Limpopo? Further
back than the Limpopo were the Zambesi and the Equator. And yet as
matters then stood a certain unpronounced claim was implied by what had
been done between the Orange and the Vaal. A treaty was therefore made
with the people in 1852, and for the making of the treaty Messrs. Hogge
and Owen were despatched as Her Majesty’s Commissioners to meet
Pretorius and a deputation of emigrant farmers, to settle the terms on
which the Republic should be established. There were two clauses of
special interest. One prohibited slavery in the new Republic,--a clause
so easy to put into a treaty, but one of which it is so impossible for
an outside power to exact the fulfilment! Another declared that the
British would make no alliances with the natives north of the Vaal
river,--a clause which we have also found to be very inconvenient. It
would have been better perhaps merely to have told these Boers that if
we found slavery to exist we should make it a casus belli, and to have
bound ourselves to nothing. This would have been “high-handed,”--but
then how much more high-handed have we been since?
Andreas Pretorius was the first President of the now established and
recognised nationality which, with a weak ambition which has assisted
much in bringing it to its ruin, soon called itself the South African
Republic,--as though it were destined to swallow up not only the Free
State but the British Colonies also. In this, however, Andreas Pretorius
himself had no part. The passion of his soul seems to have been
separation from the British;--not dominion over them. He died within two
years, in July 1853, and his son was elected in his place. The father
was certainly a remarkable man,--the one who of all his class was the
most determined to liberate himself from the thraldom of English
opinions. Mr. Theal in his history[2] of South Africa well describes how
this man had become what he was by a continued reading of the Old
Testament. The sanguinary orders given to the chosen people of the Lord
were to him orders which he was bound to obey as were they. Mr. Theal
quotes a special passage from the twentieth chapter of Deuteronomy, to
which I will refer my reader--“When thou comest nigh unto a city fight
against it.” The Israelites are enjoined either to slay or to enslave.
And Pretorius felt that such were the commands given to him in reference
to those natives among whom his lot had cast him. They were to him the
people of the cities which were “very far off,” and whom he had divine
order to enslave, while the more unfortunate ones who would still fain
occupy the lands on which it suited him and his people to dwell, were
“the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the
Hivites and the Jebusites” whom the Lord had commanded him utterly to
destroy. With such authority before him, and while black labour was so
necessary to the cultivation of the land, how could he doubt about
slavery? In studying the peculiarity of the Dutch character in South
Africa and the aversion of the people to our ways we have always to
remember that they had been brought up for ages in the strictest belief
in the letter of scripture. The very pictures in their bibles were to
them true pictures, because they were there. It was so two hundred years
ago with a large sect in Europe,--from which sect they had sprung. They
had grown in the new land without admixture with the progressing ideas
of Europe. They had neither been enlightened nor contaminated by new
systems of belief, or unbelief. So it has come to pass that an
institution which is so abhorrent to us as to make us feel that the man
who is stained by it must be a godless sinner, is still to them a
condition of things directly authorized and ordered by the Almighty. By
our persistency, by our treaties, by our power, by enforcing upon their
inferior condition as the very trade-mark of our superiority the command
that slavery shall exist no longer, we have driven them to deny it, and
have almost convinced them that slavery is no longer possible. But that
heartfelt hatred of slavery which is now common to all of us in England
has not yet reached the Dutchman of South Africa,--and is hardly as
strong in the bosoms of all British South African Colonists as it might
be.
After the death of the elder Pretorius the Republic had by no means a
quiet or a bloodless time. The capital was then at Potchefstrom, near
the Vaal, while the enormous territory claimed by it to the north was
almost without government. There are stories of terrible massacres
amidst the records of the Republic,--of fearful revenge inflicted on
the white men by the Savage whose lands had been taken from him, and of
tenfold, hundredfold revenge following quick upon the heads of the
wretched people. “Thou shalt utterly destroy them!” And therefore a
whole tribe was smothered and starved to death within the caves in which
they had taken refuge. We read that, “For years afterwards the supremacy
of the white man was unquestioned in that part of the Transvaal, and we
can easily believe it.”[3] But for some years the Republic hardly had
any other history but that of its contests with the Natives and its
efforts to extend its borders by taking land wherever its scanty
European population could extend itself. The cities “very far off” were
all their legitimate prey. As the people thus followed out their destiny
at great distances the seat of Government was moved from Potchefstrom to
Pretoria, which city was named after the founder of the Republic.
Upon the death of Andreas Pretorius in 1853 his son became President;
but in 1859 he was elected President of the Free State in the room of
Mr. Bostrof, who had then retired. When at Bloemfontein he advocated
measures for joining the two Republics under the name of the South
African Republic. Already had risen the idea that the Dutch might oust
the English from the continent, not by force of arms but by Republican
sentiment,--an idea however which has never travelled beyond the brains
of a few political leaders in the Transvaal. I do not think that a trace
of it is to be found in the elder Pretorius. Mr. Burgers, the last
President, of whom I shall have to speak presently, was so inflated by
it, that it may be said to have governed all his actions. The idea is
grand, for a South African Dutchman patriotic, and for a Republican
Dutchman not unnatural. But such ideas must depend on their success for
their vindication. When unsuccessful they seem to have been foolish
thoughts, bags of gas and wind, and are held to be proof of the
incompetency of the men who held them for any useful public action.
Neither will Mr. Pretorius junior nor Mr. Burgers ever be regarded as
benefactors of their country or as great statesmen; but the bosoms of
each have no doubt swelled with the aspiration of being called the Dutch
Washington of South Africa. I think I may say that Mr. Brand, who is now
President of the Orange Free State, is imbued with no such vaulting
ambition, whatever may be his ideas on the course of things in the womb
of time. He is mildly contented to be President of the Free State, and
as long as the Free State has a history to be written he will be spoken
of as the man who in the midst of its difficulties made its existence
possible and permanent.
The Volksraad of the Free State did not sympathise with the views of
their President from the Transvaal, and in 1863 he resigned the place.
He was soon re-elected President of the Northern Republic and remained
in that office till he quarrelled with his own Volksraad or was
quarrelled with by them. He struggled hard and successfully to extend
the bounds of the Empire, and claimed among other lands that tract of
land of which I have already spoken, which is far to the south-west of
the Transvaal, but still to the north or north-west of the Vaal, where
a tribe of the Griquas, a branch of the vast tribe of the Bechuanas,
were living. The question of a boundary in that direction was submitted
to Governor Keate as umpire, and his decision, which was hostile to the
claims of the Republic, was accepted by the President. But the Volksraad
repudiated their President, declaring that he had acted without their
authority, and refused to surrender the land in question. Oddly enough
after this, it is,--or it is not,--at this moment a portion of British
territory. I do not know with what face we can hold it;--but still I
feel sure that we shall not abandon it. Pretorius was so disgusted with
his Volksraad that he resigned his office. This happened in 1872. Mr.
Burgers, the late President, was then elected for a term of five years,
and was sworn into office on 1st July of that year.
Mr. Burgers, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in Capetown, is still a
man in the prime of life and is entitled to be spoken of with that
courtesy which always should be extended to living politicians who have
retired from office. Unless the proof to the contrary be so apparent as
to be glaring,--as to be impossible of refutation,--the motives of such
men should not be impugned. When a man has held high office in his
State,--especially when he has been elected to that office by the voices
of his fellow-citizens,--he is entitled to the merit of patriotism
unless the crime of selfish ambition or unclean hands have been brought
home against him by the voices which elected him. No such charges have
been substantiated against Mr. Burgers, and I shall therefore speak of
him with all the respect which patriotism deserves. He was chosen
because he was supposed to be fit, and I have no reason to doubt that he
strove to do his best for his adopted country. But the capacity of a
Statesman for the office he has filled is always open to remark, whether
he be still in power or shall have retired. In the former case it is
essential to oust an incompetent man from his place, and in the latter
to defend the course by which such a one has been ousted. As a public
man,--one who devotes himself to the service of the people,--is entitled
to the most generous construction of his motives, which should be
regarded as pure and honest till their impurity and dishonesty shall
have been put beyond question,--so is he justly exposed to all that
criticism can say as to the wisdom of his words and deeds. The work on
which he is employed is too important for that good-natured reticence
with which the laches of the insignificant may be allowed to be
shrouded.
When Mr. Burgers was elected President of the Transvaal Republic he was,
or shortly before had been, a clergyman of the Dutch Reformed Church in
the Cape Colony, who had differed on matters of creed with the Church to
which he belonged, and had consequently cast off his orders. He was
known as an eloquent enthusiastic man, and was warmly welcomed in the
Transvaal,--where, if ever, a silent, patient, unobtrusive officer was
wanted for the work which had to be done in consolidating the Republic.
The country at the time was very poor. The Treasury was empty,--a paper
currency had been set afloat in 1865, and was of course greatly
depreciated. Taxes were with difficulty collected, and the quarrels with
the natives were incessant. Mr. Burgers succeeded in raising a loan,
and borrowed £60,000, which the bank who lent the money will now receive
from the pockets of tax-payers in England. A considerable portion of
this sum has, I believe, already been repaid out of money voted by the
House of Commons. He established a national flag,--which was we may
suppose a cheap triumph. He had a gold coinage struck, with a
portraiture of himself,--two or three hundred gold pieces worth 20s.
each--which I will not hurt his feelings by calling sovereigns. This
could not have cost much as the coinage was so limited. They were too
all made out of Transvaal gold. He set on foot a most high flown scheme
of education,--of which the details will be given elsewhere and which
might not have been amiss had it not been utterly impracticable. He
attempted to have the public lands surveyed, while he did not in the
least know what the public lands were and had no idea of their limits.
There was to be a new code of laws, before as yet he had judges or
courts. And then he resolved that a railway should at once be made from
Pretoria through the gold fields of the Transvaal down to Delagoa Bay
where the Portuguese have their settlement. For the sake of raising a
loan for this purpose he went in person to Holland,--just when one would
have thought his presence in his own country to be indispensable, and
did succeed in saddling the Republic with a debt of £100,000 for railway
properties,--which debt must now, also, be paid by the British
tax-payers. To all this he added,--so runs the rumour among those who
were his friends in the Republic--many proud but too loudly spoken
aspirations as to the future general destiny of the South African
Republic. His mind seems to have been filled with the idea of competing
with Washington for public admiration.
In all this there was much for which only the statesman and not the man
must be blamed. The aspirations in themselves were noble and showed that
Mr. Burgers had so far studied his subject as to know what things were
good for a nation. But he had none of that method which should have
taught him what things to put first in bestowing the blessings of
government upon a people. We remember how Goldsmith ridicules the idea
of sending venison to a man who is still without the necessaries of
life.
“It’s like sending them ruffles when wanting a shirt.”
It was certainly a shirt, and other of the simplest of garments, which
the people of the Transvaal then wanted;--the ordinary calico shirt of
taxation and the knee-breeches of security for property;--while Mr.
Burgers was bestowing ruffles upon them in the shape of a national flag
and a national gold coinage with his own portrait. Education is
certainly one of the first wants of a people, but education will not be
assisted at all by a law declaring that all schoolmasters shall have
ample incomes, unless there be funds from which such incomes may be
paid. What is so excellent as a good code of laws;--unless indeed it be
some means of enforcing them, without which the best code in the world
must be ineffective? A code of laws is to be had with comparatively
little difficulty,--almost as easily as the flag. There are so many that
an aspiring President need only choose. But that regular system of
obedience to the laws which has to found itself on a well-collected
Revenue, and which is the very essence of government, should come first,
and in such a country as that which Mr. Burgers was called upon to
govern, the establishment of this system should have been the care of
the Governor before he had thought of a new code. Mr. Burgers rushed at
once to the fruition of all the good things which a country can possess
without stopping to see whether they were there, to be enjoyed. Such was
his temperament. Nothing more plainly declares the excessive wealth of
France and of England than the plenty of their gold coinage;--therefore
certainly let us have some gold pieces in the Transvaal. How proud are
the citizens of the United States of their Stars and Stripes! Therefore
let us have a flag. How grand is the education of Prussia! Therefore let
us have schools every where!
I myself think that the measure most essential for the development of
the resources of the Transvaal is a railway to Delagoa Bay. I cannot
therefore quarrel with Mr. Burgers for holding the same opinion. But it
was characteristic of the enthusiasm of the man that he, leaving his
country in uttermost confusion, should himself rush off to Europe for a
loan,--characteristic of his energy that he should be able to raise, if
not a large sum of money, railway plant representing a large sum--and
characteristic of his imprudence that all this should have been done
without any good result whatever. A railway to a country is a great
luxury, the most comfortable perhaps that it can enjoy; but Mr. Burgers
does not seem to have understood that a nation like a man, should be
able to provide for itself the necessaries of life before it looks for
luxuries.
As in this I am accusing Mr. Burgers, so also am I defending him from
many of the charges which have been brought against him. His fault
hitherto has been an ambition to make his country great before it had
been made secure; but in what he so did there is no trace of any undue
desire for personal aggrandizement. As a nation rises in the world, so
will its rulers rise. That a President of a young Republic should be
aware of this and feel that as honour and wealth come to his people so
will they come to him, is fair enough. It is but human. I believe that
Mr. Burgers thought more of his country than of himself. That he was
sanguine, unsteady, and utterly deficient in patience and prudence was
the fault of those who elected him rather than of himself.
All these follies, if they were follies, could have been nothing to us
but for our close proximity to the borders of the Transvaal. While the
gold was being coined and the flag was being stitched, there were
never-ending troubles with the Natives. The question of the right to
territory in a country which was inhabited by native races when it was
invaded by Europeans is one so complex that nothing but superior force
has as yet been able to decide it. The white races have gradually
obtained possession of whatever land they have wanted because they have
been the braver and the stronger people. Philanthropy must put up with
the fact, and justice must reconcile herself to it as best she may. I
venture to express an opinion that to the minds of all just men, who
have turned this matter in their thoughts with painful anxiety, there
has come a solution,--which has by no means satisfied them, but which
has been the only solution possible,--that God Almighty has intended
that it should be as it is. The increasing populations of the civilized
world have been compelled to find for themselves new homes; and that
they should make these homes in the lands occupied by people whose
power of enjoying them has been very limited, seems to have been
arranged----by Destiny. That is the excuse which we make for ourselves;
and if we do not find verbal authority for it in Deuteronomy as do the
Boers, we think that we collect a general authority from the manifested
intention of the Creator.
But in the midst of all this the attempts to deal justly with the
original occupants of the soil have of late years been incessant. If we
buy the land then it will be ours of right. Or if we surrender and
secure to the Native as much as the Native wants, then are we not a
benefactor rather than a robber? If we succour the weak against the
strong then shall we not justify our position? If in fact we do them
more good than harm may we not have quiet consciences? So we have dealt
with them intending to be just, but our dealings have always ended in
coercion, annexation, dominion and masterdom.
In these dealings who has been able to fix a price or to decide where
has been the right to sell? A few cattle have been given for a large
territory or even a few beads; and then it has turned out that the
recipient of the cattle or beads has had no title to dispose of the
land. But the purchaser if he be strong-handed will stick to his
purchase. And then come complications as to property which no judge can
unravel. Shall the law of the Native prevail or European, laws? and if
the former who shall interpret it,--a Native or a European? Some years
ago a Zulu king conquered a native tribe which lived on lands which are
now claimed as part of the Transvaal and then sold them for a herd of
cattle to the Dutch Republic. Time went by and the conquered people were
still allowed to live on the land, but the Dutch still claimed it as a
part of their empire. Then there arose a warrior among the tribe which
had been conquered; and the number of the tribe had increased with
peace; and the warrior said that he was then on his own territory and
not there by sufferance. And now that he was brave and strong he
declared that all the land that had once belonged to his tribe should be
his. And so there came war. The warrior was Secocoeni, the son of
Sequani who had been conquered by Dingaan the King of the Zulus, and the
war came up in the time of Mr. Burgers and has been the cause of our
annexation of the Republic. It should have been the first duty of Mr.
Burgers to have settled this affair with Secocoeni. His title to the
land in question was not very good, but he should have held it or
yielded it. If not all he might have yielded some. Or he might have
shown himself able to conquer the Native, as Dutchmen and Englishmen
have done before,--and have consoled himself with such justification as
that I have mentioned. But with his coins and his flags and his railway
he seems to have lost that power of inducing his Dutchmen to fight which
the Dutch leaders before his time have always possessed. There was
fighting and the Dutch had certain native allies, who assisted them
well. The use of such allies has become quite customary in South Africa.
At the very moment in which I am writing we are employing the Fingos
against Kreli and the Galekas in Kafraria. But Mr. Burgers with his
allies could not conquer Secocoeni although he was again and again
rebuked by our Secretary of State at home for the barbarity with which
he carried on the war. It is thus that Lord Carnarvon wrote to our
Governor at the Cape on the 25th January 1877. “I have to instruct you
once more to express to him”--President Burgers,--“the deep regret and
indignation with which H.M. Government view the proceedings of the armed
force which is acting in the name and under the authority of the
Transvaal Government, and that he is rapidly making impossible the
continuance either of those sentiments of respect and confidence towards
him, or of those friendly relations with him as the Chief of a
neighbouring Government, which it was the earnest hope of H.M.
Government to preserve.” This was a nice message for a President to
receive, not when he had quelled the Natives by the “armed force which
is acting in the name and under the authority of the Transvaal
Government,”--and which was undoubtedly the Transvaal army fighting for
the just or unjust claims of the country,--but when that armed force had
run away after an ineffective effort to drive the enemy from his
stronghold!
Whether Mr. Burgers ever received that message I do not know. It was not
written till a day or two after the arrival of Sir Theophilus Shepstone
at Pretoria,--to which place he had then gone up as British
Commissioner, and could hardly have been handed to the President much
before the final overthrow of his authority. Under these circumstances
we may hope that he was spared the annoyance of reading it. But other
annoyances, some from the same source, must surely have been enough to
crush any man, even one so sanguine as Mr. Burgers. During all the
latter period of his office he was subjected to a continued hail-storm
of reproaches as to slavery from British authorities and British
newspapers. These reached him generally from the Cape Colony, and Mr.
Burgers, who had come from the Cape, must have known his own old Colony
well enough himself to have been sure that if not refuted they would
certainly lead to disaster. I do not believe that Mr. Burgers had any
leaning towards slavery. He was by no means a Boer among Boers, but has
come rather of a younger class of men and from a newer school. But he
could only exist in the Transvaal by means of the Boers, and in his
existing condition could not exert himself for the fulfilment of the
clause of the treaty which forbad slavery.
Then he had against him a tribe of natives whom he could not conquer,
and at the same time the British Government and British feeling. And he
had not a shilling in the Treasury. Nominal taxes there were;--but no
one would pay them. As they were all direct taxes, it was open to the
people to pay them or to decline to do so. And they declined. As no one
had any confidence in anything, why should any one pay five or ten
pounds to a tax gatherer who had no constable at his back to enforce
payment? No one did do so, and there was not a shilling in the
Treasury. This was the condition of the South African Republic when Sir
Theophilus Shepstone arrived at Pretoria on January 22nd, 1877, with six
or seven other gentlemen from Natal and a guard of 25 mounted
policemen.
CHAPTER III.
THE TRANSVAAL.--ANNEXATION.
I have endeavoured in the last chapter to tell very shortly the story of
the South African Republic and to describe its condition at the moment
when our Secretary of State at home took the unusual step of sending a
British Commissioner,--not with orders to take possession of the land
but with orders which have been held to justify the act when done. I
doubt whether there is a precedent for so high-handed a deed in British
history. It is as though the rulers of Germany were to say that in their
opinion the existence of a Switzerland in Europe was deleterious and
dangerous, and that therefore they would abolish Switzerland as a
Republic, and annex its territory. It will be said that the case would
be different because Switzerland is well governed and prosperous. But
the Germans in such a case would say that they thought otherwise,--which
is what we say here,--and that they therefore took it. It was we who
found fault with the management of that other Republic and we who have
taken possession of the land. It is well that the whole truth as to the
matter should be understood. If we had done this act in compliance with
the expressed wish of the inhabitants generally, that would be a
justification. But it cannot fairly be said that such was the case
here. A nation with a popular parliament can only be held to express its
opinion to another nation by the voice of its parliament;--and the
Volksraad of the Transvaal was altogether opposed to the interference of
Great Britain. I will touch upon this matter again presently when
alluding to the words of the Commission given to the British
Commissioner by the Secretary of State at home;--but I think it must be
acknowledged that no other expression of opinion, unless it be a general
rising of a people, can be taken as national. In nine cases out of ten
petitions ought to be held to mean nothing. They cannot be verified.
They show the energy of the instigators of the petition and not of the
petitioners. They can be signed by those who have and by those who have
not an interest in the matter. The signatures to them can be readily
forged. At home in England the right of petitioning is so dear to us
from tradition that we still cling to it as one of the bulwarks of our
freedom; but there cannot be a statesman, hardly a Member of Parliament
among us, who does not feel that pen and ink and agitating management
have become so common that petitions are seldom now entitled to much
respect.
It may perhaps be said that we have repeatedly done the same thing in
India. But a little thinking will show that our Indian annexations have
been quite of a different nature. There we have gone on annexing in
opposition to the barbarism and weakness of native rule against which
our presence in India has, from the first, been a protest. Each
annexation has been the result of previous conquest and has been caused
by non-compliance with the demands of the conquerors. In the Transvaal
we have annexed a dominion which was established by ourselves in express
obedience to our own requisitions, which was in the possession of
European rulers, which was altogether independent, and as to the
expediency of annexing which we have had nothing to guide us but our own
judgment and our own will. It is as though a strong boy should say to a
weak one, “It is better that I should have that cricket bat than you,”
and should therefore take it.
The case will seem to be still stronger if it shall appear, as I think
it will, that Sir Theophilus Shepstone, the Commissioner appointed to
this work, did what he did do without complete authority. It is evident
that there was doubt in the Colonial Office at home. The condition of
the Transvaal was very bad. Slavery was rampant. The Natives were being
encouraged to rebellion. The President was impotent. The Volksraad was
stiff-necked and ignorant. There was no revenue, no order, no obedience.
The Dutch seemed to have forgotten even the way to fight. What were we
to do with such neighbours,--for whose inefficiency we were in a measure
responsible, having ourselves established the Republic? That we must
interfere for our own protection in regard to the Natives seemed to be
necessary. As has been said so often, there was a house on fire next
door to us, in the flames of which we might ourselves be enveloped.
Remonstrances had been frequent and had been altogether ineffectual. The
Republic was drifting,--nay, had drifted into Chaos. If any other people
could have assisted us in putting out the fire, French, Germans, or
Italians,--so that we might not seem to tyrannise,--it would have been
so comfortable! But in South Africa we had none to help us. And then
though this Republic was more than half Dutch it was also only less than
half English.
Something must be done; and therefore an order was sent out directing
Sir Theophilus Shepstone to go to Pretoria and see what he could do. Sir
Theophilus was and for many years had been Minister for Native Affairs
in the Colony of Natal, and was credited,--no doubt correctly,--with
knowing more about the Natives than any other European in South Africa.
He was a man held in special respect by the King of the Zulus, and the
King of the Zulus was in truth the great power whom both Dutch and
English would dread should the natives be encouraged to rebel. When men
have talked of our South African house being in danger of fire, Cetywayo
the King of the Zulus has been the fire to whom they have alluded. So
Sir Theophilus started on his journey taking his Commission in his
pocket. He took a small body of policemen with him as an escort, but
advisedly not a body that might seem by its number to intimidate even so
weak a Government as that of the South African Republic.
The writing of the Commission must have been a work of labour, requiring
much thought, and a great weighing of words. It had to be imperative and
yet hemmed in by all precautions; giving clear instruction, and yet
leaving very much to the Commissioner on the spot who would have his
work to do in a distant country not connected with the world by
telegraph wires. The Commission is long and I will not quote it all;
but it goes on to say that “if the emergency should seem to you to be
such as to render it necessary, in order to secure the peace and safety
of Our said Colonies and of Our subjects elsewhere that the said
territories, or any portion or portions of the same, should
_provisionally and pending the announcement of Our pleasure_,{A} be
administered in Our name and on Our behalf, then _and in such case
only_{A} We--” authorize you to annex so much of any such territories as
aforesaid.
But the caution against such annexing was continued much further.
“Provided first--that”--no such annexation shall be made--“unless you
shall be satisfied that the inhabitants thereof, _or a sufficient number
of them, or the Legislature thereof_[4] desire to become Our subjects,
nor if any conditions unduly limiting Our power and authority are sought
to be imposed. And secondly, that, unless the circumstances are such as
in your opinion to make it necessary to issue a Proclamation forthwith,
no such Proclamation shall be issued by you until the same has been
submitted to and approved by----” the Governor of the Cape Colony, all
whose titles are given at great length.
Could anything be more guarded, or less likely one would say on the mere
perusal of the document, to lead to an immediate and permanent
annexation of the whole country. The annexation if made at all was to be
provisional only and pending the Queen’s pleasure, and then it was only
to be made if the inhabitants, or a sufficient number of them, or the
Legislature should wish it. What the sufficient number might be was
left to the discretion of the Commissioner. But he was only to do this
in compliance with the wishes of the people themselves. He was to take
temporary possession,--only temporary possession,--of a part of the
Transvaal should the people desire it, and in the event of such a
measure being approved by a distant Governor,--unless the circumstances
were such as to make him think it expedient to do it without such
approval. Such was the nature of the Order, and I think that any one
reading it before the event would have said that it was not intended to
convey an authority for the immediate and permanent annexation of the
whole country.
But Sir Theophilus, after a sojourn of ten weeks at Pretoria, in which
the question of the annexation was submitted to the Volksraad and in
which petitions and counter-petitions were signed, did annex the whole
country permanently, without any question of provisional occupation, and
without, as far as I have been able to learn, any sanction from the
Governor of the Cape Colony. As to conditions limiting Her Majesty’s
power, the mere allusion to such a condition of things seems to be
absurd now that we know what has been done. “Now therefore I do ...
proclaim and make known that from and after the publication hereof the
territory heretofore known as the South African Republic ... shall be,
and shall be taken to be, British territory.” These are the words which
contain the real purport of the Proclamation issued by Sir Theophilus
Shepstone at Pretoria on 12th April, 1877. Was ever anything so decided,
so audacious, and apparently so opposed to the spirit of the
instructions which the Commissioner had received? When the Secretary of
State received a telegram from Madeira, the nearest telegraph station,
saying that the Transvaal had been annexed, which he did in the
following May, he surely must have been more surprised than any other
man in England at what had been done.
Was the deed justifiable? Has it been justified by what has occurred
since? And if so how had come about a state of things which had made
necessary a proceeding apparently so outrageous? The only man I have met
in all South Africa who has questioned the propriety of what has been
done is Mr. Burgers, the ousted President. Though I have discussed the
matter wherever I have been, taking generally something of a slant
against Sir Theophilus,--as I must seem to have done in the remarks I
have just made, and to which I always felt myself prompted by the
high-handedness of the proceeding,--I have never encountered even a
doubtful word on the subject, except in what Mr. Burgers said to me. And
Mr. Burgers acknowledged to me, not once or twice only, that the step
which had been taken was manifestly beneficial, to the Natives, to the
English,--and to the Dutch. He thought that Sir Theophilus had done a
great wrong,--but that the wrong done would be of great advantage to
every one concerned. He made various complaints;--that the Natives
around him had been encouraged to rebel in order that an assumed
difficulty might be pleaded;--that no national petition, and indeed no
trustworthy petition, had been sent forward praying for
annexation;--that the deed was uncalled for and tyrannical;--and that
the whole proceeding was one in which the courtesy due to a weaker
nation was neglected and omitted. He then asserted that fresh emigrants
would not flock into a land governed under a European crown as they
would have done into a Republic. But he repeated his admission that for
Dutchmen, Englishmen, and Natives as at present settled in the country,
the British rule would be the best.
He alleged as to himself that when Sir Theophilus stated to him his
intentions, three courses appeared to be open to him. He might use his
influence and his words in assisting the transference of the country to
the British. This as President of the Republic he could not do;--and the
less so as he did not think that it should be done. Or he might cause
Sir Theophilus and his twenty-five policemen to be marched back over the
border, treating them on their way as unauthorized intruders. This he
would not do, he said, because he knew it to be useless to wage war with
Great Britain. Or he might yield and remonstrate;--yield to power while
he remonstrated against injustice. This, he said, that he did do. The
words and personal bearing of the man recommended themselves to me much.
Whether he is to be regarded as a banished patriot or a willing placeman
must depend on a delicate question which has not as far as I know yet
been answered, though it has been broached,--to which, delicate as it
is, I will refer again before I have ended my story.
I had not the pleasure of meeting Sir Theophilus and have the less
repugnance therefore to surmise the condition of his mind when he
received the order to go to Pretoria. Had he told me his mind I might
have been unable to publish my own surmises. He knew that the native
races of the Transvaal unless convinced of the superiority of their
white neighbours would ever struggle to prove them inferior,--and that
such inferiority if proved would at once be their death-warrant. The
Natives had long learned to respect the English and to hate the
Dutch;--but even that respect would not restrain them if once they had
asserted their masterhood to a white race. And now this state of things
was at hand. He was aware that though English troops could be supplied
to maintain English authority, English troops would not be lent to fight
the battles of the Dutch. There might, nay there probably would be, a
native triumph just across our borders which he as a minister in Natal
could not interfere to quell,--but which, when a rumour of it should
spread among the Zulus on our border, might induce 300,000 coloured
subjects to think that they could free themselves by a blow from 20,000
white masters. And he knew the condition which I have attempted to
explain,--that these Dutch people in the Transvaal would not pay a
stiver of tax, that there was in fact no government, that the gaols were
unlocked in order that prisoners might find elsewhere the bread which
their gaolers could not get for them, that the posts could not be
continued because the Contractors were not paid, that no one would part
with a coin which he possessed, that property was unsaleable, that
industry was unprofitable, that life was insecure, that Chaos was come
upon the land. I do not suppose that Sir Theophilus doubted much when he
read the Commission which had been sent to him, or that he thought very
much of all the safeguards and provisions. He probably felt, as did
everybody else, that the South African Republic had from the first been
a failure,--almost a farce,--and that the sooner so expensive a failure
could be brought to an end, the better. If indeed the Volksraad would
have voted their own extermination that would have been very well; but
he could hardly have expected it. As for petitions, and the wish of a
“sufficient number” of the inhabitants,--I should imagine that he must
have been a little indifferent to that. His mind probably was made
up,--with a resolve to give the Volksraad what time might be needed for
their deliberations. They did not deliberate,--only deliberated whether
they would deliberate or not, and then declined even to deliberate.
Whereupon Sir Theophilus said that then and from thenceforth the
Transvaal should be British property. So he put up the Queen’s
flag;--and the Transvaal is and probably will remain British property.
I have to acknowledge, with all my sympathies strongly opposed to what I
call high-handed political operations, that I think Sir Theophilus was
justified. A case of such a kind must in truth be governed by its own
merits, and cannot be subjected to a fixed rule. To have annexed only a
part of the Transvaal would have been not only useless, but absurd. Not
only would the part which we had spared have been hostile to us, but the
Dutch within our assumed borders would have envied the independence we
had left to others. We shall have trouble enough now in settling our
boundaries with the Natives. We should then have had the worse trouble
of settling them with the Dutch. To have waited for authority from the
Governor of the Cape Colony would have shown a weakness in his own
authority which might have been fatal to Sir Theophilus as he was then
placed. No other Governor could know the condition of the matter as well
as he did. To get the authority needed he must have wasted six weeks
during which it would have been known to every member of the Volksraad
that he was waiting. To carry him through it was needed that the Boers
should understand that when he said that the land should be annexed,
Great Britain was saying so. They did so believe. The President so
believed. And therefore the surrender was made without a struggle.
So much for Sir Theophilus and his instructions. In the larger matter
which regards Great Britain and her character, we have to enquire
whether this arbitrary act has been justified by what has occurred
since. In discussing this there are at least four parties concerned, if
not more. Mr. Burgers spoke of three, and in South Africa it is natural
that reference should be made to those three only. As regards the
Natives there can be no question. No friend of theirs can wish it to be
otherwise unless they have a friend so foolish as to desire for them an
independence which can be obtained only by the extermination or
banishment of the European races. That the Natives generally respect the
English and do not respect the Dutch is certain. This had come to such a
pitch in the Transvaal that it had produced war,--and that war if
continued would have meant the destruction of the tribe which was waging
it. Permanent success against white men is impossible for Natives in
South Africa. Every war between a tribe and its white neighbours ends in
the destruction of the tribe as an independent people. And here, if
Secocoeni had been successful against the Dutch,--if the English could
have allowed themselves to sit by and see the house all in
flames,--Cetywayo, the King of the Zulus, would at once have been at war
with Secocoeni. As far as the Natives were concerned, it would indeed
have been to “let slip the dogs of war.” It has been one of our great
objects in dealing with the Natives,--perhaps that in accomplishing
which we should be most proud of what we have done,--to save the tribes
from being hounded on to war among themselves by their Chiefs. The Dutch
rule in the Transvaal was an incentive to war which was already
operating. The house was on fire and could only have been put out by us.
As to the good done to the English of the Transvaal it is hardly
necessary that any arguments should be used. We had abandoned the
country to Dutch rule in 1852, and it was natural that the Dutch should
consider only themselves--and the Natives. After what we had done we
clearly had no right to take back the Transvaal by force in order that
we might protect the interests of Englishmen who were living there. But
it is matter of additional satisfaction that we have been enabled to
re-establish a basis of trade in the country;--for the trade of the
country has been in the hands of English, Germans, or newly arrived
Hollanders, and not in those of the Boers to whom the country was given
up. I do not remember to have found a shop or even an hotel all through
the Transvaal in the hands of a Dutch Boer.
But the man who has cause to rejoice the most,--and who as far as I
could learn is wide awake to the fact,--is the Boer himself. He is an
owner of land,--and on the first of January 1877 his land was hardly
worth having. Now he can sell it, and such sales are already being made.
He was all astray even as to what duty required of him. Ought he to pay
his taxes when no one around him was paying? Of what use would be his
little contribution? Therefore he did not pay. And yet he had sense
enough to know that when there are no taxes, then there can be no
government. Now he will pay his taxes. Ought he to have fought, when
those wretched Natives, in their audacity, were trying to recover the
land which he had taken from them? Of what use could fighting have been
when he had no recognised leader,--when the next Boer to him was not
fighting? Now he knows that he will have a leader. Why cultivate his
land, or more of it than would feed himself? Why shear his sheep if he
could not sell his wool? Now there are markets for him. It was to this
condition of not paying, not fighting, and not working that he was
coming when British annexation was suggested to him. He could not
himself ask to be expatriated; but it may well be understood that he
should thoroughly appreciate the advantage to himself of a measure for
which as a Dutchman he could not ask. What was wanted was money and the
credit which money gives. England had money and the Boer knew well
enough that English money could procure for him that which a national
flag, and a gold coinage, and a code of laws, and a promised railway
could not achieve. It was almost cruel to ask him to consent to
annexation, but it would have been more cruel not to annex him.
But the condition of the fourth party is to be considered. That fourth
party is the annexing country. It may be very well for the Natives and
for the Dutch, and for the English in the Transvaal, but how will it
suit the English at home? It became immediately necessary for us to send
a large military force up to the Transvaal, or to its neighbourhood.
Something above two regiments have I believe been employed on the
service, and money has been demanded from Parliament for the purpose of
paying for them. Up to this time England has had to pay about £125,000
for the sake of procuring that security of which I have spoken. Why
should she pay this for the Boers,--or even for the English who have
settled themselves among the Boers? And then the sum I have named will
be but a small part of what we must pay. Hitherto no violent objection
has been made at home to the annexation. In Parliament it has been
almost as well received by the Opposition as by the Government. No one
has said a word against Lord Carnarvon; and hardly a word has been said
against Sir Theophilus. But how will it be when other and larger sums
are asked for the maintenance of the Transvaal? Surely some one will
then arise and say that such payments are altogether antagonistic to our
colonial policy,--by which our Colonies, as they are required to give
nothing to us, are also required to support themselves.
The answer to this I think must be that we have been compelled thus to
deviate from our practice and to put our hands deeply into our pockets
by our folly in a former generation. It is because we came to a wrong
judgment of our position in 1852,--when we first called upon the Dutch
Boers to rule themselves,--that we are now, twenty-five years
afterwards, called upon to pay for the mistake that has since occurred.
We then endeavoured to limit our responsibility, saying to ourselves
that there was a line in South Africa which we would not pass. We had
already declined to say the same thing as to Natal and we ought to have
seen and acknowledged that doctrine of the house on fire as clearly then
as we do now. The Dutch who trekked across the Vaal were our subjects as
much as though they were English. Their troubles must ultimately have
become our troubles,--whereas their success, had they been successful,
might have been as troublesome to us as their troubles. We repudiated
two territories, and originated two Republics. The first has come back
upon our hands and we must pay the bill. That is the Transvaal. The
other, which can pay its own bill, will not come back to us even though
we should want it. That is the Orange Free State. I have now answered
the three questions. I think the annexation was justifiable. I think
that it has been justified by the circumstances that have followed it.
And I have given what in my opinion has been the cause for so
disagreeable a necessity.
There is one other matter to be mentioned,--that delicate matter to
which I have alluded. A report has been spread all through South Africa
that the late President of the South African Republic is to be gratified
by a pension of £750 per annum out of the revenues of Great Britain. I
trust for every one’s sake that that report may not be true. The late
President was the chief officer of his country when the annexation was
made, and I cannot think that it would be compatible with his honour to
receive a pension from the Government of the country which has
annihilated the Republic over which he had been called on to preside.
When he says that he yielded and remonstrated he takes a highly
honourable position and one which cannot be tarnished by any
incapability for ruling which he may have shown. But were he to live
after that as a pensioner on English bounty,--the bounty of the country
which had annihilated his own,--then I think that he had better at least
live far away from the Transvaal, and from the hearing of the sound of a
Dutchman’s voice.
And why should we pay such a pension? Is it necessary that we should
silence Mr. Burgers? Have we done him an injustice that we should pay
him a compensation for the loss of his office? It is said that we pay
dethroned Indian Princes. But we take the revenues of dethroned Indian
Princes,--revenues which have become their own by hereditary descent.
Mr. Burgers had a month or two more of his Presidency to enjoy, with but
little chance of re-election to an office the stipend of which could not
have been paid for want of means. But this argument ought not to be
required. An expensive and disagreeable duty was forced upon us by a
country which could not rule itself, and certainly we should not
convict ourselves of an injustice by giving a pension to the man whose
incompetence imposed upon us the task. I trust that the rumour though
very general has been untrue.
CHAPTER IV.
THE TRANSVAAL.--PRETORIA.
Pretoria itself, the capital of our new country, is a little town, lying
in a basin on a plateau 4,500 feet above the level of the sea,--lat. 25°
45´, S., long. 28° 49´, E. From its latitude it would be considered to
be semitropical, but its altitude above the sea is so great as to make
the climate temperate. In regard to heat and cold it is very
peculiar,--the changes being more rapid and violent than I have
experienced in any other place. I was there during the last days of
September, which would answer to the last days of March on our side of
the equator. The mornings were very fine, but somewhat chilly,--not so
as to make a fire desirable but just to give a little sting to the
water. The noon-day was hot,--not too hot for exercise; but the heat
seemed to increase towards the afternoon, the level rays of the sun
being almost oppressive. Then suddenly there would come an air so cold
that the stranger who had not expected the change and who was wearing
perhaps his lightest clothes would find that he wanted a great coat and
a warm cravat round his neck. It was not till I was about to leave the
place that I became alive to its peculiarities. I caught a cold every
evening in consequence of my ignorance, becoming quite hoarse and
thinking of hot water externally and internally as I went to bed;--but
in the morning I was always quite well again. I was assured, however,
that the climate of Pretoria was one which required great care from its
inhabitants. It is subject to very violent storms, and deaths from
lightning are not uncommon. The hailstorms, when they come, are very
violent, the stones being so large as not unfrequently to batter the
cattle to death. I was glad to find that they were unfrequent, and that
my good fortune saved me from experiencing their effects. “What does a
man do if he be out in the veld?” I asked when I heard these frightful
stories. “Put his saddle over his head,” was the answer, showing much as
to the custom of a people who seldom walk to any distance always having
horses at command. “But if he have not a saddle?” “Ah, then indeed, he
would be badly off.” My informants, for I was told of the hailstorms and
the necessary saddles more than once, seemed to think that in such a
dilemma there would be no hope for a man who, without a saddle, might
chance to be beyond the reach of a roof. I could not, however, learn
that people were often killed. I therefore accepted the Pretorian
hailstones with a grain of salt.
The first President of the Colony was named Pretorius and hence the name
of the town, which became the capital in the time of his son who was the
second President. The old man was one of the pioneer farmers who first
entered in upon the country under circumstances already described, and
the family now is very numerous in the Transvaal, occupying many farms.
Potchefstroom,--a hundred miles to the south-west of Pretoria,--was the
first capital and is still the bigger town; but President Pretorius the
second thought it well to move the seat of Government more to the centre
of the large district which the Republic was then claiming, and called
the little city Pretoria, after the name of his father.
I am quite unable to say what is the population of the capital, as those
of whom I inquired could only guess at it from their own point of view.
I should think it might amount to two thousand exclusive of the
military. At the time I was there it was of a very shifting nature, and
will be so for; some months. It has lately become the seat of a British
Government, and people have flocked into it knowing that money will be
flying about. Money has flown about very readily, and there are hands of
course to receive it. Six hundred British soldiers are stationed there
under tents, and soldiers, though their pay is low, are great consumers.
A single British soldier will consume as much purchased provender as a
whole Boer family. But as people are going in, so are they going out.
The place therefore in its present condition is like a caravansary
rather than an established town. All menial services are done by a Kafir
population,--not permanently resident Kafirs who can be counted, but by
a migratory imported set who are caught and used as each master or
mistress of a family may find it possible to catch and use them. “They
always go when you have taught them anything,” one poor lady said to me.
Another assured me that two months of continuous service was considered
a great comfort. And yet they have their domestic jealousies. I dined at
a house at which one of our British soldiers waited at table, an
officer who dined there having kindly brought the much-needed assistance
with him. The dinner was cooked by a Kafir who, as the lady of the house
told me, was very angry because the soldier was allowed to interfere
with the gala arrangements of the day. He did not see why he should not
be allowed to show himself among the company after having undergone the
heat of the fray. These Kafirs at Pretoria, and through all those parts
of the Transvaal which I visited, are an imported population,--the Dutch
having made the land too hot to hold them as residents. The Dutch hated
them, and they certainly have learned to hate the Dutch in return. Now
they will come and settle themselves in Pretoria for a short time and be
good-humoured and occasionally serviceable. But till they settle
themselves there permanently it is impossible to count them as a
resident population.
Down many of the streets of the town,--down all of them that are on the
slope of the descent,--little rivulets flow, adding much to the
fertility of the gardens and to the feeling of salubrity. Nothing seems
to add so much to the prettiness and comfort of a town as open running
water, though I doubt whether it be in truth the most healthy mode of
providing for man the first necessary of life. Let a traveller, however,
live for a few days but a quarter of a mile from his water supply and he
will learn what is the comfort of a rivulet just at his door-step. Men
who have roughed it in the wilderness, as many of our Colonists have had
to do before they have settled themselves into townships, have learned
this lesson so perfectly that they are inclined, perhaps, to be too fond
of a deluge. For purposes of gardening in such a place as Pretoria
there can be no doubt about the water. The town gardens are large,
fertile, and productive, whereas nothing would grow without irrigation.
The streets are broad and well laid out, with a fine square in the
centre, and the one fact that they have no houses in them is the only
strong argument against them. To those who know the first struggling
efforts of a colonial town,--who are familiar with the appearance of a
spot on which men have decided to begin a city but have not as yet
progressed far, the place with all its attributes and drawbacks will be
manifest enough. To those who have never seen a city thus struggling
into birth it is difficult to make it intelligible. The old faults of
old towns have been well understood and thoroughly avoided. The old town
began with a simple cluster of houses in close contiguity, because no
more than that was wanted. As the traffic of the day was small, no
provision was made for broad spaces. If a man could pass a man, or a
horse a horse,--or at most a cart a cart,--no more was needed. Of
sanitary laws nothing was known. Air and water were taken for granted.
Then as people added themselves to people, as the grocer came to supply
the earlier tanner, the butcher the grocer, the merchant tailor his
three forerunners, and as a schoolmaster added himself to them to teach
their children, house was adjoined to house and lane to lane, till a
town built, itself after its own devise, and such a London and such a
Paris grew into existence as we who are old have lived to see pulled
down within the period of our own lives. There was no foresight and a
great lack of economy in this old way of city building.
But now the founder has all these examples before his eyes, and is
grandly courageous in his determination to avoid the evils of which he
has heard and perhaps seen so much. Of course he is sanguine. A founder
of cities is necessarily a sanguine man, or he would not find himself
employed on such a work. He pegs out his streets and his squares
bravely, being stopped by no consideration as to the value of land. He
clings to parallelograms as being simple, and in a day or two has his
chief thoroughfare a mile long, his cross streets all numbered and
named, his pleasant airy squares, each with a peg at each corner, out in
the wilderness. Here shall be his Belgravia for the grandees, and this
his Cheapside and his Lombard Street for the merchants and bankers. We
can understand how pleasant may be the occupation and how pile upon pile
would rise before the eyes of the projector, how spires and minarets
would ascend, how fountains would play in the open places, and pleasant
trees would lend their shade to the broad sunny ways.
Then comes the real commencement with some little hovel at the corner of
two as yet invisible streets. Other hovels arise always at a distance
from each other and the town begins to be a town. Sometimes there will
be success, but much more often a failure. Very many failures I have
seen, in which all the efforts of the sanguine founder have not produced
more than an Inn, a church, half a dozen stores; and twice as many
drinking booths. And yet there have been the broad streets,--and the
squares if one would take the trouble to make enquiry. Pretoria has not
been a failure. Among recent attempts of the kind Pretoria is now
likely to be a distinguished success. An English Governor is to live
there, and there will be English troops;--I fear, for many years. Balls
will be given at Pretoria. Judges will hold their courts there, and a
Bishop will live in a Pretorian Bishopstowe. But the Pretoria of to-day
has its unknown squares, and its broad ill defined streets about which
houses straggle in an apparently formless way, none of which have as yet
achieved the honours of a second storey. The brooks flow pleasantly, but
sometimes demand an inconvenient amount of jumping. The streets lie in
holes, in which when it rains the mud is very deep. In all such towns as
these mud assumes the force of a fifth element, and becomes so much a
matter of course that it is as necessary to be muddy, as it is to be
smoke-begrimed in London. In London there is soap and water, and in
Pretoria there are, perhaps, clothes-brushes; but a man to be clean
either in one place or the other must always be using his soap or his
clothes-brush. There are many gardens in Pretoria,--for much of the
vacant spaces is so occupied. The time will come in which the gardens
will give place to buildings, but in the mean time they are green and
pleasant-looking. Perhaps the most peculiar feature of the place is the
roses. There are everywhere hedges of roses, hedges which are all
roses,--not wild roses but our roses of the garden though generally less
sweet to the smell. And with the roses, there are everywhere weeping
willows, mourning gracefully over the hitherto unaccomplished
aspirations of the country. This tree, which I believe to have been
imported from St. Helena, has become common to the towns and homesteads
of the Transvaal. To the eye that is strange to them the roses and
weeping willows are very pretty; but, as with everything else in the
world, their very profusion and commonness detracts from their value.
The people of Pretoria think no more of their roses, than do those of
Bermuda of their oleanders.
In such towns the smallness of the houses is not the characteristic
which chiefly produces the air of meanness which certainly strikes the
visitor, nor is it their distance from each other, nor their poverty;
but a certain flavour of untidiness which is common to all new towns and
which is, I fear, unavoidable. Brandy bottles and sardine boxes meet the
eye everywhere. Tins in which pickled good things have been conveyed
accumulate themselves at the corners. The straw receptacles in which
wine is nowadays conveyed meet the eye constantly, as do paper
shirt-collars, rags, old boots, and fragments of wooden cases. There are
no dust holes and no scavengers, and all the unseemly relics of a hungry
and thirsty race of pioneers are left open to inspection.
And yet in spite of the mud, in spite of the brandy bottles, in spite of
the ubiquitous rags Pretoria is both picturesque and promising. The
efforts are being made in the right direction, and the cottages which
look lowly enough from without have an air of comfort within. I was
taken by a gentleman to call on his wife,--an officer of our army who is
interested in the gold fields of the Transvaal,--and I found that they
had managed to gather round them within a very small space all the
comforts of civilized life. There was no front door and no hall; but I
never entered a room in which I felt myself more inclined to “rest and
be thankful.” I made various calls, and always with similar results. I
found internal prettinesses, with roses and weeping willows outside
which reconciled me to sardine boxes, paper collars, and straw
liquor-guards.
In the middle of Pretoria is a square, round which are congregated the
public offices, the banks, hotels, and some of the chief stores, or
shops of the place, and in which are depastured the horses of such
travellers as choose to use the grass for the purpose. Ours, I hope,
were duly fed within their stables; but I used to see them wandering
about, trying to pick a bit of grass in the main square. And here stands
the Dutch Reformed Church,--in the centre,--a large building, and as
ugly as any building could possibly be made. Its clergyman, quite a
young man, called upon me while I was in Pretoria, and told me that his
congregation was spread over an area forty miles round. The people of
the town are regular attendants; for the Dutchman is almost always a
religious father of a family, thinking much of all such services as were
reverenced by his fathers before him. But the real congregation consists
of the people from the country who flock into the Nichtmaal, or Lord’s
Supper, once in three months, who encamp or live in their waggons in the
square round the Church, who take the occasion to make their town
purchases and to perform their religious services at the same time. The
number attending is much too large to enter the church at once, so that
on the appointed Sunday one service succeeds another. The sacrament is
given, and sermons are preached, and friends meet each other, amid the
throng of the waggons. The clergyman pressed me to stay and see it;--but
at this time my heart had begun to turn homewards very strongly. I had
come out to see Pretoria, and, having seen it, was intent upon seeing
London once again.
There are various other churches,--all of them small edifices,--in the
place, among which there is a place of worship for the Church of
England. And there is a resident English clergyman, a University man,
who if he live long enough and continue to exercise his functions at
Pretoria will probably become the “clergyman of the place.” For such is
the nature of Englishmen. Now that the Transvaal is an English Colony
there can be no doubt but that the English clergyman will become the
“clergyman of the place.”
I would fain give as far as it may be possible an idea to any intending
emigrant of what may be the cost of living in Pretoria. Houses are very
dear,--if hired; cheap enough if bought. When I was there in September,
1877, the annexation being then four months old, a decent cottage might
be bought for seven or eight hundred pounds, for which a rental of seven
or eight pounds a month would be demanded. A good four-roomed house with
kitchen &c. might be built, land included, for a thousand pounds, the
rent demanded for which would be from £150 to £175 a year. Meat was
about 6d. a pound, beef being cheaper and I think better than mutton.
Butter, quite uneatable, was 2s. a pound. Eggs a shilling a dozen. Fowls
1s. 6d. each. Turkeys, very good, 7s. 6d. to 9s. 6d. each. Coals 10s. a
half hundredweight,--and wood for fuel about £2 for a load of two and a
half tons. These prices for fuel would add considerably to the cost of
living were it not that fires are rarely necessary except for the
purpose of cooking. Bread is quoted at 1s. a loaf of two pounds, but was
I think cheaper when I was there. Potatoes were very dear indeed, the
price depending altogether on the period of the year and on the season.
I doubt whether other vegetables were to be bought in the market, unless
it might be pumpkins. Potatoes and green vegetables the inhabitant of
Pretoria should grow for himself. And he should be prepared to live
without butter. Why the butter of South Africa should be almost always
uneatable, culminating into an acme of filth at Pretoria, I cannot
say;--but such was my experience. After all men and women can live
without butter if other things be in plenty.
Then comes that difficult question of domestic service. All that the
inhabitant of Pretoria will get in this respect will cost him very much
less than in Europe, very much less indeed than in England, infinitely
less than in London. With us at home the cost of domestic service has
become out of proportion to our expenditure in other respects, partly
because it has become to be thought derogatory to do anything for
ourselves, and partly because our servants have been taught by their
masters and mistresses to live in idle luxury. Probably no man earning
his bread eats so much meat in proportion to the work he does as the
ordinary London footman. This is an evil to those who live in London
from which the inhabitant of Pretoria will find himself free. He will
get a “boy” or perhaps two boys about the house,--never a girl let the
mistress of the family coming out to the Transvaal remember,--to whom
he will pay perhaps 10s. a month and whom he will feed upon mealies. The
“boy’s” wages and diet will cost perhaps £12 per annum. But indeed they
will not cost him so much, for the “boy” will go away, and he will not
be able to get another just when he wants one. These boys he will find
to be useful, good humoured, and trustworthy,--if only he could keep
them. They will nurse his baby, cook his dinner, look after his house,
make his bed, and dig his garden. That is they will half do all these
things,--with the exception of nursing the baby, whom the Kafir is never
known to neglect or injure. The baby perhaps may serve to keep him a
whole twelvemonth, for he is very fond of a white baby. The wife of the
British gentleman who thus settles himself at Pretoria will, at first,
be struck with horror at the appearance of the Kafir, who will probably
wear an old soldier’s jacket with a ragged shirt under it and no other
article of clothing; and she will not at first suffer the Savage to
touch her darling. But she will soon become reconciled to her inmate and
the darling will take as naturally to the Kafir man as though he were
some tendered, best instructed old English nurse out of a thoroughly
well-to-do British family. And very soon she will only regret the
reckless departure of the jet black dependant who had struck her at
first with unmingled disgust.
Gradually I suppose these people will learn to cling to their work with
some better constancy. I, as a stranger, was tempted to say that better
diet, better usage, and better wages would allure them. But I was
assured that I was wrong in this, and that any attempts in that
direction only spoilt “the Native.” No doubt if you teach a Native to
understand that he is indispensable to your comfort you raise his own
estimation of himself, and may do so in such a manner as to make him
absurdly fastidious. He is still irrational, still a Savage. He has to
be brought by degrees to bend his neck to the yoke of labour and to
learn that continued wages are desirable. That the thing will be done by
degrees I do not at all doubt, and do not think that there is just cause
of dissatisfaction at the rate of the present progress. The new comer to
Pretoria to whom I am addressing myself will doubtless do something
towards perfecting the work. In the meantime his domestic servants will
cost him very much less than they have done in England.
A man with a wife and family and £500 a year would I think live with
more comfort, certainly with more plenty in Pretoria, than in England.
The inhabitants of Pretoria will demur to this, for it is a matter of
pride to the denizens of every place to think that the necessaries of
life are dearer there than elsewhere. But the cheapness of a place is
not to be reckoned only by what people pay for the articles they use.
The ways of the country, the requirements which fashion makes, the pitch
to which the grandeur of Mrs. Smith has aroused the ambition of Mrs.
Jones, the propensities of a community to broadcloth or to
fustian,--these are the causes of expensive or of economical living. A
gentleman in Pretoria may invite his friends to dinner with no greater
establishment than a Kafir boy to cook the dinner and another to hand
the plates, whereas he does not dare to do so in London without paying
10s. for the assistance of the greengrocer.
As, however, men with £500 a year will not emigrate in great numbers to
Pretoria it would be more important to say how the labouring man might
live in the Transvaal. With him his condition of life does not depend so
much on what he will have to pay for what he consumes as on the wages
which he may receive. I found that an artizan can generally earn from
10s. to 12s. a day at almost any trade,--if the work of the special
trade be required. But I am far from saying that amidst so small a
community all artizans would find an opening. At the present moment
bricklayers and carpenters are in demand at Pretoria,--and can live in
great plenty on their wages.
As to workmen, who are not artizans but agricultural labourers, I hardly
think that there is any opening for them in the Transvaal. Though the
farmers all complain that they cannot plough their lands because there
is no labour, yet they will not pay for work. And though the Kafir is
lazy and indifferent, yet he does work sufficiently to prevent the white
man from working. As I have said before the white men will not work
along with the Kafir at the same labour. If there be but a couple of
black men with him he presumes that it is his business to superintend
and not to work. This is so completely the case in the Transvaal that it
is impossible to name any rate of wages as applicable to white rural
labour. Sons work for their fathers or brothers may work together;--but
wages are not paid. The Dutchman has a great dislike to paying wages.
The capital of the Transvaal is all alive with soldiers. There are 600
redcoats there, besides artillery, engineers and staff. These men live
under canvas at present, and are therefore very visible. Barracks
however are being built, with officers’ quarters and all the
appurtenances of a regular military station. It was odd enough to me to
see a world of British tents in the middle of a region hazily spoken of
at home six months ago as the South African Republic; but how much
stranger must it be to the Dutch Boers who certainly anticipated no such
advent. I had the honour of being invited to dine at the mess, and found
myself as well entertained as though I had been at Aldershott. When I
was sitting with the officers in their uniform around me it seemed as
though a little block of England had been cut out and transported to the
centre of South Africa.
It may be as well to say a few words here as elsewhere as to the state
of education in our new Colony. The law on this matter as it stood under
the Republic is the law still. Now, as I write, it is hardly more than
six months since the annexation and there has not been time for changes.
On no subject was the late President with his Cabinet more alive to the
necessity of care and energy, on no subject were there more precise
enactments, and on no subject were the legislative enactments more
pretentious and inefficacious. There are three classes of schools,--the
High Schools, the District Schools, and the Ward Schools, the whole
being under the inspection of a Superintendent General of Education. The
curriculum at the High Schools is very high indeed, including Dutch,
English, French, German, Latin, Greek, geometry, algebra, and all the
ologies, together with logic, music, drawing, and astronomy. The law
enacts that the principal master at a High School shall receive £400 a
year, and the Assistant Masters £250 each;--but even at these salaries
teachers sufficiently instructed could not be found, and when the
Superintendent made his last return there was but one High School in the
Transvaal, and at that school there were but five pupils. At the High
School, the pupils paid 30s. a month, which, presuming there to be two
months of holydays in the year, would give £15 per annum. There would be
therefore £75 towards maintaining a school of which the Head Master
received £400. But the reality of the failure was worse even than this.
The law required that all boys and girls should pay the regular fees,
but in order to keep up the number of pupils gratuitous instruction was
offered. Three months after annexation the five High School pupils had
dwindled down to two, and then the school was closed by order of the
British Governor. The education no doubt was far too advanced for the
public wants; and as it was given by means of the Dutch language only it
did not meet the needs of those who were most likely to make use of it.
For, even while the Transvaal was a Dutch Republic, the English language
was contending for ascendancy with that of the people. In this
contention the President with his Government did his best to make Dutch,
and Dutch only, the language of the country. For this we cannot blame
him. It was naturally his object to maintain the declining nationality
of his country. But the parents and pupils who were likely to profit by
such a school as I have described were chiefly English.
At the District and Ward schools the nature of the instruction proposed
to be given is lower. The District schools are held in the chief
towns,--such as they are,--and the Ward schools in sub-divisions of the
Districts. They too have failed for the same reasons. They are too
expensive and pretentious. The Salaries,--_i.e._ the lowest salaries
permitted by law,--are £200 and £100 for head masters at the two classes
of schools, and £125 and £30 for assistant masters. According to the
last return there were 236 pupils at the District schools, and 65 at the
Ward schools. The pupils pay varying fees, averaging 7s. a month or
about £3 10s. per annum each. There are six District schools and two
Ward schools, at which the masters’ salaries alone would amount to
£1,700 per annum,--presuming there to be no assistant masters,--while
the total of fees would be about £1,050 per annum. As the Government had
been for many months penniless, it need hardly be explained further that
the schools must have been in a poor condition. The nominal cost to the
State during the last years of the Republic was about £3,500, being more
than £11 per year for each pupil over and above the fees. What was still
due under the head had of course to be paid out of British taxes when
the country was annexed.
But all this does not show the extent of the evil. The white population
of the country is supposed to be 45,000, of which about a tenth or 4,500
ought to be at school. The public schools at present show 300. There are
some private schools as to which I could obtain no trustworthy
information; but the pupils educated at them are few in number.
The average Boer is generally satisfied in regard to education if his
children can be made to read the Bible. To this must be added such a
knowledge of the ritual of the religion of the Dutch Reformed Church as
will enable the children to pass the examination necessary for
confirmation. Until this ceremony has been completed they cannot marry.
So much, by hook or by crook, is attained, and thus the outermost
darkness of ignorance is avoided. But the present law as to education
does not provide for even this moderate amount of religious instruction,
and is therefore, and has been, most unpopular with the Boers. It must
be understood that on all religious matters the late Government was at
loggerheads with the bulk of the population, the President being an
advocate of free-thinking and absolute secularism,--of an education from
which religion should be as far as possible removed; whereas the Boer is
as fanatic, as conservative, and as firmly wedded to the creed of his
fathers as an Irish Roman Catholic Coadjutor. It may, on this account,
be the easier for the Colonial Government to reconcile the population to
some change in the law.
A few of the better class of farmers, in the difficulty which at present
exists, maintain a schoolmaster in their houses for a year or two,
paying a small salary and entertaining the teachers at their tables. I
have met more than one such a schoolmaster in a Boer’s house. In the
course of my travels I found an Englishman in the family of a Dutchman
who could not speak a word of English,--and was astonished to find so
much instructed intelligence in such a position. Formerly there existed
a class of itinerant schoolmasters in the Transvaal, who went from house
to house carrying with them some rudiments of education, and returning
now and again on their tract to see how the seed had prospered. These
were supported by the Government of the day, but the late Government in
its ambitious desire to effect great things, discontinued this
allowance. It is not improbable that the renewal of some such scheme may
be suggested.
It will be imperative on the Colonial Government to do something as the
law now existing has certainly failed altogether. But there are great
difficulties. It is not so much that education has to be provided for
the children of a people numbering 45,000;--but that it has to be done
for children dispersed over an area as big as Great Britain and Ireland.
The families live so far apart, owing to the absurdly large size of the
farms, that it is impossible to congregate them in schools.
When I was at Pretoria I rode out with four companions to see a
wonderful spot called the “Zoutpan” or saltpan. It is 28 miles from the
town and the journey required that we should take out a tent and food,
and that we should sleep in the veld. I was mounted on an excellent
horse who was always trying to run away with me. This tired me much, and
the ground was very hard. While turning myself about upon the ground I
could not but think how comfortable the beds are in London. The saltpan,
however, was worth the visit. That it had been a volcanic crater there
could be no doubt, but unlike all other volcanic craters that I have
seen it was not an aperture on the apex of a mountain. We went north
from Pretoria and crossing through the spurs of the Magaliesberg range
of hills found ourselves upon a plain which after a while became studded
with scrub or thorn bushes. Close to the saltpan, and still on the
plain, we came to the residence of a Boer who gave us water,--the
dirtiest that ever was given me to drink,--with a stable for our horses
and sold us mealies for our animals. As one of our party was a doctor
and as the Boer’s wife was ill, his hospitality was not ill repaid. A
gentle rise of about 200 feet from the house took us to the edge of the
pan, which then lay about 300 feet below us,--so as to look as though
the earthwork around the valley had been merely thrown out of it as
earth might be thrown from any other hole. And this no doubt had been
done,--by the operation of nature.
The high outside rim of the cup was about 2¼ miles round, with a
diameter of 1,500 yards; and the circle was nearly as perfect as that of
a cup. Down thence to the salt lake at the bottom the inside of the bowl
fell steeply but gradually, and was thickly covered with bush. The
perfect regularity of shape was, to the eye, the most wonderful feature
of the phenomenon. At the bottom to which we descended lay the shallow
salt lake, which at the time of our visit was about half full,--or half
covered, I might better say, in describing the gently shelving bottom of
which not more than a moiety was under water. In very dry weather there
is no water at all,--and then no salt. When full the lake is about 400
yards across.
Some enterprising Englishman had put up a large iron pan 36 feet by 20,
and 18 inches deep, with a furnace under it, which, as everything had
been brought out from England at a great cost for land transit, must
have been an expensive operation. But it had been deserted because the
late Government had been unable to protect him in the rights which he
attempted to hire from them. The farmers of the neighbourhood would not
allow themselves to be debarred from taking the salt,--and cared nothing
for the facts that the Government claimed the privilege of disposing of
the salt and that the Englishman had bought the privilege. The
Englishman therefore withdrew, leaving behind him his iron pan and his
furnace, no doubt with some bitter feelings.
It is probable, I believe, that another Englishman,--or a
Scotchman,--will now commence proceedings there, expecting that Downing
Street will give better security than a Republican President. In the
meantime our friend the Boer pays £50 per annum to the Government, and
charges all comers some small fine per load for what they take. Baskets
are inserted into the water and are pulled up full of slush. This is
deposited on the shore and allowed to drain itself. On the residuum
carbonate of soda rises, with a thick layer, as solid cream on standing
milk;--and below this there is the salt more or less pure,--very nasty,
tasting to me as though it were putrid,--but sufficing without other
operation for the curing of meat and for the use of cattle. I was told
by one of our party that the friable stone which we found all around is
soda-feldspar from which, as it melts in the rain, the salt is brought
down. Here, at this place, there is but one crater;--whereas at other
places of a like nature, as in New Zealand and Central America, I have
seen various mouths crowded together, like disjected fragments of a
great aperture down into the earth. Here there is but the one circle,
and that is as regular as though it had been the work of men’s hands.
Such saltpans in South Africa are common, though I saw none other but
the one which I have described. The northern district of the Transvaal
is called Zoutpansberg from the number of its saltpans,--and there are
others in other parts of the country. I do not know that there is much
else particularly worthy of notice in the neighbourhood of Pretoria,
unless it be the wonderboom,--a pretty green over-arching tree, which
makes for its visitors a large bower capable of holding perhaps 50
persons. It is a graceful green tree;--but not very wonderful.
CHAPTER V.
THE TRANSVAAL: ITS CONDITION AND PRODUCTS.
Among the products of the Transvaal gold must be reckoned first, because
gold in itself is so precious and so important a commodity, that it will
ever force itself into the first rank,--and because notice was first
attracted to the Transvaal in Europe, or at any rate in England, by the
discovery of gold in the country and by the establishment of gold
fields. But I believe that the gold which has hitherto been extracted
from the auriferous deposits of the country has been far from paying the
expenses incurred in finding them and bringing them into the market.
Gold is a product of the earth which will be greedily sought, even when
the seeker lose by his labour. I doubt even whether the Australian gold
would be found to have paid for itself if an accurate calculation were
made. I know that the promoters of Australian gold enterprises and the
shareholders in Australian Gold Companies would attempt to cover me with
ridicule for expressing such an opinion were I to discuss the matter
with them. But these enterprising and occasionally successful people
hardly look at the question all round. Before it can be answered with
accuracy account must be taken not only of all the money lost, but of
the time lost also in unsuccessful search,--and of such failures the
world takes no record. Be that as it may gold has done very much to make
the fortune of the Australian Colonies. This has not been done by the
wealth of the gold-finders. It is only now and then,--and I may say that
the nows and thens are rare,--that we find a gold-seeker who has retired
into a settled condition of wealth as the result of his labours among
the Gold Fields. But great towns have sprung up, and tradesmen have
become wealthy, and communities have grown into compact forms, by the
expenditure which the gold-seekers have created. Melbourne is a great
city and Ballarat is a great city, not because the Victorian
gold-diggers have been rich and successful;--but because the trade of
gold-finding creates a great outlay. If the gold-diggers themselves have
not been rich they have enriched the bankers and the wine-merchants and
the grocers and the butchers and the inn-keepers who have waited upon
them. While one gold-digger starves or lives upon his little capital,
another drinks champagne. Even the first contributes something to the
building up of a country, but the champagne-drinker contributes a great
deal. There is no better customer to the tradesman, no more potent
consumer, than the man who is finding gold from day to day. Gold becomes
common to him, and silver contemptible.
I say this for the purpose of showing that though the gold trade of the
Transvaal has not as yet been remunerative,--though it may perhaps never
be truly remunerative to the gold-seekers,--it may nevertheless help to
bring a population to the country which will build it up, and make it
prosperous. It will do so in the teeth of the despair and ruin which
unsuccessful speculations create. There is a charm and a power about
gold which is so seductive and inebriating that judgment and calculation
are ignored by its votaries. If there be gold in a country men will seek
it though it has been sought there for years with disastrous effects. It
creates a sanguine confidence which teaches the gold-dreamer to believe
that he will succeed where hundreds have failed. It despises climate,
and reconciles the harshness of manual labour to those who have been
soft of hand and luxurious of habit. I am not now intending to warn the
covetous against the Gold Fields of South Africa;--but am simply
expressing an opinion that though these gold regions have hitherto
created no wealth, though henceforth they should not be the source of
fortune to the speculators, they will certainly serve to bring white
inhabitants into the country.
Gold as a modern discovery in South Africa was first found at Tatin in
1867. That there had been gold up north, near the Eastern coast, within
the tropics, there can be little doubt. There are those who are
perfectly satisfied that Ophir was here situated and that the Queen of
Sheba came to Solomon’s court from these realms. As I once wrote a
chapter to prove that the Queen of Sheba reigned in the Isle of Ceylon
and that Ophir was Point de Galle, I will not now go into that subject.
It has no special interest for the Transvaal which as a gold country
must sink or swim by its own resources. But Tatin though not within the
Transvaal, is only just without it, being to the north of the Limpopo
river which is the boundary of our Colony in that direction.
The Limpopo is an unfortunate river as much of its valley with a
considerable district on each side of it is subjected by nature to an
abominable curse,--which population and cultivation will in the course
of years probably remove but which at present is almost fatal to
European efforts at work within the region affected. There is a
fly,--called the Tsetse fly,--which destroys all horses and cattle which
come within the regions which it selects for its own purposes. Why it
should be destructive to a party of horses or to a team of oxen and not
to men has I believe to be yet found out. But as men cannot carry
themselves and their tools into these districts without horses or oxen,
the evil is almost overpowering. The courses of the fly are so well
known as to have, enabled geographers to mark out on the maps the limits
of the Tsetse country. The valley of the Limpopo river may be taken as
giving a general idea of the district so afflicted, the distance of the
fly-invested region varying from half a dozen to 60 and 80 miles from
the river. But towards the East it runs down across the Portuguese
possessions never quite touching the sea but just reaching Zululand.
Tatin is to the north west of this region, and though the place itself
is not within the fly boundary, all ingress and egress must have been
much impeded by the nuisance. The first discovery there of gold is said
to have been made by Mauch. There has been heavy work carried on in the
district and a quartz-crushing machine was used there. When I was in the
Transvaal these works had been abandoned, but of the existence of gold
in the country around there can be no doubt. In 1868 the same explorer,
Mauch, found gold at a spot considerably to the south east of
this,--south of the Limpopo and the Tsetse district, just north of the
Olifant’s river and in the Transvaal. Then in 1871 Mr. Button found gold
at Marabas Stad, not far to the west of Mauch’s discovery, in the
neighbourhood of which the mines at Eesteling are now being worked by an
English Company. On the Marabas-Stad gold fields a printed report was
made by Captain Elton in 1872, and a considerable sum of money must have
been spent. The Eesteling reef is the only one at present worked in the
neighbourhood. Captain Elton’s report seems to promise much on the
condition that a sufficient sum of money be raised to enable the
district to be thoroughly “prospected” by an able body of fifty
gold-miners for a period of six months. Captain Elton no doubt
understood his subject, but the adequate means for the search suggested
by him have not yet been raised. And, indeed, it is not thus that gold
fields have been opened. The chances of success are too small for men in
cold blood to subscribe money at a distance. The work has to be done by
the gambling energy of men who rush to the spot trusting that they may
individually grasp the gold, fill their pockets with the gold, and thus
have in a few months, perhaps in a few days or hours, a superabundance
of that which they have ever been desiring but which has always been so
hard to get! The great Australian and Californian enterprises have
always been commenced by rushes of individual miners to some favoured
spot, and not by companies floated by subscription. The companies have
come afterwards, but individual enterprise has done the pioneering work.
In 1873 gold was found in the Lydenburg district which is south of the
Olifant’s river. Here are the diggings called Pilgrim’s Rest, and here
the search for gold is still carried on,--not as I am told with
altogether favourable results. One nugget has been found weighing nearly
18 pounds. Had there been a few more such treasures brought to light the
Lydenburg gold fields would have been famous. There are two crushing
machines now at work, and skilled European miners are earning from 10s.
to 12s. a day. The place is healthy, and though tropical is not within
the tropics. A considerable number of Kafirs are employed at low rates
of wages, but they have not as yet obtained a reputation as good miners.
The white employer of black labour in South Africa does not allow that
the Kafir does anything well.
Among other difficulties and drawbacks to gold mining in South Africa
the want of fuel for steam is one. Wood of course is used, but I am told
that wood is already becoming scarce and dear. And then the great
distance from the coast, the badness of the roads, and the lack of the
means of carriage exaggerates all the other difficulties. Machinery,
provisions, and the very men themselves have to be brought into the
country at a cost which very materially interferes with the chances of a
final satisfactory result. If there be a railway from Pretoria to
Delagoa Bay,--as at some not very remote date there probably will
be,--then that railway will pass either through or very near to the
Lydenburg district, and in that case the Lydenburg gold fields will
become all alive with mining life.
Attempts are always made to show what gold fields have done in the way
of produce by Government records of the gold exported. In the second
great exhibition of London we saw an enormous yellow pyramid near the
door, and were told that the gold taken out of Victoria would if
collected make a pyramid of just that size. To enable the makers of the
pyramid to arrive at that result it was necessary that they should know
how much gold had been taken from Victoria. I presume that the records
of the Colony did tell of so much,--but if so the gold found must have
been considerably more. For gold is portable and can be carried away in
a man’s pocket without any record. And as that which was recorded was
taxed, it is probable that very much was taken away, untaxed, in some
private fashion. As to the Transvaal gold a record of that supposed to
be exported has been kept at the Custom House in Natal, which shows but
very poor results. It is as follows:--
1873 £735
1874 4,710
1875 28,443
1876 (first six months) 13,650
-------
£47,538
-------
This sum can have done but little more than paid for the necessary
transport of the machinery and other matters which have been carried up
from the coast. It certainly cannot also have paid for the machinery
itself. The bulk of the gold found has, however, been probably carried
down to the coast at Fort Elizabeth or Capetown without any record.
Such is all that I have to say respecting the Gold Fields of the
Transvaal,--and it is very little. I did not visit them, and had I done
so I do not know that I could have said much more. I conscientiously
inspected many Gold mines in Australia, going down into the bowels of
the earth 500 feet here and 600 feet there at much personal
inconvenience, and some danger to one altogether unused to mining
operations; but I do not know that I did any good by this exercise of
valour and conscience. A man should be a mineralogist to be able to take
advantage of such inspections. Had I visited Pilgrim Rest I could have
said how the men looked who were there working, and might have attempted
to guess whether they were contented with their lot;--but I could have
said nothing as to the success of the place with more accuracy than I do
now.
The Transvaal is said, and I believe correctly, to be very rich in other
minerals besides gold;--but the travellers in new countries are always
startled by sanguine descriptions of wealth which is not in view. Lead
and cobalt are certainly being worked. Coal is found in beds all along
the eastern boundary of the country, and will probably some day be the
most valuable product of the country. Did I not myself see it burning at
Stander’s Drift? Iron is said to be plentiful in almost every district
of the Colony and has been long used by the natives in making weapons
and ornaments. Copper also has been worked by the natives and is now
found in old pits, where it has been dug to the depth of from 30 to 40
feet. A variety of copper ornaments are worn by the Kafirs of the
northern parts of the Transvaal who have known how to extract the metal
from the mineral and to smelt it into pure ore. No mining operations in
search of copper have, as I believe, yet been carried on by white men in
the country. At an Agricultural Show which was held in 1876 at
Potchefstroom, the chief town in the southern part of the Transvaal,
prizes were awarded for specimens of the following minerals found in the
country itself. Gold-bearing quartz, alluvial gold, copper, tin, lead,
iron, plumbago, cobalt, and coal. The following is an extract from a
report of the Show, which I borrow from Messrs. Silver’s South African
Guide Book. “We believe there is no other country in the whole world
that could have presented to the public gaze such a variety of minerals
as were seen in the room set apart for their exhibition and which upon
first entering reminded one of a charming museum; and all these minerals
and earthy substances, we are informed, were the products of this
country. We saw gold both quartz and alluvial,--not in small quantities
but pounds in weight; coal by the ton,--silver, iron, lead. We do not
know what to say about this last mineral; but there it was, not in small
lumps, as previously exhibited, but immense quantities of ore, and
molten bars by the hundred.”
This is somewhat flowery, but I believe the statements to be
substantially true. The metals are all there, but I do not know whether
any of them have yet been so worked as to pay for expenses and to give a
profit. All the good things in the Transvaal seem to be so hard to come
at, that it is like looking and longing for grapes, hanging high above
our reach. But when grapes are really good and plentiful, ladders are at
last procured, and so it will be with the grapes of the Transvaal.
The ladder which is especially wanted is of course a Railway. President
Burgers among his other high schemes was fully aware of this and made a
journey to Europe during the days of his power with the view of raising
funds for this purpose. Like all his schemes it was unsuccessful, but he
did raise in Holland a sum of £90,958 for this purpose, which has been
expended on railway materials, or perhaps tendered to the Republic in
that shape. These are now lying at Delagoa Bay, and the sum above named
is part of the responsibility which England has assumed in annexing the
Republic.
The question of a Railway is of all the most vital to the new Colony.
The Transvaal has no seaboard, and no navigable rivers, and no available
outlet for its produce. Pretoria is about 450 miles from Durban, which
at present is the seaport it uses, and the road to Durban is but half
made and unbridged. The traffic is by oxen, and oxen cannot travel in
dry weather because there is no grass for them to eat. They often cannot
travel in wet weather because the rivers are impassable and the mud is
overwhelming. If any country ever wanted a Railway it is the Transvaal.
But whence shall the money come? Pretoria is about 300 miles distant
from the excellent Portuguese harbour at Delagoa Bay, and it was to this
outlet that President Burgers looked. But an undertaking to construct a
railway through an unsurveyed country at the rate of £1,000 a mile was
manifestly a castle in the air. If the absolute money could have been
obtained, hard cash in hand, the thing could not have been half done.
But President Burgers was one of those men who believe that if you can
only set an enterprise well on foot the gods themselves will look after
its accomplishment,--that if you can expend money on an object other
money will come to look after that which has been expended. But here, in
the Transvaal, he could not get his enterprise on foot; and I fear that
certain railway materials lying at Delagoa Bay, and more or less suited
for the purpose, are all that England has to show for the debt she has
taken upon her shoulders.
I am not very anxious to offer an opinion as to the best route for a
railway out from the Transvaal to the sea. Ne sutor ultra crepidam;--and
the proper answering of such a question is, I fear, beyond the reach of
my skill. But the reasons I have heard for the Delagoa Bay seem to me to
be strong,--and those against it to be weak. The harbour at the Bay is
very good,--perhaps the only thoroughly good harbour in South Africa,
whereas that at Durban is at present very bad. Expensive operations may
improve it, but little or nothing has as yet been done to lessen the
inconvenience occasioned by its sand-bar. Durban is 450 miles from the
capital of the Transvaal, whereas Delagoa Bay is only two-thirds of that
distance. The land falls gradually from Pretoria to the Bay, whereas in
going to Durban the line would twice have to be raised to high levels.
And then the route to the Bay would run by the Gold Fields, whereas the
other line would go through a district less likely to be productive of
traffic. It is alleged on the other hand that as Delagoa Bay belongs to
the Portuguese, and as the Portuguese will probably be unwilling to part
with the possession, the making of a railway into their territory would
be inexpedient. I cannot see that there is anything in this argument.
The Americans of the United States made a railway across the Isthmus of
Panama with excellent financial results, and in Europe each railway
enterprise has not been stopped by the bounds of the country which it
has occupied. The Portuguese have offered to take some share in the
construction, and by doing so would lessen the effort which the Colony
will be obliged to make. It is also alleged that Lorenço Marques, the
Portuguese town at Delagoa Bay, is very unhealthy. I believe that it is
so. Tropical towns on the sea board are apt to be unhealthy, and Lorenço
Marques though not within the tropics is tropical. But so is Aspenwall,
the terminus of the Panama Railway, unhealthy, being peculiarly subject
to the Chagres fever. But in the pursuit of wealth men will endure bad
climate. That at Delagoa Bay is by no means so bad as to frighten
passengers, though it will probably be injurious to the construction of
the railway. To the ordinary traffic of a constructed railway it will
hardly be injurious at all.
If the Natal Colony would join the Transvaal in the cost, making the
railway up to its own boundary, then the Natal line would no doubt be
the best. The people of the Transvaal would compensate themselves for
the bad harbour at Durban by the lessening of their own expenditure, and
the line as a whole would be better for British interests in general
than that to the Portuguese coast. But there is but little probability
of this. Natal wants a line from its capital to its coast, and will have
such a line almost by the time that these words are published. But it
cares comparatively little for a line through 175 miles of its country
up to its boundary at Newcastle, over which the traffic would be for the
benefit of the Transvaal rather than for that of Natal. Estcourt and
Newcastle which are in Natal would no doubt be pleased, but Natal will
not spend its money for the sake of Estcourt and Newcastle.
But when the route for the railway shall have been decided, whence shall
the money come? No one looking at the position of the country will be
slow to say that a railway is so necessary for the purposes of the
Colony that it must expend its first and its greatest energies in
achieving that object. It is as would be the possession of a corkscrew
to a man having a bottle of wine in the desert. There is no getting at
the imprisoned treasure without it. The farms will not be cultivated,
the mines will not be worked, the towns will not be built, the people
will not come without it. President Burgers, prone as he was to build
castles in the air, saw at any rate, when he planned the railway, where
the foundations should be laid for a true and serviceable edifice. But
then we must return to the question,--whence shall the money come?
Well-to-do Colonies find no difficulty in borrowing money for their own
purposes at a moderate rate of interest,--say 4 per cent. Victoria and
New South Wales have made their railways most successfully, and New
Zealand has shown what a Colony can do in borrowing. But the Transvaal
is not as yet a well-to-do Colony, and certainly could not go into the
money market with any hope of success with the mere offer of her own
security,--such as that security is at this moment. This is so
manifestly the case that no one proposes to do so. Mr. Burgers went home
for the purpose and succeeded only in getting a quantity of
material,--for which, in the end, the British Government will have to
pay probably more than twice the value.
I think I am justified in saying that the idea among those who are now
managing the Colony is to induce the Government at home to guarantee a
loan,--which means that the Transvaal should be enabled to borrow on the
best security that the world has yet produced, that namely of the
British nation. And perhaps there is something to warrant this
expectation on their part. The annexation, distasteful as the idea is at
home of a measure so high-handed and so apparently unwarrantable, has
been well received. It has been approved by our Secretary of State, who
is himself approved of in what he has caused to be done by Parliament
and the nation. The Secretary of State must feel a tenderness for the
Transvaal, as we all do for any belonging of our own which has turned
out better than we expected. The annexation has turned out so well that
they who are now concerned with its affairs seem to expect that the
British Government and the British Parliament will assent to the giving
of such security. It may be that they are right. Writing when and where
I am now I have no means of knowing how far the need for such a loan
and the undoubted utility of such a railway may induce those who have
the power in their hands to depart from what I believe to be now the
established usage of the mother country in regard to its
Colonies,--viz., that of sanctioning loans only when they can be floated
on the security of the Colony itself.
If I may venture to express an opinion on the subject, I think that that
usage should be followed in this case. No doubt the making of the
railway would be postponed in this way,--or rather would be accelerated
if the British name and British credit were to be pawned for Transvaal
purpose; but I doubt the justice of risking British money in such a
cause. The Transvaal colonist in making such an application would in
fact be asking for the use of capital at British rates of interest with
the object of making colonial profits. The risk would attach wholly to
the mother country. The profits, if profits should come, would belong
wholly to the Colony.
Money, too, with nations and with colonies is valued and used on the
same principles as with individuals. When it has been easily got,
without personal labour, proffered lightly without requirement of
responsibility or demand for security, it is spent as easily and too
often is used foolishly. Lend a man money on security and he will know
that every shilling that he spends must come at last out of his own
pocket. If money for the purpose required were at once thrown into the
Transvaal,--as might be the case to-morrow if the British Government
were to secure the loan,--there would immediately arise a feeling that
wealth was being scattered about broadcast, and that a halcyon time had
come in which parsimony and prudence were no longer needed. The thing
would have been too easy,--and easy things are seldom useful and are
never valued.
At the present moment Great Britain is paying the Transvaal bill. The
marching to and fro of the soldiers, the salaries of the Governors and
other officials, the debts of the late Government, the interests on
loans already made, the sums necessary for the gradual redemption of
loans, I fear even a pension for the late President, are provided or are
to be provided out of British taxes. The country was annexed on 12th
April. On 8th June a letter was written from the Colonial Office to the
Treasury, showing that we had annexed an existing debt of £217,158 for
which we were responsible, and that we had expended £25,000 in marching
troops up to the Transvaal for the sake of giving safety to the
inhabitants and their property. The report then goes on to its natural
purpose. “Lord Carnarvon is of opinion that it may be possible to meet
the more immediate requirements of the moment if their Lordships will
make an advance of £100,000 in aid of the revenues of the Transvaal, _to
be repaid as soon as practicable_. Unless aid is given at once the new
province would be obliged to endeavour to borrow at a ruinously high
rate of interest.” I doubt whether the idea of repayment has taken so
strong a hold of the people in the Transvaal, as it has of the officials
in Downing Street. In a former paragraph of the report the Secretary of
State thus excuses himself for making the application. “It is with
great unwillingness that Lord Carnarvon feels himself compelled to have
recourse to the assistance of the Imperial Treasury in this matter, but
he is satisfied that the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty’s Treasury
will readily acknowledge that in this most difficult case he has had no
alternative. The annexation of the Transvaal with all its consequent
liabilities, political as well as financial, _has been neither coveted
nor sought by him_;”--the italics here and above are my own;--“and it is
only a sincere conviction that this step was necessary in order to
prevent most serious danger to Her Majesty’s Colonies in South Africa
which has persuaded him to approve the late action of Sir T. Shepstone.”
The £100,000 was advanced, if not without a scruple at least without a
doubt, whatever might be the expectations of the Treasury as to speedy
repayment; and there can be little doubt, I fear, that further advances
will be needed and made before the resources of the country in the shape
of collected taxes will suffice to pay the expenses of the country,
including the gradual redemption of the Dutch loans. But if the country
cannot do this soon the annexation will certainly have been a failure.
Great as is the parliamentary strength of the present Ministry,
Parliament would hardly endure the idea of paying permanently for the
stability and security of a Dutch population out of the British pocket.
I do believe myself that the country will be able to pay its way in the
course of some years;--but I do not believe that the influx of a large
loan on easy terms, the expenditure of which must to a great measure be
entrusted to the Colony, would hasten the coming of this desirable
condition. There would be a feeling engendered,--if that can be said to
be engendered which to some extent already exists,--that “nunky pays for
all.” Neither for Colony nor for Mother Country can it be well that
nunky should either pay or be supposed to pay through the nose.
When it shall once be known that the Transvaal is paying its own bill,
governing itself and protecting itself out of its own revenues, then the
raising of a sufficient loan for its railway on its own security will
not be difficult. It may even then,--when that day comes,--have to pay a
percentage something higher than it would have to give under a British
guarantee; but the money will be its own, brought into use on its own
security, and will then be treated with respect and used with care. The
Transvaal no doubt wants a railway sorely, but it has no right to expect
that a railway shall be raised for it, as by a magician’s wand. Like
other people, and other countries the Transvaal should struggle hard to
get what it wants, and if it struggles honestly no doubt will have its
railway and will enjoy it when it has it.
“The Transvaal may in truth be called the ‘corn chamber’ of South
Eastern Africa, for no other Colony or State in this part of the world
produces wheat of such superior quality or offers so many and varied
advantages to farming pursuits.” This is extracted from Mr. Jeppe’s
excellent Transvaal Directory. The words are again somewhat flowery, as
is always the nature of national self-praise as expressed in national
literature. But the capability of the Transvaal for producing wheat is
undoubted; as are also the facts that it has for years past fed
itself,--with casual exceptions which amount to nothing,--and that it
has done something towards feeding the great influx of population which
has been made into the Diamond Fields. It has also continually sent a
certain amount of flour and corn into Natal and over its northern and
western borders for the use of those wandering Europeans, who are
seeking their fortunes among the distant tribes of South Africa. In
estimating the wheat produce of the country these are I know but idle
words. A great deal of wheat,--when the words are written and
printed,--means nothing. It is like saying that a horse is a very good
horse when the owner desires to sell him. The vendor should produce his
statistics as to the horse in the shape of an opinion from a veterinary
surgeon. If Mr. Jeppe had given statistics as to the wheat-produce of
the Transvaal during the last few years it would have been better.
Statistics are generally believed and always look like evidence. But
unless Mr. Jeppe had created them himself, he could not produce
them,--for there are none. I think I may say that a very large portion
of the country,--all of it indeed which does not come under tropical
influences, with the exception of regions which are mountainous or
stoney,--is certainly capable of bearing wheat; but I have no means
whatever of telling the reader what wheat it has already produced.
It is certain, however, that the cereal produce of the country is
curtailed by most pernicious circumstances against which the very best
of governments though joined by the very best of climates can only
operate slowly. One of these circumstances is the enormous size of the
existing farms. That great colonial quidnunc and speculator in colonial
matters, Gibbon Wakefield, enunciated one great truth when he declared
that all land in new countries should be sold to the new comers at a
price. By this he meant that let the price be what it might land should
not be given away, but should be parted with in such a manner as to
induce in the mind of the incoming proprietor a feeling that he had paid
for it its proper price, and that he should value the land accordingly.
The thing given is never valued as is the thing bought,--as is the thing
for which hard-earned money has been handed over, money which is
surrendered with a pang, and which leaves behind a lasting remorse
unless he who has parted with it can make himself believe that he has at
least got for it its full worth. Now the land in the Transvaal generally
has never been sold,--and yet it has almost entirely become the property
of private occupiers. The Dutchmen who came into the country brought
with them ideas and usages as to the distribution of land from the Gape
Colony, and following their ideas and usages they divided the soil among
themselves adjudging so much to every claimant who came forward as a
certified burgher. The amount determined on as comprising a sufficient
farm for such an individual was 3,000 morgen,--which is something more
than 6,000 acres. The Dutchman in South Africa has ever been greedy of
land, feeling himself to be cribbed, cabined, and confined if a
neighbour be near to him. It was in a great measure because land was not
in sufficient plenty for him that he “trekked” away from the Cape
Colony. Even there 3,000 “morgen” of land had been his idea of a
farm,--which farm was to satisfy his pastoral as well as his much
smaller agricultural needs. When at last he found his way into the
Transvaal and became a free Republican, his first ambition was for land
to fulfil the lust of his heart. The country therefore was divided into
6,000-acre farms,--many of which however contained much more than that
number of acres,--and in many cases more than one farm fell into the
hands of one Dutchman. The consequences are that there is not room for
fresh comers and that nevertheless the land is not a quarter occupied.
Nor is this the only or perhaps the greatest evil of the system which I
have attempted to describe. The Boer has become solitary,
self-dependent, some would say half savage in his habits. The
self-dependent man is almost as injurious to the world at large as the
idle man. The good and useful citizen is he who works for the comfort of
others and requires the work of others for his own comfort. The Boer
feels a pride in his acres, though his acres may do nothing for him. He
desires no neighbours though neighbours would buy his produce. He
declares he cannot plough his fields because he cannot get labour, but
he will allow no Kafirs to make their kraals on his land. Therefore he
wraps himself up in himself, eats his billetong,--strips of meat dried
in the sun,--and his own flour, and feels himself to be an aristocrat
because he is independent.
If the farms in the Transvaal could be at once divided, and a moiety
from each owner taken away without compensation, not only would the
country itself be soon improved by such an arrangement, but the farmers
also themselves from whom the land had been taken. Their titles,
however, are good, and they are lords of the soil beyond the power of
any such, arbitrary legislation. But all the influence of government
should be used to favour subdivision. Subdivisions no doubt are made
from day to day. As I went through the country I heard of this man
having half a “plaats,” and that man a quarter. These diminished
holdings had probably arisen from family arrangements, possibly from
sales. Farms frequently are sold,--freehold lands passing from hand to
hand at prices varying from 1s. an acre upwards. Land therefore is very
vile,--what I would call cheap if it were to be found in the market when
wanted and in the quantities wanted. In our Australian Colonies land is
not as a rule sold under 20s. an acre; but it is being sold daily,
because men of small means can always purchase small areas from the
Government, and because the Governments afford easy terms. But the land
in the Transvaal is locked up and unused,--and not open to new comers.
Therefore it is that the produce is small, that the roads are desolate,
and that the country to the eye of the traveller appears like a
neglected wilderness.
What may be the remedy for this I am not prepared to say after the
sojourn of but a few weeks in the country; but it is probable that a
remedy may be found by making the transfer of land easy and profitable
to the Boers.
As this land will produce wheat, so will it also other cereals--such as
barley, oats, and Indian corn. Hay, such as we use at home, is unknown.
The food given to stabled cattle is Indian corn or forage, such as I
have before mentioned,--that is young corn, wheat, oats, or barley, cut
before fully grown and dried. This is considered to be the best food
for horses all through South Africa.
The fruits of the country are very plentiful;--oranges, lemons, figs,
grapes, peaches, apricots, apples, pears, and many others. The climate
is more tropical than ours, so as to give the oranges and lemons, but
not so much so as to exclude pears and apples.
No doubt it may,--as far as its nature is concerned,--become a land
flowing with milk and honey, if the evil effects of remoteness and of a
bad beginning can be removed.
CHAPTER VI.
THE TRANSVAAL.--PRETORIA TO THE DIAMOND FIELDS.
On the 1st of October I and my friend started from Pretoria for the
Diamond Fields, having spent a pleasant week at the capital of the
Transvaal. There was, however, one regret. I had not seen Sir Theophilus
Shepstone though I had been entertained at his house. He, during the
time, had been absent on one of those pilgrimages which Colonial
Governors make through their domains, and would be absent so long that I
could not afford the time to wait his return. I should much have liked
to discuss with him the question of the annexation, and to have heard
from his own lips, as I had heard from those of Mr. Burgers, a
description of what had passed at the interviews between them. I should
have been glad, also, to have learned from himself what he had thought
of the danger to which the Dutch community had been subject from the
Kafirs and Zulus,--from Secocoeni and Cetywayo,--at the moment of his
coming. But the tale which was not told to me by him was, I think, told
with accuracy by some of those who were with him. I have spoken my
opinion very plainly, and I hope not too confidently of the affair, and
I will only add to that now an assurance of my conviction that had I
been in Sir T. Shepstone’s place and done as he did, I should have been
proud of the way I had served my country.
We started in our cart with our horses as we thought in grand condition.
While at Pretoria we had been congratulated on the way in which we had
made our purchases and travelled the road surmounting South African
difficulties as though we had been at the work all our lives. We had
refilled our commissariat chest, and with the exception that my
companion had shied a bottle of brandy,--joint property,--at the head of
a dog that would bite him,--not me,--as we were packing the cart, there
had been as yet no misfortune. Our Cape-boy driver had not once been
drunk and nothing material had been lost or broken. We got off at 11
A.M.; and at half past one P.M.,--having travelled about fifteen miles
in the normal two and a half hours,--we spanned out and shared our lunch
with a very hungry-looking Dutchman who squatted himself on his haunches
close to our little fire. He was herding cattle and seemed to be very
poor and hungry. I imagined him to be some unfortunate who was working
for low wages at a distance from his home. But I found him to be the
lord of the soil, the owner of the herd, and the possessor of a
homestead about a mile distant. I have no doubt he would have given me
what he had to give if I had called at his house. As it was he seemed to
be delighted with fried bacon and biscuits, and was aroused almost to
enthusiasm over a little drop of brandy and water.
On our road during this day we stopped at an accommodation house, as it
is called in the country,--or small Inn, kept by an Englishman. Here
before the door I saw flying a flag intended to represent the colours
of the Transvaal Dutch Republic. The Englishman, who was rather drunk
and very civil, apologized for this by explaining that he had his own
patriotic feelings, but that as it was his lot in life to live by the
Boers it was necessary that he should please the Boers. This was,
however, the only flag of the Republic which I saw during my journey
through the country, and I am inclined to think that our countryman had
mistaken the signs of the time. I have however to acknowledge in his
favour that he offered to make us a present of some fresh butter.
We passed that night at the house of a Boer, who was represented to me
as being a man of wealth and repute in the country and as being
peculiarly averse to English rule,--Dutch and republican to his heart’s
core. And I was told soon after by a party who had travelled over the
same road, among whom there were two Dutchmen, that he had been very
uncourteous to them. No man could have been more gracious than he was to
us, who had come in as strangers upon his hospitality, with all our
wants for ourselves our servants and our horses. I am bound to say that
his house was very dirty, and the bed of a nature to make the flesh
creep, and to force a British occupant of the chamber to wrap himself
round with further guards of his own in the shape of rugs and great
coats, rather than divest himself of clothes before he would lay himself
down. And the copious mess of meat which was prepared for the family
supper was not appetising. But nothing could be more grandly courteous
than the old man’s manner, or kinder than that of his wife. With this
there was perhaps something of an air of rank,--just a touch of a
consciousness of superiority,--as there might be with some old Earl at
home who in the midst of his pleasant amenities could not quite forget
his ancestors. Our host could not speak a word of English,--nor we of
Dutch; but an Englishman was in the house,--one of the schoolmasters of
whom I have before spoken,--and thus we were able to converse. Not a
word was said about the annexation;--but much as to the farming
prospects of the country. He had grown rich and was content with the
condition of the land.
He was heartily abused to us afterwards by the party which contained the
two Dutchmen as being a Boer by name and a boor by nature, as being a
Boer all round and down to the ground. These were not Hollanders from
Holland, but Dutchmen lately imported from the Cape Colony;--and as such
were infinitely more antagonistic to the real Boer than would be any
Englishman out from Europe. To them he was a dirty, ignorant, and
arrogant Savage. To him they were presumptuous, new-fangled, vulgar
upstarts. They were men of culture and of sense and of high standing in
the new country,--but between them and him there were no sympathies.
I think that the English who have now taken the Transvaal will be able,
after a while, to rule the Boers and to extort from them that respect
without which there can be no comfort between the governors and the
governed;--but the work must be done by English and not by Dutch hands.
The Dutch Boer will not endure over him either a reforming Hollander
from Europe, or a spick-and-span Dutch Africander from the Cape Colony.
The reforming Hollander and the spick-and-span Dutch Africander are very
intelligent people. It is not to be supposed that I am denying them any
good qualities which are to be found in Englishmen. But the Boer does
not love them.
Soon after starting from our aristocratic friend’s house one of our
horses fell sick. He was the one that kicked,--a bright bay little
pony,--and in spite of his kicking had been the favourite of the team.
We dined that day about noon at a Boer’s house, and there we did all
that we knew to relieve the poor brute. We gave him chlorodyne and
alum,--in accordance with advice which had been given to us for our
behoof along the road,--and when we started we hitched him on behind,
and went the last stage for that day with a unicorn team. Then we gave
him whisky, but it was of no use. That night he could not feed, and
early the next morning he laid himself down when he was brought out of
the stable and died at my feet. It was our first great misfortune. Our
other three horses were not the better or the brighter for all the work
they had done, and would certainly not be able to do what would be
required of them without a fourth companion.
The place we were now at is called Wonder Fontein, and is remarkable,
not specially for any delightfully springing run of water, but for a
huge cave, which is supposed to go some miles underground. We went to
visit it just at sunset, and being afraid of returning in the dark, had
not time to see all of it that is known. But we climbed down into the
hole, and lit our candles and wandered about for a time. Here and
there, in every direction, there were branches and passages running
under ground which had hitherto never been explored. The son of the Boer
who owned the farm at which we were staying, was with us, and could
guide us through certain ways;--but other streets of the place were
unknown to him, and, as he assured us, had never yet been visited by
man. The place was full of bats, but other animals we saw none. In
getting down, the path was narrow, steep, low and disagreeable
enough;--but when once we were in the cave we could walk without
stooping. At certain periods when the rains had been heavy the caves
would become full of water,--and then they would drain themselves when
the rains had ceased. It was a hideously ugly place; and most
uninteresting were it not that anything not customary interests us to
some extent. The caves were very unlike those in the Cango district,
which I described in the first volume.
At Wonder Fontein there were six or seven guests besides the very large
family with which the Boer and his wife were blessed, and we could not
therefore have bedrooms apiece;--nor even beds. I and my young friend
had one assigned to us, while the Attorney General of the Colony, who
was on circuit and to whom we had given a lift in our cart to relieve
him for a couple of days of the tedium of travelling with the Judge and
the Sheriff by ox waggon, had a bench assigned to him in a corner of the
room. In such circumstances a man lies down, but does not go to bed. We
lay down,--and got up at break of day, to see our poor little horse die.
On leaving these farm houses the Boers, if asked, will make a charge for
the accommodation afforded, generally demanding about 5s. for the
supper, a night’s rest, and breakfast if the traveller chooses to wait
for it. Others, English and Germans, will take nothing for their
hospitality. Both the one and the other expect to be paid for what the
horses may consume; and we thought we observed that forage with the
English and Germans was dearer than with the Boers,--so that the cost
came to much the same with the one as with the other. At the English
houses,--or German,--it was possible to go to bed. In a Boer’s
establishment we did not venture to do more than lie down.
Starting on the following day with our three horses we reached
Potchefstroom, which, though not the capital, is the largest town in the
Transvaal. The road all along had been of the same nature, and the
country nearly of the same kind as that we had seen before reaching
Pretoria. Here and there it was stony,--but for the most part capable of
cultivation. None of it, however, was cultivated with the exception of
small patches round the farm houses. These would be at any rate ten
miles distant one from each other, and probably more. The roads are
altogether unmade, and the “spruits” or streams are unbridged. But the
traffic, though unfrequent, has been sufficient to mark the way and to
keep it free from grass. Travelling in wet weather must often be
impossible,--and in windy weather very disagreeable. We were most
fortunate in avoiding both mud and dust, either of which, to the extent
in which they sometimes prevail in the Transvaal, might have made our
journey altogether impossible.
At Potchefstroom we found a decent hotel kept by an Englishman,--at
which we could go to bed, though not indulged with the luxury of a room
for each of us. The assizes were going on and we found ourselves to be
lucky in not being forced to have a third with us. Here our first care
was to buy a horse so as once again to complete our team. We felt that
if we loudly proclaimed our want, the price of horses in Potchefstroom
would be raised at once;--and yet it was difficult to take any step
without proclaiming our want. We had only one day to stay in the town,
and could not therefore dally with the difficulty as is generally the
proper thing to do when horse-flesh is concerned. So we whispered our
need into the landlord’s ear and he undertook to stand our
friend,--acknowledging, however, that a horse in a hurry was of all
things the most difficult to be had at Potchefstroom. Nevertheless
within two hours of our arrival an entire team of four horses was
standing in the hotel yard, from which we were to be allowed to choose
one for £30. I had refused to have anything to do with the buying in
regard to terms; but consented to select the one which should be bought,
if we could agree as to price. When I went forth to make the choice I
found that in spite of our secrecy a congregation of horse-fanciers had
come to see what was being done. Four leaner, poorer, skinnier brutes I
never saw standing together with halters round their necks;--but out of
the four I did pick one, guided by the bigness of his leg bones and by
the freedom of his pace. Everybody was against me,--our driver
preferring a younger horse, and the vendor assuring me that in passing
over an old grey animal I was altogether cutting my own throat. But I
was firm, and then left the conclave, desiring my young friend to go
into the money question.
The seller at first seemed to think that the price was a thing settled.
Had he not told the landlord that we might select one for £30;--and had
not the selection been made? He assumed a look of injured innocence as
though the astute Briton were endeavouring to get the better of the poor
Dutchman most dishonourably. Eventually, however, he consented to accept
£23, and the money was paid. Then came the criticism of the bystanders
thick and hard upon us. £23 for that brute! Was it true that we had
given the man £23 for an animal worth at the most £7 10s.? They had
allowed the seller to have his luck while the sale was going on, but
could not smother their envy when the money was absolutely in his
pocket. However we had our horse, whose capabilities were much better
than his appearance, and who stood to us gallantly in some after
difficulties in which his co-operation was much needed.
Potchefstroom may probably contain something over 2,000 white
inhabitants. In saying this, however, I have nothing but guess work to
guide me. It is a town covering a very large area, with streets nearly a
mile in length;--but here again there is a great deficiency of houses.
In some of those streets a wanderer might fancy himself to be roaming
through some remote green lane in England, overshadowed through its
whole length by weeping willows. The road way under his feet will be
exactly that of a green lane;--here a rut, and there a meandering path
worn by children’s feet, and grass around him everywhere. Now and again
he will come across a cottage,--hardly more than a cabin,--with half a
dozen dirty children at the door. Such are the back streets at
Potchefstroom. And here too, as at Pretoria, there are hedges of roses,
long rows of crowded rose-bushes round the little houses of the better
class. There are spots so picturesque as almost to make the wanderer
fancy that it would be pleasant to live in a place so pretty, so
retired, and so quiet. But weeping willows and rose hedges would, I
fear, after a time become insufficient, and the wanderer who had chosen
to sojourn here under the influence of these attractions, might wish
himself back in some busier centre of the world’s business.
Here also there is a great square in the centre of the town, with the
Dutch church in the midst of it,--by no means so ugly as the church at
Pretoria. The square is larger and very much more picturesque,--while
the sardine boxes and paper shirt-collars, so ubiquitous at the newer
town, are less obtrusive. The square when I was there was green with
grass on which horses were grazing, and here and there were stationed
the huge waggons of travellers who had “spanned out” their oxen and were
resting here under the tent coverings erected on their vehicles. The
scene as I saw it would have made an exquisite subject for a Dutch
landscape painter, and was especially Dutch in all its details.
At one corner of the square the Judge was holding the Court in a large
room next to the Post-office which is kept for that and other public
services. The Judge I had met at Pretoria, and had been much struck by
his youth. One expects a judge to be reverend with years, but this was
hardly more than a boy judge. He had been brought from the Cape Bar to
act as Judge in the Transvaal before the annexation,--when the payment
even of a judge’s salary must have been a matter of much doubt. But the
annexation came speedily and the position of the new comer was made sure
by British authority. He at any rate must approve the great step taken
by Sir Theophilus Shepstone. I was assured when at Pretoria that the
Colony generally had every reason to be satisfied with the choice made
by the Republic. He will no doubt have assistant Judges and become a
Chief Justice before long and may probably live to be the oldest legal
pundit under the British Crown. I went into the Court to look at him
while at work, but was not much edified as the case then before him was
carried on in Dutch. Dutch and English have to be used in the Court as
one or the other language may be needed. An interpreter is present, but
as all the parties concerned in the case, including the Judge and the
jury, were conversant with Dutch, no interpreter was wanted when I was
there.
From Potchefstroom to Klerksdorp our horses, including the new purchase,
did their work well. Here we found a clean little Inn kept by an
Englishman with a very nice English wife,--who regaled us with lamb and
mint-sauce and boiled potatoes, and provided clean sheets for our
couches. Why such a man, and especially why such a woman, should be at
such a place it is difficult to understand. For Klerksdorp is a town
consisting perhaps of a dozen houses. The mail cart passes but once a
week, and the other traffic on the road is chiefly that of ox-waggons.
On the following day, a Saturday, we travelled 50 miles, and, with our
horses very tired, reached a spot across the “Maquasie Spruit,” at which
a store or shop is kept and where we remained over the Sunday,
hospitably entertained by the owners of the establishment. Here we were
on land which has been claimed and possessed by the Transvaal Republic;
but which was given over to the Batlapin natives by a division generally
known in the later-day history of South African affairs as the Keate
award. The Batlapins are a branch of the great Bechuana tribe. Mr. Keate
in 1871 was Lieut.-Governor of Natal, and undertook, at the instance of
the British Government, to make an award between the Transvaal Republic
and the Batlapin Kafirs, whose Chief is and was a man called Gassibone.
I should hardly interest or instruct my readers by going deeply into the
vexed question of the Keate award. To Europeans living in South Africa
it is always abominable that anything should be given up or back to the
natives, and whatever is surrendered to them in the way of territory is
always resumed before long by hook or crook. There is a whole district
of the Transvaal Republic,--a county as we should say,--lying outside or
beyond the “Maquasie Spruit,”--called Bloomhof, with two towns, Bloomhof
and Christiana, each having perhaps a dozen houses,--and this the
Transvaal never did surrender. Governor Keate’s award was repudiated by
the Volksraad of the Transvaal, and a Dutch Landroost,--or
magistrate,--who however is an Englishman, was stationed at Christiana
and still remains there. This was a matter of no great trouble to us
while the Republic stood on its own legs. Though a Governor of ours had
made the award we were not bound to remedy Dutch injustice. But now what
are we to do? Are we to give back the country with its British and Dutch
inhabitants,--a dozen families at Bloomhof and a dozen more at
Christiana,--and the farmers here and there to the dominion of Gassibone
and his Batlapins? I think I may say that most certainly we shall do
nothing of the kind,--but with what excuse we shall escape the necessity
I do not see so clearly. In the meantime there is the Landroost at
Christiana,--now paid with British gold, who before the annexation was
paid with Transvaal notes worth 5s. to the nominal pound. When I talked
to him of Keate’s award and of Gassibone’s line, he laughed at me.
Annexation to British rule with all the beauties of British punctuality
was a great deal too good a thing to be sacrificed to a theory of
justice in favour of such a poor race of unfighting Kafirs as the
Batlapins! I have no doubt that he was right, and that the Transvaal
Colony will maintain a Landroost at Christiana as long as Landroosts
remain in that part of South Africa.
But the question was a very vital one in that neighbourhood. As I was
passing over the Vaal in a punt to the Orange Free State a Boer who had
heard my name, and who paid me the undeserved compliment of thinking my
opinion on such a matter worth having, consulted me on his peculiar
case. After the Keate award, when by the decision then made the portion
of territory in question had been adjudged to be the property of
Gassibone and his tribe, this Boer had bought land of the Kafirs. The
land so procured had also been distributed by the Transvaal Republican
Government to those claiming it under the law as to burghers’ rights.
The rulers of the Transvaal Republic would not recognise any alienation
of land by contract with the Kafirs. Now, upon the annexation, my friend
had thought that the Keate award would be the law, and that his purchase
from the Kafirs would hold good. There was I, a grey-bearded Englishman
of repute, travelling the country. What did I think of it? I could only
refer him to the Landroost. The Landroost, he said, was against him.
“Then,” said I, “you may be sure that the facts will be against you, for
the Landroost will have the decision in his hands.” He assented to my
opinion as though it had come direct from Minos, merely remarking that
it was very hard upon him. I did not pity him much because it is
probable that he only gave the Kafirs a few head of cattle, and that he
bought the land from Kafirs who had no right of selling it away from
their tribe. At the “Maquasie Spruit,” where we first entered this
debateable land, the storekeepers were also anxious to know what was to
happen to them; but they were Scotchmen and were no doubt quite clear in
their own minds that the entire country would remain British soil.
The next day we reached Bloomhof and on the day following Christiana.
This last place we entered anything but triumphantly, two of our horses
being so tired that we had to take them off the cart, and walk into the
place driving them before us. Two more days would take us to Kimberley
according to our appointed time, but these two days would be days of
long work. And here we heard for the first time that there was a long
and weary region of sand before us in the portion of the Orange Free
State through which we must pass. It was evident to us that we could not
do it all with our own horses, and therefore we resolved to hire. This
was at first pronounced to be impossible, but the impossibility
vanished. Though there were certainly not more than twelve houses in the
place one belonged to a man who, oddly enough, had two spare horses out
in the veld. He was brought to us, and I shall never forget the look of
dismay and bewilderment which came across his countenance when he was
told that he must decide at once whether he would allow his horses to be
hired. “He must,” he said, as he seated himself near a bottle of Cape
brandy,--“he must have time to think about it!” When he was again
pressed, he groaned and shook himself. The landlord told us that the man
was so poor that his children had nothing to eat but mealies. The money
no doubt was desirable;--but how could he make up his mind in less than
two or three hours to what extent he might so raise his demand as not to
frighten away the customers which Providence had sent him, and yet
secure the uttermost sum after due chaffering and bargaining? At last
words were extracted from him. We should have two horses for sixteen
miles, for----well, say, for the incredibly small sum of £2. We
hurriedly offered him 30s., and he was at last bustled into the
impropriety of agreeing to our terms without taking a night’s rest to
sleep upon it. He was an agonised man as he assented, having been made
to understand that we must then and there make up our minds, whether we
would proceed early on the next day or stay for twenty-four hours to
refresh our own stud. The latter alternative would, however, have been
destructive to us, as our horses had already eaten up all the forage to
be found in Christiana. At seven the next morning two wretched little
ponies were brought in from the veld, one of which was lame. All
Christiana was standing in the street to watch us. I flicked the lame
animal with the driver’s long whip to see if he could trot, and then
pronounced in his favour. I fear I felt that his lameness would not
matter if he could be made to take us as far as “Blignaut’s punt” which
was now his destination. He was harnessed in, and on we went with the
two most infirm of our own team following behind us. We made the stage
with great success,--and whatever may have been the future state of that
pony he went out of harness apparently a much sounder animal than he
went in. From hence, after discussing the matter of Keate’s award with
the injured Dutchmen, we went on across the arid lands of the Orange
Free State to a Boer’s house in the wilderness, where we were assured
that we should be made welcome for that night. Our horses could hardly
take us there;--but they did do it, and we were made welcome. The Boer
was very much like the other Boers of the Transvaal,--a burly, handsome,
dirty man, with a very large, dirty family, and a dirty house,--but all
the manners of the owner of a baronial castle. He also had a private
tutor in his family, a Dutchman who had come out to make money, who knew
German and English, but who had failed in his career, and had undertaken
his present duties at the rate of £12 a month, besides his board and
lodging. I have known English gentlemen who have not paid so highly for
their private tutors. This farm was altogether in the wilderness, the
land around being a sandy, stony desert, and not a shrub, hardly a blade
of grass, being visible. But we knew that our host had grown rich as a
farmer on it, owning in fee about 12,000 acres.
On the next morning we were up early, but we could not get on without
the Boer’s assistance. One of our horses was again dying or seemed to be
dying. He was a pretty bay pony, the very fellow of the one we had lost
at Wonder Fontein. He had not ate his food all night, and when we took
him out at five in the morning he would do nothing but fall down in the
veld at our feet. He suffered excruciating agonies, groaning and
screaming as we looked at him. We gave him all that we had to
give,--French brandy and Castor oil. But nothing seemed to serve him.
Then there came to us a little Dutchman from a neighbouring waggon who
suggested that we should bleed our poor pony in the ear. The little
Dutchman was accordingly allowed the use of a penknife, and the animal’s
ear was slit. From that moment he recovered,--beginning at once to crop
what grass there was. I have often known the necessity of bleeding
horses for meagrims or staggers, by cutting the animal on the palate of
the mouth. But I had never before heard of operating on a horse’s ear;
and I think I may say that our pony was suffering, not from meagrims or
from staggers, but from cholic. I leave the fact to veterinary surgeons
at home; but our pony, after having almost died and then been bled on
the ear, travelled on with us bravely though without much strength to
help us.
On this day we did at last reach the Diamond Fields, but our journey was
anything but comfortable. It was very hot and the greater part of the
road was so heavy with sand that we were forced to leave the cart and
walk. The Boer at whose house we had slept, lent us a horse to help us
for the first eight miles. Then we came to a little Dutch roadside
public house, the owner of which provided us with two horses to help us
on to Kimberley,--a distance of 27 miles,--for £2, sending with us a
Kafir boy to lead our tired horses and bring back his own. Eight miles
on we reached a hut in the wilderness where a Dutchman had made a dam,
and he allowed us to water our cattle charging us one and sixpence. From
thence on to Kimberley, through the heavy sand, there was not a drop of
water. We went very slowly ourselves, trudging on foot after the cart;
but the Kafir boy could not keep up with us, and he with the two poor
animals remained out in the veld all night. We did reach the town about
sunset, and I found myself once again restored to the delights of tubs,
telegrams, and bed linen.
Here we parted with our cart, horses, and harness which,--including the
price of the animal purchased at Potchefstroom,--had cost us
£243,--selling them by auction and realising the respectable sum of £100
by the sale. The auctioneer endeavoured to raise the speculative energy
of the bidders by telling them that the horses had all been bred at
“Orley Farm” for my own express use, “Orley Farm” being the name of a
novel written by me many years ago;--but I do not know that this romance
much affected the bidding. We had intended to have taken our equipage
on to Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange Free State, which is about
80 miles from Kimberley; but my travelling companion was summoned back
to Capetown, and I would not make the journey, or undertake the nuisance
of the sale alone. We were of course told that, as things were at
present, horses were a mere drug at the Diamond Fields, and that a Cape
cart in Kimberley was a thing of no value at all. In my ignorance I
would have taken £10 for my share, and therefore when I heard what the
auctioneer had done for us I almost felt that my fortune had been made
for ever. I certainly think that if the purchaser had seen the team
coming into Kimberley he would have hesitated before he made his last
bid.
I have endeavoured to give the reader the results so far of my
experience of South African travel. As regards money and time no doubt
both are to some extent sacrificed by the buying and selling of a
private carriage or cart. We had our horses on the road a month.
They coat us about 7s. 6d. a day each for their keep, or £45
The expenses of the Cape boy who drove us amounted to about 15
The cart and horses and harness, as above shown, cost 143
----
Total £203
====
which, as we were two, must be divided, making our expense £101 10s.
each for about 700 miles. There are public conveyances over the whole
road which would carry a passenger with his luggage for about £40. We
travelled when on the road 30 miles a day on an average, whereas the
public carts make an average of 90. This seems to be all in favour of
the mail carts. And then it has to be acknowledged that the
responsibilities and difficulties of a private team are very wearing.
Horses in South Africa are peculiarly liable to sickness; and, though
they do a very large average of work, seem when tired to be more
incapable of getting over the ground than any other horses. The
necessity of providing forage,--sometimes where no forage is to be
had,--and of carrying large quantities on the cart; the agony of losing
a horse, and the nuisance of having to purchase or hire others; the
continual fear of being left as it were planted in the mud;--all these
things are very harassing, and teach the traveller to think that the
simplicity of the Mail Cart is beautiful. If misfortune happen to a
public conveyance the passenger is not responsible. He may be left
behind, but he always has the satisfaction of demanding from others that
he shall be carried on. On our route we encountered two sets of
travellers who had been left on the road through the laches of the Cart
Contractors; but in both cases the sufferers had the satisfaction of
threatening legal proceedings and of demanding damages. When one’s own
horse dies on the road, or one’s own wheel flies off the axle, there is
nobody to threaten, and personal loss is added to personal misery. All
this seems to be in favour of the simple Mail Cart.
But there is another side to the question which I attempted to describe
when I told the tale of those unfortunate wretches who were forced to
wander about in the mud and darkness between Newcastle and Pretoria.
Such a journey as those gentlemen were compelled to make would in truth
kill a weakly person. Some of these conveyances travel day and night,
for four, five, or six consecutive days,--or stop perhaps for three or
four hours at some irregular time which can hardly be turned to account
for rest. Such journeys if they do not kill are likely to be
prejudicial, and for the time are almost agonizing. We with our own cart
and horses could get in and out when we pleased, could stop when we
liked and as long as we liked, and encountered no injurious fatigue. In
addition to this I must declare that I never enjoyed my meals more
thoroughly than I did those which we prepared for ourselves out in the
veld. Such comfort, however, must depend altogether on the nature of the
companion whom the traveller may have selected for himself. I had been,
in this respect, most fortunate. We had harassed minds when our horses
became sick or when difficulties arose as to feeding them; but our
bodies were not subjected to torment.
These are the pros and the cons, as I found them, and which I now offer
for the service of any gentleman about to undertake South African
travel. Ladies, who make long journeys in these parts only when their
husbands or fathers have selected some new and more distant site for
their homes, are generally carried about on ox-waggons, in which they
live and sleep and take their meals. They progress about 16, 20, or
sometimes 24 miles a day, and find the life wearisome and uncomfortable.
But it is sure, and healthy, and when much luggage has to be carried, is
comparatively inexpensive.
I had by no means finished my overland travels in South Africa on
reaching Kimberley. I had indeed four or five hundred miles still
before me, of which I shall speak as I go on. But I had learned that the
coaches to Bloemfontein, and thence down to Grahamstown were more
Christian in their nature, and more trustworthy than those which had
frightened me in the Transvaal. Partly on this account and partly
because my friend was deserting me I determined to trust myself to
them;--and therefore have given here this record of my experiences as to
a Cape cart and private team of horses.
GRIQUALAND WEST.
CHAPTER VII.
GRIQUALAND WEST--WHY WE TOOK IT.
Griqualand West is the proper, or official, name for that part of South
Africa which is generally known in England as the Diamond Fields, and
which is at the period of my writing,--the latter part of 1877,--a
separate Colony belonging to the British Crown, under the jurisdiction
of the Governor of the Cape Colony, but in truth governed by a resident
administrator. Major Lanyon is now the occupier of the Government House,
and is “His Excellency of Griqualand” to all the Queen’s loyal British
subjects living in and about the mines. This is the present position of
things;--but the British Government has offered to annex the Province to
the Cape Colony, and the Cape Colony has at length agreed to accept the
charge,--subject to certain conditions as to representation and other
details. Those conditions are, I believe, now under consideration, and
if they be found acceptable,--as will probably be the case,--the
Colonial Office at home being apparently anxious to avoid the expense
and trouble of an additional little Colony,--Griqualand West and the
Diamond Fields will become a part of the Cape Colony in the course of
1878. The proposed conditions offer but one member for the Legislative
Council, and four for the Assembly, to join twenty-one members in the
former house, and sixty-eight in the latter. It is alleged very loudly
and perhaps correctly at the Fields that this number is smaller than
that to which the District is entitled if it is to be put on the same
footing with other portions of the great Colony. It is alleged also that
a class of the community which has shewn itself to be singularly
energetic should be treated at any rate not worse than its neighbours
who have been very much more slow in their movements, and less useful by
their industry to the world at large. Whether such remonstrances will
avail anything I doubt much. If they do not, I presume that the
annexation will almost be immediate.
The history of Griqualand West does not go back to a distant antiquity,
but it is one which has given rise to a singularly large amount of
controversy and hot feeling, and has been debated at home with more than
usual animation and more than usual acerbity. In the course of last year
(1877) the “Quarterly” and the “Edinburgh Reviews” warmed themselves in
a contest respecting the Hottentot Waterboer and his West Griquas, and
the other Hottentot Adam Kok and his East Griquas, till South African
sparks were flying which reminded one of the glorious days of Sidney
Smith and Wilson Croker. Such writings are anonymous, and though one
knows in a certain sense who were the authors, in another sense one is
ignorant of anything except that an old-fashioned battle was carried on
about Kok and Waterboer in our two highly esteemed and reverend
Quarterlies. But as the conduct, not only of our Colonial Office, but
of Great Britain as an administrator of Colonies, was at stake,--as on
one side it was stated that an egregious wrong had been done from
questionable motives, and on the other that perfect state-craft and
perfect wisdom had been combined in the happy manner in which Griqualand
West with its diamonds had become British territory, I thought it might
be of interest to endeavour to get at the truth when I was on the spot.
But I have to own that I have failed in the attempt to find any exact
truth or to ascertain what abstract justice would have demanded. In
order to get at a semblance of truth and justice in the matter it has to
be presumed that a Hottentot Chief has understood the exact nature of a
treaty and the power of a treaty with the accuracy of an accomplished
European diplomate; and it has to be presumed also that the Hottentot’s
right to execute a treaty binding his tribe or nation is as well defined
and as firmly founded as that of a Minister of a great nation who has
the throne of his Sovereign and the constitutional omnipotence of his
country’s parliament at his back. In our many dealings with native
tribes we have repeatedly had to make treaties. These treaties we have
endeavoured to define, have endeavoured to explain; but it has always
been with the conviction that they can be trusted only to a certain very
limited extent.
The question in dispute is whether we did an injustice to the Orange
Free State by taking possession of Griqualand West in 1871 when diamonds
had already been discovered there and the value of the district had been
acknowledged. At that time it was claimed by the Orange Free State
whose subjects had inhabited the land before a diamond had been found,
and which had levied taxes on the Boers who had taken up land there as
though the country had belonged to the Republic. Since the annexation
has been effected by us we have, in a measure, acknowledged the claim of
the Free State by agreeing to pay to it a sum of £90,000--as
compensation for what injustice we may have done; and we have so far
admitted that the Free State has had something to say for itself.
The district in question at a period not very remote was as little
valuable perhaps as any land on the earth’s surface lying adjacent to
British territory. The first mention I find of the Griquas is of their
existence as a bastard Hottentot tribe in 1811 when one Adam Kok was
their captain. The word Griqua signifies bastard, and Adam Kok was
probably half Dutchman and half Hottentot. In 1821 Adam Kok was
dismissed or resigned, and Andreas Waterboer was elected in his place.
Kok then went eastwards with perhaps half the tribe, and settled himself
at a place which the reader will find on the map, under the name of
Philipolis, north of the Orange river in the now existing Orange Free
State. Then some line of demarcation was made between Waterboer’s lands
and Kok’s lands, which line leaves the Diamond Fields on one side or--on
the other. Adam Kok then trekked further eastward with the Griquas of
Griqualand East, as they had come to be called, to a territory south of
Natal, which had probably been depopulated by the Zulus. This territory
was then called No Man’s Land, but is now marked on the maps as Adam
Kok’s Land. But he gave some power of attorney enabling an agent to
sell the lands he left behind him, and under this power his lands were
sold to the Orange Free State which had established itself in 1854. The
Free State claims to have bought the Diamond Fields,--diamonds having
been then unknown,--under this deed. But it is alleged that the deed
only empowered the agent to sell the lands in and round Philipolis on
which Adam Kok’s Griquas had been living. It is certain, however, that
Adam Kok had continued to exercise a certain right of sovereignty over
the territory in question after his deposition or resignation, and that
he made over land to the Boers of the Free State by some deed which the
Boers had accepted as giving a good title. It is equally certain that
old Waterboer’s son had remonstrated against these proceedings and had
objected to the coming in of the Boers under Kok’s authority.
We will now go back to old Andreas Waterboer, who for a Hottentot seems
to have been a remarkably good sort of person, and who as I have said
had been chosen chief of the Griquas when Adam Kok went out. In 1834 Sir
Benjamin D’Urban, that best and most ill-used of Cape Colony Governors,
made a treaty with old Andreas undertaking to recognise him in all his
rights, and obtaining a promise from the Hottentot to assist in
defending the British border from the hordes of savagery to the north.
There was also a clause under which the Hottentot was to receive a
stipend of £150 per annum. This treaty seems to have been kept with
faith on both sides till Waterboer died in December, 1852. The stipend
was punctually paid, and the Hottentot did a considerable quantity of
hard fighting on behalf of the British. On his death his son Nicholas
Waterboer came to reign in his stead. Nicholas is a Christian as was his
father, and is comparatively civilized;--but he is by no means so good a
Christian as was the old man, and his father’s old friends were not at
first inclined to keep up the acquaintance on the same terms.
Nicholas, no doubt mindful of the annual stipend, asked to have the
treaty renewed in his favour. But other complications had arisen. In
1852 Messrs. Hogge and Owen had acted as Commissioners for giving over
the Transvaal as a separate Republic and in the deed of transference it
was agreed that there should not be any special treaties between the
Cape Colony and the Natives north of the Orange river, as it was thought
that such treaties would interfere with the independence of the
Republic. Poor Nicholas for a time suffered under this arrangement, but
in 1858 a letter was written to him saying that all that had been done
for his father should be done for him,--and the payment of the £150 per
annum was continued though no treaty was made.[5]
In the mean time, in 1854, the severance had been made of the Orange
Free State from the Colony, the bounds of which were not then settled
with much precision. Had they been declared to be the Orange and the
Vaal rivers in reference to the North, East, and South, the Diamond
Fields would have been included,--or the greater part of the Diamond
Fields. But that would not have settled the question, as England could
not have ceded what she did not possess. Thus there was a corner of land
as there have been many corners in South Africa, respecting which there
was doubts as to ownership. Waterboer alleged that the line which his
father and old Adam Kok had made so long ago as 1821,--with what
geometrical resources they might then have,--gave him a certain
apparently valueless tract of land, and those again who assumed a right
to Adam Kok’s land, asserted that the line gave it to them. The Kokites,
however, had this point in their favour, that they had in some sort
occupied the land,--having sold it or granted leases on it to Dutch
Boers who paid taxes to the Orange Free State in spite of Waterboer’s
remonstrances.
But the matter at the time was in truth unimportant. Encroachments were
made also into this very district of Griqualand from the other Republic
also. In speaking of the Transvaal I have already described the position
there to which such encroachments had led. A treaty became necessary to
check the Transvaal Boers from establishing themselves on Griqualand,
and the Transvaal authorities with the native Chiefs, and our Governor
at the Cape, agreed that the matter should be referred to an umpire. Mr.
Keate, the Lieut. Governor of Natal, was chosen and the Keate award was
made. But the land in question was not valuable; diamonds had not yet
been found, and the question was not weighty enough to create determined
action. The Transvaal rejected the treaty, and the Transvaal Boers, as
well as those from the Free State, continued to occupy land in
Griqualand West. Now the land of the Transvaal Republic has come back
into our hands, and there is one little difficulty the more to solve.
Then, in 1869, the first diamond was found on a farm possessed by an
Orange Free State Boer, and in 1871 Nicholas Waterboer, claiming
possession of the land, and making his claim good to British colonial
intellects, executed a treaty ceding to the British the whole district
of Griqualand West,--a tract of land about half as big as Scotland,
containing 17,800 square miles. There had by this time grown up a vast
diamond seeking population which was manifestly in want of government.
Waterboer himself could certainly do nothing to govern the free,
loudspeaking, resolute body of men which had suddenly settled itself
upon the territory which he claimed. Though he considered himself to be
Captain of the Country, he would have been treated with no more respect
than any other Hottentot had he shown himself at the diggings. Yet he no
doubt felt that such a piece of luck having turned up on what he
considered to be his own soil, he ought to get something out of it. So
he made a treaty, ceding the country to Great Britain in 1871. In 1872
his stipend was raised to £250,--in 1873 to £500; and an agreement has
now been made, dated I think in October 1877, increasing this to £1,000
a year, with an allowance of £500 to his widow and children after his
death. It was upon this deed that we took possession of Griqualand West
with all its diamonds; but the Orange Free State at once asserted its
claim,--based on present possession and on the purchase of Adam Kok’s
rights.
I think I shall not be contradicted when I say that amidst such a
condition of things it is very hard to determine where is precisely the
truth and what perfect abstract justice would have demanded. I cannot
myself feel altogether content with the title to a country which we have
bought from a Hottentot for an allowance of £1,000 a year with a pension
of £500 to his wife and children. Much less can I assent to the title
put forward by the Free State in consequence of their negotiation with
Adam Kok’s Agent. The excuse for annexation does not in my mind rest on
such buyings and sellings. I have always felt that my sense of justice
could not be satisfied as to any purchase of territory by civilized from
uncivilized people,--first because the idea of the value of the land is
essentially different in the minds of the two contracting parties; and
secondly because whatever may be the tribal customs of a people as to
land I cannot acknowledge the right of a Chieftain to alienate the
property of his tribe,--and the less so when the price given takes the
form of an annuity for life to one or two individuals.
The real excuse is to be found in that order of things which has often
in the affairs of our Colonies made a duty clear to us, though we have
been unable to reconcile that duty with abstract justice. When we
accepted the cession of the Province in 1871 the Free State was no doubt
making an attempt to regulate affairs at the Diamond Fields; but it was
but a feeble attempt. The Republic had not at its back the power needed
for saying this shall be law, and that shall be law, and for enforcing
the laws so enacted. And if the claim of Great Britain to the land was
imperfect, so was that of the Free State. The persons most interested in
the matter prayed for our interference, and felt that they could live
only under our Government. There had no doubt been occupation after a
kind. A few Boers here and there had possessed themselves of the lands,
buying them by some shifty means either from the Natives or from those
who alleged that they had purchased them from the Natives. And, as I
have said, taxes were levied. But I cannot learn that any direct and
absolute claim had ever been made to national dominion,--as is made by
ourselves and other nations when on a new-found shore we fly our
national flags. The Dutch had encroached over the border of the Griquas
and then justified their encroachment by their dealings with Adam Kok.
We have done much the same and have justified our encroachment by our
dealings with Nicholas Waterboer. But history will justify us because it
was essentially necessary that an English speaking population of a
peculiarly bold and aggressive nature should be made subject to law and
order.
The accusation against our Colonial Office of having stolen the Diamond
Fields because Diamonds are peculiarly rich and desirable can not hold
water for an instant. If that were so in what bosom did the passion rise
and how was it to be gratified? A man may have a lust for power as
Alexander had, and Napoleon,--a lust to which many a British Minister
has in former days been a prey; but, even though we might possibly have
a Colonial Secretary at this time so opposed in his ideas to the
existing theories and feelings of our statesmen as to be willing to
increase his responsibilities by adding new Colonies to our long list of
dependencies, I cannot conceive that his ambition should take the shape
of annexing an additional digging population. Has any individual either
claimed or received glory by annexing Griqualand West? From the
operations of such a Province as the Diamond Fields it is not the mother
country that reaps the reward, but the population whether they be
English, Dutch, or Americans,--the difficult task of ruling whom the
mother country is driven to assume.
It is known to all Englishmen who have watched the course of our
colonial history for the last forty years that nothing can be so little
pleasant to a Secretary of State for the Colonies as the idea of a new
Colony. Though they have accrued to us, one after the other, with
terrible rapidity there has always been an attempt made to reject them.
The Colonial Secretary has been like an old hen to whose large brood
another and another chick is ever being added,--as though her powers of
stretching her wings were unlimited. She does stretch them, like a good
old mother with her maternal instincts, but with most unwilling efforts,
till the bystander thinks that not a feather of protection could be
given to another youngling. But another comes and the old hen stretches
herself still wider,--most painfully.
New Zealand is now perhaps the pet of our colonial family; and yet what
efforts were made when Lord Normanby and afterwards when Lord John
Russell were at the Colonies to stave off the necessity of taking
possession of the land! But Englishmen had settled themselves in such
numbers on her shores that England was forced to send forth the means of
governing her own children. The same thing happened, as I have attempted
to tell, both in British Kafraria and Natal. The same thing happened the
other day in the Fiji Islands. The same feeling, acting in an inverse
way,--repudiating the chicks instead of taking them in,--induced us to
give over the Transvaal and the Orange Free State to Republicanism. Our
repudiation of the former has lasted but for a quarter of a century, and
there are many now of British race to be found in South Africa who are
confident that we shall have to take the Orange Free State in among the
brood in about the same period from her birth. British rule in distant
parts, much as it is abused, is so precious a blessing that men will
have it, and the old hen is forced to stretch her poor old wings again
and still again.
This I hold to be the real and unanswerable excuse for what we have done
in Griqualand West and not our treaty with Waterboer. As far as right
devolving from any treaty goes I think that we have the best of it,--but
not so much the best, that even could I recognize those treaties as
conveying all they are held to convey, I should declare our title to be
complete. But, that such treaties are for the most part powerless when
pressure comes, is proved by our own doings and by those of other
nations all round the world. We have just annexed the Transvaal,--with
the approbation of both sides in the House of Commons. Our excuse is
that though the Transvaal was an independent State she was so little
able to take care of herself that we were obliged to enter in upon her,
as the law does on the estate of a lunatic. But how would it have been
if the Transvaal instead of the Orange Free State had been our
competitor for the government of the Diamond Fields? If we can justify
ourselves in annexing a whole Republic surely we should not have
scrupled to take the assumed dependency of a Republic. In such doings we
have to reconcile ourselves to expedience, however abhorrent such a
doctrine may be to us in our own private affairs. Here it was expedient
that a large body, chiefly of Englishmen, should, for their own comfort
and well being, be brought under rule. If in following out the doctrine
any abstract injustice was done, it was not against the Orange Free
State, but against the tribes whom no Waterboer and no Adam Kok could in
truth be authorized to hand over either to British or to Dutch
Republican rule.
For a while I was minded to go closely into the question of Kok v.
Waterboer and to put forward what might probably have been a crude
expression of the right either of the one Hottentot or of the other to
make over at any rate his power and his privileges of government. But I
convinced myself, when on the spot, that neither could have much right,
and that whatever right either might have, was so far buried in the
obscurity of savagery in general, that I could not possibly get at the
bottom of it so as to form any valid opinion. Books have been written on
the subject, on the one side and on the other, which have not I think
been much studied. Were I to write no more than a chapter on it my
readers would pass it by. The intelligence of England will not engage
itself on unravelling the geographical facts of a line of demarcation
made between two Hottentot Chieftains when the land was comparatively
valueless, and when such line could only be signified by the names of
places of which the exact position can hardly even now be ascertained.
When subsequently I read the report which the Secretary of State for the
Colonies made to the Governor of the Cape Colony on 5 August 1876,
informing the Governor of the terms under which he and the President of
the Orange Free State had agreed to compromise the matter, I was glad to
find that he, in his final discussions with the President, had come to
the same conclusion. I here quote the words in which Lord Carnarvon
expressed himself to Sir Henry Barkly;--and I would say that I fully
agree with him were it not that such testimony might seem to be
impertinent. “At the earlier interviews Mr. Brand repeatedly expressed
his desire to submit proof of the claim preferred by his Government to a
great part of Griqualand West. I had however determined from the first
that there would be no advantage in entering upon such on enquiry. It
was obvious that there could be no prospect of our coming to an
agreement on a question which teemed with local details and personal
contentions.”
The Secretary of State goes on to explain the circumstances under which
the £90,000 are to be given. I will confess for myself that I should
almost have preferred to have stuck to the territory without paying the
money. If it be our “destiny” to rule people I do not think that we
ought to pay for assuming an office which we cannot avoid. The Secretary
of State in this report strongly reasserts the British right to
Griqualand West,--though he acknowledges that he cannot hope by mere
eloquence to convince President Brand of that right. “As you think you
are wronged,” the Secretary goes on to argue, “we will consent to
compensate the wrong which we feel sure you have not suffered, but which
you think you have endured, so that there need be no quarrel between
us.” Probably it was the easiest way out of the difficulty; but there is
something in it to regret. It must of course be understood that the
£90,000 will not be paid by the British taxpayer, but will be gathered
from the riches of Griqualand West herself.
On the 27 October 1871 the Diamond Fields were declared to be British
territory. But such a declaration, even had it not been opposed by the
Free State and the friends of the Free State, would by no means have
made the course of British rule plain and simple. There have, from that
day to this, arisen a series of questions to settle and difficulties to
solve which, as they crop up to the enquirer’s mind, would seem to have
been sufficient to have overcome the patience of any Colonial Secretary
even though he had not another Colony on his shoulders. If there was any
Colonial sinner,--Secretary, Governor, or subordinate,--who carried away
by the lust of empire had sought to gratify his ambition by annexing
Griqualand West, he must certainly have repented himself in sackcloth
and ashes before this time (the end of 1877) when the vexed question of
annexation or non-annexation to the Cape Colony is hardly yet settled.
When the territory was first accepted by Great Britain it was done on an
understanding that the Cape Colony should take it and rule it, and pay
for it,--or make it pay for itself. The Colonial Secretary of the day
declared in an official dispatch that he would not consent to the
annexation unless, “the Cape Parliament would personally bind itself to
accept the responsibility of governing the territory which was to be
united to it, together with the entire maintenance of any force which
might be necessary for the preservation of order.” It must be presumed
therefore that the lust for empire did not exist in Downing Street. The
Cape Parliament did so far accede to the stipulation made by the
Secretary of State, as to pass a resolution of assent. They would
agree,--seeing that British rule could not in any other way be obtained.
But an intermediate moment was necessary,--a moment which should admit
of the arrangement of terms,--between the absolute act of assumption by
Great Britain and the annexation by the Colony. That moment has been
much prolonged, and has not yet, as I write, been brought to an end. So
that the lust for rule over the richest diamond fields in the world
seems hardly to be very strong even in the Colony. Though the Parliament
of the Colony had assented to the requisition from Downing Street, it
afterwards,--not unnaturally,--declined to take the matter in hand till
the Government at home had settled its difficulties with the Orange Free
State. The Free State had withdrawn whatever officers it had had on the
Fields, and had remonstrated. That difficulty is now solved;--and the
Cape Colony has passed a bill shewing on what terms it will annex the
territory. The terms are very unpopular in the district,--as indeed is
the idea of annexation to the Cape Colony at all. Griqualand would very
much prefer to continue a separate dependency, with a little Council of
its own. The intention however of the mother country and of the Colony
has been too clearly expressed for doubt on that subject. They are both
determined that the annexation shall take place, and the Colony will
probably be able to dictate the terms.
But there have been other difficulties sufficient almost to break the
heart of all concerned. Who did the land belong to on which the diamonds
were being found, and what were the rights of the owners either to the
stones beneath the surface, or to the use of the surface for the purpose
of searching? The most valuable spot in the district, called at first
the Colesberg Kopje,--Kopje being little hill,--and now known as the
Kimberley mine, had been on a farm called Vooruitzuit belonging to a
Dutchman named De Beer. This farm he sold to a firm of Englishmen for
the very moderate sum of £6,600,[6]--a sum however which to him must
have appeared enormous,--and the firm soon afterwards sold it to the
Government for £100,000. To this purchase the Government was driven by
the difficulties of the position. Diggers were digging and paying 10s. a
month for their claims to the owners of the soil, justifying themselves
in that payment by the original edict of the Free State, while the
owners were claiming £10 a month, and asserting their right to do as
they pleased with their own property. The diggers declared their purpose
of resisting by force any who interfered with them;--and the owners of
the soil were probably in league with the diggers, so as to enhance the
difficulties, and force the Government to purchase. The Government was
obliged to buy and paid the enormous sum of £100,000 for the farm. Many
stories could be told of the almost inextricable complexities which
attended the settlement of claims to property while the diggers were
arming and drilling and declaring that they would take the law into
their own hands if they were interfered with in their industry.
In 1872 the population had become so great,--and, as was natural in such
circumstances, so unruly,--that the Governor of the Cape Colony, who is
also High Commissioner for all our South African territories, was
obliged to recommend that a separate Lieutenant Governor should be
appointed, and Mr. Southey who had long held official employment in the
Cape Colony was sent to fill the place. Here he remained till 1875,
encumbered by hardships of which the difficulty of raising a sufficient
revenue to pay the expenses of the place was not the least. Diamonds
were being extracted worth many millions, but the diamonds did not come
into the pocket of the Government. In such localities the great source
of revenue,--that which is generally most available,--is found in the
Custom duties levied on the goods consumed by the diggers. But here,
though the diggers consumed manfully, the Custom duties levied went
elsewhere. Griqualand West possessed no port and could maintain no
cordon of officers to prevent goods coming over her borders without
taxation. The Cape Colony which has been so slow to annex the land got
the chief advantages from the consumption of the Diamond Fields, sharing
it, however, with Natal. Mr. Southey is said to have had but thirty
policemen with him to assist in keeping the peace, and was forced to ask
for the assistance of troops from the Cape. Troops were at last sent
from Capetown,--at an expense of about £20,000 to Griqualand West.
During all this time it may easily be conceived that no British
aggressor had as yet obtained the fruition of that rich empire for which
he is supposed to have lusted when annexing the country.
The Lieutenant Governor with his thirty policemen,--and the sudden
influx of about 300 soldiers from the Cape--was found to be too
expensive for the capabilities of the place. “In 1875,” says the
Colonial Office List for 1877, “the condition of the finances rendered
it necessary to reduce the civil establishment, and the office of
Lieutenant Governor, as well as that of Secretary to Government, was
discontinued, and an administrator appointed.” That administrator has
been Major Lanyon who has simply been a Lieutenant Governor with a
salary somewhat less than that of his predecessor. That the difficulty
of administering the affairs of the Colony have been lessened during his
period of office, may in part be due to circumstances and the more
settled condition of men’s minds. But with such a task as he has had not
to have failed is sufficient claim for praise. There have been no
serious outrages since he reached the Fields.
Annexation to the Cape Colony will probably take place. But what will
come next? The Province does not want annexation;--but specially wants
an adequate, we may say a large share in the constituencies of the joint
Colonies should annexation be carried out. I sympathise with Griqualand
West in the first feeling. I do not think that the diggers of the
Diamond Fields will be satisfied with legislation carried on at
Capetown. I do not think that a parliamentary majority at Capetown will
know how to manage the diggers. Kimberley is so peculiar a place, and so
likely to shew its feeling of offence against the Government if it be
offended, that I fear it will be a very thorn in the side of any
possible Cape Colony Prime Minister. That Downing Street should wish to
make over to the Colony the rich treasure, which we are told has been
acquired with so much violence and avarice, I am not surprised,--though
such annexation must be prejudicial to that desire for South African
Confederation which is now strong in Colonial Office bosoms;--but that
the Colony should accept the burden while she already possesses that
which generally makes such burdens acceptable,--viz., the Custom duties
on the goods consumed by the people,--is to me a marvel. It may be that
the Cape Parliament was induced to give its first assent by the strongly
expressed wishes of the Secretary of State at home, and that it can
hardly now recede from the promise it then made.
But in regard to the share which Griqualand claims in the two
legislative Houses of the future combined Colonies I cannot at all wish
her to prevail. It may be natural that a community should desire to be
largely represented without looking forward to all the circumstances by
which such representation may be affected. The population of the Diamond
Fields is supposed to consist of about 15,000 whites and 30,000 natives.
Of the latter number about 12,000 are men employed in the mines. The
other 18,000 natives who are living on their own lands may he eliminated
from our present enquiry. Of the 15,000 white persons we will say that a
half are men who would be entitled to vote under the present franchise
of the Cape Colony. The number would shew a very large proportion of
adult males, but a digging population will always have an excessive
population of men. But the 12,000 natives would, with a very small
deduction on account of women, all be enabled to claim a right to be
registered.
The Cape Colony franchise is given to all men with certain
qualifications. One qualification, and that the broadest,--is that a man
shall be earning wages at the rate of £25 a year and his diet. And he
must either have been born a British subject, or born in a Dutch South
African territory taken over by the British Government. The latter
clause was inserted no doubt with the intention of saving from exclusion
any men then still living who might have been born when the Cape of Good
Hope was a Dutch Colony; but in justice must be held to include also
those born in the Transvaal when the Transvaal was a Dutch Republic. The
meaning is that all shall vote, who are otherwise qualified, who have
been born English subjects or have become English subjects by annexation
from Dutch rule. The majority of the Kafirs now working at the Diamond
Fields have been born in the Transvaal; some indeed at Natal, some few
in Zululand which is not English, and some few beyond the Limpopo, on
native territory which has never been either Dutch or English. But the
great majority are from the distant parts of the Transvaal;--and, with a
Kafir as with a white man who should assert himself to be born an
English subject or a Transvaalian, the onus probandi would be with those
who objected to, or denied, the claim. Every Kafir about the mines earns
at the lowest 10s. a week, or £26 10s. per annum and his diet, and it
would be found I think impossible to reject their claim to be registered
as voters if their names were brought up on the lists.
There will be those at home who will say,--why should they not vote if
they are industrious labourers earning wages at so high a rate? But no
white man who has been in South Africa and knows anything of South
Africa will say that. A very eminent member of the House of Commons,--a
friend of my own whom I respect as a politician as highly as any man of
the present day,--gently murmured a complaint in discussing the South
African permissive bill as to the statement which had been made by the
Secretary of State “that until the civilization of the Natives
throughout South Africa had made considerable progress it would be
desirable that they should not have direct representation in the
Legislative Assembly of the Union;”--that is in the Confederated Union
sanctioned by the permissive bill. My friend’s philanthropic feelings
were hurt by the idea that the coloured man should be excluded from the
franchise. But the suggestion contained in this speech that the Kafir
should have a vote is received by Europeans in South Africa simply with
a smile. Were it granted and could it be generally used at the will and
in accordance with the judgment of the Kafir himself all Europeans
would at once leave the country, and South Africa would again become the
prey of the strongest handed among the Natives then existing. That
Englishmen should live under a policy devised or depending upon Negroes
I believe to be altogether impossible. Nor will such an attempt be made.
Let the law say what it will as to suffrage that state of things will be
avoided,--if not otherwise, then by force.
It is not that I think that the Kafirs about the Diamond Fields will at
once swarm to the poll as soon as the franchise of the Cape Colony shall
make it possible for them to do so. That is not the way the evil will
shew itself. They will care nothing for the franchise and will not be at
the trouble to understand its nature. But certain Europeans will
understand it,--politicians not of the first class,--and they will
endeavour to use for their own purposes a privilege which will have been
thoughtlessly conferred. Such politicians will not improbably secure
election by Kafir votes, and will cause to be done exactly that which
the most respectable employers of labour in the place will think most
prejudicial to the interests of the place. And after a while the Negroes
of Griqualand West will learn the powers which they possess as have the
Negroes of the Southern American States, and thus there will spring up a
contest as to the party in which is to be vested the political power of
the district. I do not doubt how the contest would end. The white men
would certainly prevail however small might be their numbers, and
however great the majority of the Kafirs. But I am sure that no part of
South Africa would willingly subject itself to the possibility of such
a condition. I think that the franchise of the Cape Colony has been,--I
will not say fixed too low, but arranged injudiciously in regard to the
population of the Colony itself;--but I am even more strongly of opinion
that that franchise is not at all adapted to the population of the
Diamond Fields. Considering the nature of the task it may be doubted
whether the country of the diamonds would not be best ruled as a Crown
Colony.
At the present moment, pending annexation, the Government is carried on
by an administrator with a Council of seven besides himself,--eight in
all. Four are appointed and enjoy salaries, while four are elected and
are not paid. If necessary for a majority the administrator has two
votes. But a quorum of five is necessary of which quorum two must be
elected members. The consequence is that unless two of the elected
members are staunch to the Government, every thing is liable to be
brought to a stand still. One or two elected members take up their hats
and walk out,--and all business is at an end for the day. This, to say
the least of it, is awkward. The evil would be much remedied, if it were
required that in forming the quorum of five one elected member would be
sufficient. Out of eight a quorum of four might be held to suffice of
which one might be an elected member.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE STORY OF THE DIAMOND FIELDS.
The first known finding of a diamond in South Africa was as recent as
1867;--so that the entire business which has well nigh deluged the world
of luxury with precious stones and has added so many difficulties to the
task of British rule in South Africa is only now,--in 1877,--ten years
old. Mr. Morton, an American gentleman who lectured on the subject
before the American Geographical Society in the early part of 1877 tells
us that “Across a mission map of this very tract printed in 1750 is
written, ‘Here be Diamonds;’”--that the Natives had long used the
diamonds for boring other stones, and that it was their practice to make
periodical visits to what are now the Diamond Fields to procure their
supply. I have not been fortunate enough to see such a map, nor have I
heard the story adequately confirmed, so as to make me believe that any
customary search was ever made here for diamonds even by the Natives. I
am indeed inclined to doubt the existence of any record of South African
diamonds previous to 1867, thinking that Mr. Morton must have been led
astray by some unguarded assertion. Such a map would be most interesting
if it could be produced. For all British and South African
purposes,--whether in regard to politics, wealth, or geological enquiry
the finding of the diamond in 1867 was the beginning of the affair.
And this diamond was found by accident and could not for a time obtain
any credence. It is first known to have been seen at the house of a
Dutch farmer named Jacobs in the northern limits of the Cape Colony, and
South of the Orange river. It had probably been brought from the bed of
the stream or from the other side of the river. The “other side” would
be, in Griqualand West, the land of diamonds. As far as I can learn
there is no idea that diamonds have been deposited by nature in the soil
of the Cape Colony proper. At Jacobs’ house it was seen in the hands of
one of the children by another Boer named Van Niekerk, who observing
that it was brighter and also heavier than other stones, and thinking it
to be too valuable for a plaything offered to buy it. But the child’s
mother would not sell such a trifle and gave it to Van Niekerk. From Van
Niekerk it was passed on to one O’Reilly who seems to have been the
first to imagine it to be a diamond. He took it to Capetown where he
could get no faith for his stone, and thence back to Colesberg on the
northern extremity of the Colony where it was again encountered with
ridicule. But it became matter of discussion and was at last sent to Dr.
Atherstone of Grahamstown who was known to be a geologist and a man of
science. He surprised the world of South Africa by declaring the stone
to be an undoubted diamond. It weighed over 21 carats and was sold to
Sir P. Wodehouse, the then Governor of the Colony, for £500.[7]
In 1868 and 1869 various diamonds were found, and the search for them
was no doubt instigated by Van Niekerk’s and O’Reilly’s success;--but
nothing great was done nor did the belief prevail that South Africa was
a country richer in precious stones than any other region yet
discovered. Those which were brought to the light during these two years
may I believe yet be numbered, and no general belief had been created.
But some searching by individuals was continued. The same Van Niekerk
who had received the first diamond from the child not unnaturally had
his imagination fired by his success. Either in 1868 or 1869 he heard of
a large stone which was then in the hands of a Kafir witch-doctor from
whom he succeeded in buying it, giving for it as the story goes all his
sheep and all his horses. But the purchase was a good one,--for a
Dutchman’s flocks are not often very numerous or very valuable,--and he
sold the diamond to merchants in the neighbourhood for £11,200. It
weighed 83 carats, and is said to be perfect in all its appointments as
to water, shape, and whiteness. It became known among diamonds and was
christened the Star of South Africa. After a law suit, during which an
interdict was pronounced forbidding its exportation or sale, it made its
way to the establishment of Messrs. Hunt and Rosskill from whom it was
purchased for the delight of a lovely British Countess.
Even then the question whether this part of South Africa was
diamondiferous[8] had not been settled to the satisfaction of persons
who concern themselves in the produce and distribution of diamonds.
There seems to have been almost an Anti-South African party in the
diamond market, as though it was too much to expect that from a spot so
insignificant as this corner of the Orange and Vaal rivers should be
found a rival to the time-honoured glories of Brazil and India. It was
too good to believe,--or to some perhaps too bad,--that there should
suddenly come a plethora of diamonds from among the Hottentots.
It was in 1870 that the question seems to have got itself so settled
that some portion of the speculative energy of the world was enabled to
fix itself on the new Diamond Fields. In that year various white men set
themselves seriously to work in searching the banks of the Vaal up and
down between Hebron and Klipdrift,--or Barkly as it is now called, and
many small parcels of stones were bought from Natives who had been
instigated to search by what they had already heard. The operations of
those times are now called the “river diggings” in distinction to the
“dry diggings,” which are works of much greater magnitude carried on in
a much more scientific manner away from the river,--and which certainly
are in all respects “dry” enough. But at first the searchers confined
themselves chiefly to the river bed and to the small confluents of the
river, scraping up into their mining cradles the shingles and dirt they
had collected, and shaking and washing away the grit and mud, till they
could see by turning the remaining stones over with a bit of slate on a
board whether Fortune had sent on that morning a peculiar sparkle among
the lot.
I was taken up to Barkly “on a picnic” as people say; and a very nice
picnic it was,--one of the pleasantest days I had in South Africa. The
object was to shew me the Vaal river, and the little town which had been
the capital of the diamond country before the grand discovery at
Colesberg Kopje had made the town of Kimberley. There is nothing
peculiar about Barkly as a South African town, except that it is already
half deserted. There may be perhaps a score of houses there most of
which are much better built than those at Kimberley. They are made of
rough stone, or of mud and whitewash; and, if I do not mistake, one of
them had two storeys. There was an hotel,--quite full although the place
is deserted,--and clustering round it were six or seven idle gentlemen
all of whom were or had been connected with diamonds. I am often struck
by the amount of idleness which persons can allow themselves whose
occupations have diverged from the common work of the world.
When at Barkly we got ourselves and our provisions into a boat so that
we might have our picnic properly, under the trees at the other side of
the river,--for opposite to Barkly is to be found the luxury of trees.
As we were rowed down the river we saw a white man with two Kafirs
poking about his stones and gravel on a miner’s ricketty table under a
little tent on the beach. He was a digger who had still clung to the
“river” business; a Frenchman who had come to try his luck there a few
days since. On the Monday previous,--we were told,--he had found a 13
carat white stone without a flaw. This would be enough perhaps to keep
him going and almost to satisfy him for a month. Had he missed that one
stone he would probably have left the place after a week. Now he would
go on through days and days without finding another sparkle. I can
conceive no occupation on earth more dreary,--hardly any more
demoralizing than this of perpetually turning over dirt in quest of a
peculiar little stone which may turn up once a week or may not. I could
not but think, as I watched the man, of the comparative nobility of the
work of a shoemaker who by every pull at his thread is helping to keep
some person’s foot dry.
After our dinner we walked along the bank and found another “river”
digger, though this man’s claim might perhaps be removed a couple of
hundred yards from the water. He was an Englishman and we stood awhile
and talked to him. He had one Kafir with him to whom he paid 7s. a week
and his food, and he too had found one or two stones which he shewed
us,--just enough to make the place tenable. He had got upon an old
digging which he was clearing out lower. He had, however, in one place
reached the hard stone at the bottom, in, or below, which there could
be no diamonds. There was however a certain quantity of diamondiferous
matter left, and as he had already found stones he thought that it might
pay him to work through the remainder. He was a most good-humoured
well-mannered man, with a pleasant fund of humour. When I asked him of
his fortune generally at the diggings, he told us among other things
that he had broken his shoulder bone at the diggings, which he displayed
to us in order that we might see how badly the surgeon had used him. He
had no pain to complain of,--or weakness; but his shoulder had not been
made beautiful. “And who did it?” said the gentleman who was our
Amphytrion at the picnic and is himself one of the leading practitioners
of the Fields. “I think it was one Dr. ----,” said the digger, naming our
friend whom no doubt he knew. I need not say that the doctor loudly
disclaimed ever having had previous acquaintance with the shoulder.
The Kafir was washing the dirt in a rough cradle, separating the stones
from the dust, and the owner, as each sieve-full was brought to him,
threw out the stones on his table and sorted them through with the
eternal bit of slate or iron formed into the shape of a trowel. For the
chance of a sieve-full one of our party offered him half a crown,--which
he took. I was glad to see it all inspected without a diamond, as had
there been anything good the poor fellow’s disappointment must have been
great. That halfcrown was probably all that he would earn during the
week,--all that he would earn perhaps for a month. Then there might come
three or four stones in one day. I should think that the tedious
despair of the vacant days could hardly be compensated by the triumph of
the lucky minute. These “river” diggers have this in their favour,--that
the stones found near the river are more likely to be white and pure
than those which are extracted from the mines. The Vaal itself in the
neighbourhood of Barkly is pretty,--with rocks in its bed and islands
and trees on its banks. But the country around, and from thence to
Kimberley, which is twenty-four miles distant, is as ugly as flatness,
barrenness and sand together can make the face of the earth.
The commencement of diamond-digging as a settled industry was in 1872.
It was then that dry-digging was commenced, which consists of the
regulated removal of ground found to be diamondiferous and of the
washing and examination of every fraction of the soil. The district
which we as yet know to be so specially gifted extends up and down the
Vaal river from the confluence of the Modder to Hebron, about 75 miles,
and includes a small district on the east side of the river. Here,
within 12 miles of the river, and within a circle of which the diameter
is about 2½ miles, are contained all the mines,--or dry diggings,--from
which have come the real wealth of the country. I should have said that
the most precious diamond yet produced, one of 288 carats, was found
close to the river about 12 miles from Barkly. This prize was made in
1872.
It is of the dry diggings that the future student of the Diamond Fields
of South Africa will have to take chief account. The river diggings were
only the prospecting work which led up to the real mining
operations,--as the washing of the gullies in Australia led to the
crushing of quartz and to the sinking of deep mines in search of
alluvial gold. Of these dry diggings there are now four, Du Toit’s Pan,
Bultfontein, Old De Beers,--and Colesberg Kopje or the great Kimberley
mine, which though last in the Field has thrown all the other diamond
mines of the world into the shade. The first working at the three first
of these was so nearly simultaneous, that they may almost be said to
have been commenced at once. I believe however that they were in fact
opened in the order I have given.
Bultfontein and Du Toit’s Pan were on two separate Boer farms, of which
the former was bought the first,--as early as 1869,--by a firm who had
even then had dealings in diamonds and who no doubt purchased the land
with reference to diamonds. Here some few stones were picked from the
surface, but the affair was not thought to be hopeful. The diamond
searchers still believed that the river was the place. But the Dutch
farmer at Du Toit’s Pan, one Van Wyk, finding that precious stones were
found on his neighbour’s land, let out mining licences on his own land,
binding the miners to give him one fourth of the value of what they
found. This however did not answer and the miners resolved to pay some
small monthly sum for a licence, or to “jump” the two farms altogether.
Now “jumping” in South African language means open stealing. A man
“jumps” a thing when he takes what does not belong to him with a tacit
declaration that might makes right. Appeal was then made to the
authorities of the Orange Free State for protection;--and something was
done. But the diggers were too strong, and the proprietors of the farms
were obliged to throw open their lands to the miners on the terms which
the men dictated.
The English came,--at the end of 1871,--just as the system of dry
digging had formed itself at these two mines, and from that time to this
Du Toit’s Pan and Bultfontein have been worked as regular diamond mines.
I did not find them especially interesting to a visitor. Each of them is
about two miles distant from Kimberley town, and the centre of the one
can hardly be more than a mile distant from the centre of the other.
They are under the inspection of the same Government officer, and might
be supposed to be part of one and the same enterprise were it not that
there is a Mining Board at Du Toit’s Pan, whereas the shareholders at
Bultfontein have abstained from troubling themselves with such an
apparatus. They trust the adjustment of any disputes which may arise to
the discretion of the Government Inspector.
At each place there is a little village, very melancholy to look at,
consisting of hotels or drinking bars, and the small shops of the
diamond dealers. Everything is made of corrugated iron and the whole is
very mean to the eye. There had been no rain for some months when I was
there, and as I rode into Du Toit’s Pan the thermometer shewed over 90
in the shade, and over 150 in the sun. While I was at Kimberley it rose
to 96 and 161. There is not a blade of grass in the place, and I seemed
to breathe dust rather than air. At both these places there seemed to be
a “mighty maze,”--in which they differ altogether from the Kimberley
mine which I will attempt to describe presently. Out of the dry dusty
ground, which looked so parched and ugly that one was driven to think
that it had never yet rained in those parts, were dug in all directions
pits and walls and roadways, from which and by means of which the dry
dusty soil is taken out to some place where it is washed and the debris
examined. Carts are going hither and thither, each with a couple of
horses, and Kafirs above and below,--not very much above or very much
below,--are working for 10s. a week and their diet without any feature
of interest. What is done at Du Toit’s Pan is again done at Bultfontein.
At Du Toit’s Pan there are 1441 mining claims which are possessed by 214
claimholders. The area within the reef,--that is within the wall of
rocky and earthy matter containing the diamondiferous soil,--is 31
acres. This gives a revenue to the Griqualand Government of something
over £2,000 for every three months. In the current year,--1877,--it will
amount to nearly £9,000. About 1,700 Kafirs are employed in the mine and
on the stuff taken out of it at wages of 10s. a week and their
diet,--which, at the exceptionally high price of provisions prevailing
when I was in the country, costs about 10s. a week more. The wages paid
to white men can hardly be estimated as they are only employed in what I
may call superintending work. They may perhaps be given as ranging from
£3 to £6 a week. The interesting feature in the labour question is the
Kafir. This black man, whose body is only partially and most grotesquely
clad, and who is what we mean when we speak of a Savage, earns more than
the average rural labourer in England. Over and beyond his board and
lodging he carries away with him every Saturday night 10s. a week in
hard money, with which he has nothing to do but to amuse himself if it
so pleases him.
At Bultfontein there are 1,026 claims belonging to 153 claimholders. The
area producing diamonds is 22 acres. The revenue derived is £6,000 a
year, more or less. About 1,300 Kafirs are employed under circumstances
as given above. The two diggings have been and still are successful,
though they have never reached the honour and glory and wealth and
grandeur achieved by that most remarkable spot on the earth’s surface
called the Colesberg Kopje, the New Rush, or the Kimberley mine.
I did not myself make any special visit to the Old De Beer mine. De Beer
was the farmer who possessed the lands called Vooruitzuit of the
purchase of which I have already spoken, and he himself, with his sons,
for awhile occupied himself in the business;--but he soon found it
expedient to sell his land,--the Old De Beer mine being then
established. As the sale was progressing a lady on the top of a little
hill called the Colesberg Kopje poked up a diamond with her parasol. Dr.
Atherstone who had visited the locality had previously said that if new
diamond ground were found it would probably be on this spot. In
September 1872 the territory of Griqualand West became a British Colony,
and at that time miners from the whole district were congregating
themselves at the hill, and that which was at once called the “New Rush”
was established. In Australia where gold was found here or there the
miners would hurry off to the spot and the place would be called this
or that “Rush.”
The New Rush, the Colesberg Kopje,--pronounced Coppy,--and the Kimberley
mine are one and the same place. It is now within the town of
Kimberley,--which has in fact got itself built around the hill to supply
the wants of the mining population. Kimberley has in this way become the
capital and seat of Government for the Province. As the mine is one of
the most remarkable spots on the face of the earth I will endeavour to
explain it with some minuteness, and I will annex a plan of it which as
I go on I will endeavour also to explain.
The Colesberg hill is in fact hardly a hill at all,--what little summit
may once have entitled it to the name having been cut off. On reaching
the spot by one of the streets from the square you see no hill but are
called upon to rise over a mound, which is circular and looks to be no
more than the debris of the mine though it is in fact the remainder of
the slight natural ascent. It is but a few feet high and on getting to
the top you look down into a huge hole. This is the Kimberley mine. You
immediately feel that it is the largest and most complete hole ever made
by human agency.
At Du Toit’s Pan and Bultfontein the works are scattered. Here
everything is so gathered together and collected that it is not at first
easy to understand that the hole should contain the operations of a
large number of separate speculators. It is so completely one that you
are driven at first to think that it must be the property of one
firm,--or at any rate be entrusted to the management of one director.
It is very far from being so. In the pit beneath your feet, hard as it
is at first to your imagination to separate it into various enterprises,
the persons making or marring their fortunes have as little connection
with each other as have the different banking firms in Lombard Street.
There too the neighbourhood is very close, and common precautions have
to be taken as to roadway, fires, and general convenience.
You are told that the pit has a surface area of 9 acres;--but
for your purposes as you will care little for diamondiferous or
non-diamondiferous soil, the aperture really occupies 12 acres. The
slope of the reef around the diamond soil has forced itself back over an
increased surface as the mine has become deeper. The diamond claims
cover 9 acres.
You stand upon the marge and there, suddenly, beneath your feet lies the
entirety of the Kimberley mine, so open, so manifest, and so uncovered
that if your eyes were good enough you might examine the separate
operations of each of the three or four thousand human beings who are at
work there. It looks to be so steep down that there can be no way to the
bottom other than the aerial contrivances which I will presently
endeavour to explain. It is as though you were looking into a vast bowl,
the sides of which are smooth as should be the sides of a bowl, while
round the bottom are various marvellous incrustations among which ants
are working with all the usual energy of the ant-tribe. And these
incrustations are not simply at the bottom, but come up the curves and
slopes of the bowl irregularly,--half-way up perhaps in one place, while
on another side they are confined quite to the lower deep. The pit is
230 feet deep, nearly circular, though after awhile the eye becomes
aware of the fact that it is oblong. At the top the diameter is about
300 yards of which 250 cover what is technically called “blue,”--meaning
diamondiferous soil. Near the surface and for some way down, the sides
are light brown, and as blue is the recognised diamond colour you will
at first suppose that no diamonds were found near the surface;--but the
light brown has been in all respects the same as the blue, the colour of
the soil to a certain depth having been affected by a mixture of iron.
Below this everything is blue, all the constructions in the pit having
been made out of some blue matter which at first sight would seem to
have been carried down for the purpose. But there are other colours on
the wall which give a peculiar picturesqueness to the mines. The top
edge as you look at it with your back to the setting sun is red with the
gravel of the upper reef, while below, in places, the beating of rain
and running of water has produced peculiar hues, all of which are a
delight to the eye.
As you stand at the edge you will find large high-raised boxes at your
right hand and at your left, and you will see all round the margin
crowds of such erections, each box being as big as a little house and
higher than most of the houses in Kimberley. These are the first
recipients for the stuff that is brought up out of the mine. And behind
these, so that you will often find that you have walked between them,
are the whims by means of which the stuff is raised, each whim being
worked by two horses. Originally the operation was done by
hand-windlasses which were turned by Kafirs,--and the practice is
continued at some of the smaller enterprises;--but the horse whims are
now so general that there is a world of them round the claim. The stuff
is raised on aerial tramways,--and the method of an aerial tramway is as
follows. Wires are stretched taught from the wooden boxes slanting down
to the claims at the bottom,--never less than four wires for each box,
two for the ascending and two for the descending bucket. As one bucket
runs down empty on one set of wires, another comes up full on the other
set. The ascending bucket is of course full of “blue.” The buckets were
at first simply leathern bags. Now they have increased in size and
importance of construction,--to half barrels and so upwards to large
iron cylinders which sit easily upon wheels running in the wires as they
ascend and descend and bring up their loads, half a cart load at each
journey.
As this is going on round the entire circle it follows that there are
wires starting everywhere from the rim and converging to a centre at the
bottom, on which the buckets are always scudding through the air. They
drop down and creep up not altogether noiselessly but with a gentle
trembling sound which mixes itself pleasantly with the murmur from the
voices below. And the wires seem to be the strings of some wonderful
harp,--aerial or perhaps infernal,--from which the beholder expects that
a louder twang will soon be heard. The wires are there always of course,
but by some lights they are hardly visible. The mine is seen best in the
afternoon and the visitor looking at it should stand with his back to
the setting sun;--but as he so stands and so looks he will hardly be
aware that there is a wire at all if his visit be made, say on a
Saturday afternoon, when the works are stopped and the mine is mute.
When the world below is busy there are about 3,500 Kafirs at work,--some
small proportion upon the reef which has to be got into order so that it
shall neither tumble in, nor impede the work, nor overlay the
diamondiferous soil as it still does in some places; but by far the
greater number are employed in digging. Their task is to pick up the
earth and shovel it into the buckets and iron receptacles. Much of it is
loosened for them by blasting which is done after the Kafirs have left
the mine at 6 o’clock. You look down and see the swarm of black ants
busy at every hole and corner with their picks moving and shovelling the
loose blue soil.
But the most peculiar phase of the mine, as you gaze into its one large
pit, is the subdivision into claims and portions. Could a person see the
sight without having heard any word of explanation it would be
impossible, I think, to conceive the meaning of all those straight cut
narrow dikes, of those mud walls all at right angles to each other, of
those square separate pits, and again of those square upstanding blocks,
looking like houses without doors or windows. You can see that nothing
on earth was ever less level than the bottom of the bowl,--and that the
black ants in traversing it, as they are always doing, go up and down
almost at every step, jumping here on to a narrow wall and skipping
there across a deep dividing channel as though some diabolically
ingenious architect had contrived a house with 500 rooms, not one of
which should be on the same floor, and to and from none of which should
there be a pair of stairs or a door or a window. In addition to this it
must be imagined that the architect had omitted the roof in order that
the wires of the harp above described might be brought into every
chamber. The house has then been furnished with picks, shovels, planks,
and a few barrels, populated with its black legions, and there it is for
you to look at.
At first the bottom of the bowl seems small. You know the size of it as
you look,--and that it is nine acres, enough to make a moderate
field,--but it looks like no more than a bowl. Gradually it becomes
enormously large as your eye dwells for a while on the energetic
business going on in one part, and then travels away over an infinity of
subdivided claims to the work in some other portion. It seems at last to
be growing under you and that soon there will be no limit to the variety
of partitions on which you have to look. You will of course be anxious
to descend and if you be no better than a man there is nothing to
prevent you. Should you be a lady I would advise you to stay where you
are. The work of going up and down is hard, everything is dirty, and the
place below is not nearly so interesting as it is above. One firm at the
mine, Messrs. Baring Gould, Atkins, & Co. have gone to the expense of
sinking a perpendicular shaft with a tunnel below from the shaft to the
mine,--so as to avoid the use of the aerial tramway; and by Mr. Gould’s
kindness I descended through his shaft. Nevertheless there was some
trouble in getting into the mine and when I was there the labour of
clambering about from one chamber to another in that marvellously broken
house was considerable
[Illustration:
_PLAN and Valuation of
KIMBERLEY MINE.
1876._
]
and was not lessened by the fact that the heat of the sun was about 140.
The division of the claims, however, became apparent to me and I could
see how one was being worked, and another left without any present
digging till the claim-owner’s convenience should be suited. But there
is a regulation compelling a man to work if the standing of his “blue”
should become either prejudicial or dangerous to his neighbours. There
is one shaft,--that belonging to the firm I have mentioned; and one
tramway has been cut down by another firm through the reef and
circumjacent soil so as to make an inclined plane up and down to the
mine.
On looking at the accompanying plan the reader will see that the ground
was originally divided into 801 claims with some few double numbers to
claims at the east end of the mine;--but in truth nearly half of those
have never been of value, consisting entirely of reef, the
diamondiferous matter, the extent of which has now been ascertained, not
having travelled so far. There are in truth 408 existing claims. The
plan, which shews the locality of each claim as divided whether of worth
or of no worth, shews also the rate at which they are all valued for
purposes of taxation. To ascertain the rated value the reader must take
any one of the sums given in red figures and multiply it by the number
of subdivisions in the compartment to which those figures are attached.
For instance at the west end is the lowest figure,--£100, and as there
are 37 marked claims in this compartment, the rated value of the
compartment is £3,700. This is the poorest side of the mine and probably
but few of the claims thus marked are worked at all. The richest side
of the mine is towards the south, where in one compartment there are 12
claims each rated at £5,500, so that the whole compartment is supposed
to be worth £66,000. The selling value is however much higher than that
at which the claims are rated for the purpose of taxation.
But though there are but 408 claims there are subdivisions in regard to
property very much more minute. There are shares held by individuals as
small as one-sixteenth of a claim. The total property is in fact divided
into 514 portions, the amount of which of course varies extremely. Every
master miner pays 10s. a month to the Government for the privilege of
working whether he own a claim or only a portion of a claim. In working
this the number of men employed differs very much from time to time.
When I was there the mine was very full, and there were probably almost
4,000 men in it and as many more employed above on the stuff. When the
“blue” has come up and been deposited in the great wooden boxes at the
top it is then lowered by its own weight into carts, and carried off to
the “ground” of the proprietor. Every diamond digger is obliged to have
a space of ground somewhere round the town,--as near his whim as he can
get it,--to which his stuff is carted and then laid out to crumble and
decompose. This may occupy weeks, but the time depends on what may be
the fall of rain. If there be no rain, it must be watered,--at a very
considerable expense. It is then brought to the washing, and is first
put into a round puddling trough where it is broken up and converted
into mud by stationary rakes which work upon the stuff as the trough
goes round. The stones of course fall to the bottom, and as diamonds
are the heaviest of stones they fall with the others. The mud is
examined and thrown away,--and then the stones are washed, and rewashed,
and sifted, and examined. The greater number of diamonds are found
during this operation;--but the large gems and those therefore of by far
the greatest value are generally discovered while the stuff is being
knocked about and put into the buckets in the mine.
It need hardly be said that in such an operation as I have described the
greatest care is necessary to prevent stealing and that no care will
prevent it. The Kafirs are the great thieves,--to such an extent of
superexcellence that white superintendence is spoken of as being the
only safeguard. The honesty of the white man may perhaps be indifferent,
but such as it is it has to be used at every point to prevent, as far as
it may be prevented, the systematized stealing in which the Kafirs take
an individual and national pride. The Kafirs are not only most willing
but most astute thieves, feeling a glory in their theft and thinking
that every stone stolen from a white man is a duty done to their Chief
and their tribe. I think it may be taken as certain that no Kafir would
feel the slightest pang of conscience at stealing a diamond, or that any
disgrace would be held to attach to him among other Kafirs for such a
performance. They come to the Fields instructed by their Chiefs to steal
diamonds and they obey the orders like loyal subjects. Many of the Kafir
Chiefs are said to have large quantities of diamonds which have been
brought to them by their men returning from the diggings;--but most of
those which are stolen no doubt find their way into the hands of
illicit dealers. I have been told that the thefts perpetrated by the
Kafirs amount to 25 per cent. on the total amount found;--but this I do
not believe.
The opportunities for stealing are of hourly occurrence and are of such
a nature as to make prevention impossible. These men are sharpsighted as
birds and know and see a diamond much quicker than a white man. They
will pick up stones with their toes and secrete them even under the eyes
of those who are watching them. I was told that a man will so hide a
diamond in his mouth that no examination will force him to disclose it.
They are punished when discovered with lashes and imprisonment,--in
accordance with the law on the matter. No employer is now allowed to
flog his man at his own pleasure. And the white men who buy diamonds
from Kafirs are also punished when convicted, by fine and imprisonment
for the simple offence of buying from a Kafir; but with flogging also if
convicted of having instigated a Kafir to steal. Nevertheless a
lucrative business of this nature is carried on, and the Kafirs know
well where to dispose of their plunder though of course but for a small
proportion of its value.
Ten shillings a week and their food were the regular wages here as
elsewhere. This I found to be very fluctuating, but the money paid had
rarely gone lower for any considerable number of men than the
above-named rate. The lowest amount paid has been 7s. 6d. a week.
Sometimes it had been as high as 20s. and even 30s. a week. A good deal
of the work is supplied by contract, certain middlemen undertaking to
provide men with all expenses paid at £1 a week. When mealies have
become dear from drought,--there being no grass for oxen on the
route,--no money can be made in this way. Such was the case when I was
in Griqualand West. It is stated by Mr. Oats, an engineer, in his
evidence given to the Committee on the Griqualand West Annexation Bill,
in June 1877--that the annual amount of wages paid at Kimberley had
varied from £600,000 to £1,600,000 a year. Nearly the whole of this had
gone into the hands of the Kafirs.
Perhaps the most interesting sight at the mine is the escaping of the
men from their labour at six o’clock. Then, at the sound of some
welcomed gong, they begin to swarm up the sides close at each other’s
heels apparently altogether indifferent as to whether there be a path or
no. They come as flies come up a wall, only capering as flies never
caper,--and shouting as they come. In endless strings, as ants follow
each other, they move, passing along ways which seem to offer no hold to
a human foot. Then it is that one can best observe their costume in
which a jacket is never absent but of which a pair of trowsers rarely
forms a portion. A soldier’s red jacket or a soldier’s blue jacket has
more charms than any other vestment. They seem always to be good
humoured, always well-behaved,--but then they are always thieves. And
yet how grand a thing it is that so large a number of these men should
have been brought in so short a space of time to the habit of receiving
wages and to the capacity of bargaining as to the wages for which they
will work. I shall not, however, think it so grand a thing if any one
addresses them as the free and independent electors of Kimberley before
they have got trowsers to cover their nakedness.
I must add also that a visitor to Kimberley should if possible take an
opportunity of looking down upon the mine by moonlight. It is a weird
and wonderful sight, and may almost be called sublime in its peculiar
strangeness.
CHAPTER IX.
KIMBERLEY.
Having described the diamond mines in the Kimberley district I must say
a word about the town of Kimberley to which the mines have given birth.
The total population as given by a census taken in 1877 was 13,590,
shewing the town to be the second largest in South Africa. By joining to
this Du Toit’s Pan and Bultfontein which are in fact suburbs of
Kimberley we get a total urban population of about 18,000. Of these
nearly 10,000 are coloured, and something over 8,000 are Europeans.
Among the Europeans two-fifths are females, and of course there is the
ordinary population of children--with the coloured people the females
are about 1 to 7. Of the adult male population two-thirds are of
coloured races,--Kafirs for the most part,--and one-third is European.
At present both the one and the other are a shifting people;--but the
Kafirs shift much the quickest. Each man remains generally only six or
eight months on the Fields and then returns home to his tribe. This mode
of life, however, is already somewhat on the decrease, and as the love
of making money grows, and as tribal reverence for the Chieftains dies
out, the men will learn to remain more constantly at their work. Unless
the diamonds come to an end all together,--which one cannot but always
feel to be possible,--the place will become a large town with a settled
Kafir population which will fall gradually into civilized ways of life.
There is no other place in South Africa where this has been done, or for
many years can be done to the same extent. I mention this here because
it seems to be so essentially necessary to remember that South Africa is
a land not of white but of black men, and that the progress to be most
desired is that which will quickest induce the Kafir to put off his
savagery and live after the manner of his white brethren.
Throughout the whole country which the English and the Dutch between
them have occupied as their own, the Kafirs are the superiors in numbers
in much greater proportion than that stated above in reference to the
town of Kimberley;--but these numbers are to be found, not in towns, but
out in their own hitherto untouched districts, where they live
altogether after their old ways, where the Kafirs of to-day are as were
the Kafirs of fifty years ago. And even with those who have come under
our dominion and who live to some degree intermixed with us, the greater
proportion still follow their old customs of which idleness and
dependence on the work of women for what is absolutely necessary to
existence, may be said to be the most prominent. The work of civilizing
as it has been carried out by simple philanthropy or by religion is
terribly slow. One is tempted sometimes to say that nothing is done by
religion and very little by philanthropy. But love of money works very
fast. In Griqualand West, especially in the Diamond Fields, and above
all at Kimberley, it is not only out in the wilds, by the river sides,
on the veld, and in their own kraals, that the black men outnumber the
white; but in the streets of the city also and in the work shops of the
mine. And here they are brought together not by the spasmodic energy of
missionaries or by the unalluring attraction of schools but by the
certainty of earning wages. The seeker after diamonds is determined to
have them because the making of his fortune depends upon them; and the
Kafir himself is determined to come to Kimberley because he has learned
the loveliness of 10s. a week paid regularly into his hand every
Saturday night.
Who can doubt but that work is the great civilizer of the world,--work
and the growing desire for those good things which work only will bring?
If there be one who does he should come here to see how those dusky
troops of labourers, who ten years since were living in the wildest
state of unalloyed savagery, whose only occupation was the slaughter of
each other in tribal wars, each of whom was the slave of his Chief, who
were subject to the dominion of most brutalizing and cruel
superstitions, have already put themselves on the path towards
civilization. They are thieves no doubt;--that is they steal diamonds
though not often other things. They are not Christians. They do not yet
care much about breeches. They do not go to school. But they are
orderly. They come to work at six in the morning and go away at six in
the evening. They have an hour in the middle of the day, and know that
they have to work during the other hours. They take their meals
regularly and, what is the best of all, they are learning to spend
their money instead of carrying it back to their Chiefs.
Civilization can not come at once. The coming I fear under any
circumstances must be slow. But this is the quickest way towards it that
has yet been found. The simple teaching of religion has never brought
large numbers of Natives to live in European habits; but I have no doubt
that European habits will bring about religion. The black man when he
lives with the white man and works under the white man’s guidance will
learn to believe really what the white man really believes himself.
Surely we should not expect him to go faster. But the missionary has
endeavoured to gratify his own soul by making here and there a model
Christian before the pupil has been able to understand any of the
purposes of Christianity. I have not myself seen the model Christian
perfected; but when I have looked down into the Kimberley mine and seen
three or four thousand of them at work,--although each of them would
willingly have stolen a diamond if the occasion came,--I have felt that
I was looking at three or four thousand growing Christians.
Because of this I regard Kimberley as one of the most interesting places
on the face of the earth. I know no other spot on which the work of
civilizing a Savage is being carried on with so signal a success. The
Savages whom we have encountered in our great task of populating the
world have for the most part eluded our grasp by perishing while we have
been considering how we might best deal with them. Here, in South
Africa, a healthy nation remains and assures us by its prolific
tendency that when protected from self-destruction by our fostering care
it will spread and increase beneath our hands. But what was to be done
with these people? Having found that they do not mean to die, by what
means might we instruct them how to live? Teach them to sing hymns, and
all will be well. That is one receipt. Turn them into slaves, and make
them work. That is another receipt. Divide the land with them, and let
them live after their own fashions;--only subject to some little control
from us. That was a third. The hymns have done nothing. The slavery was
of course impossible. And that division of land has been, perhaps not
equally futile, but insufficient for the growing needs of the
people;--insufficient also for our own needs. Though we abuse the Kafir
we want his service, and we want more than our share of his land. But
that which no effort of intelligence could produce has been brought
about by circumstances. The Diamond Fields have been discovered and now
there are ten thousand of these people receiving regular wages and quite
capable of rushing to a magistrate for protection if they be paid a
shilling short on Saturday night.
This the diamonds have done, and it is the great thing which they have
done. We have fair reason to believe that other similar industries will
arise. There are already copper mines at work in Namaqualand, on the
western coast of South Africa, in which the Natives are employed, and
lead mines in the Transvaal. There are gold fields in the Transvaal at
which little is now being done, because the difficulties of working them
are at present overwhelming. But as years roll quickly on these, too,
will become hives of coloured labour, and in this way Kimberleys will
arise in various parts of the continent.
I cannot say that Kimberley is in other respects an alluring
town;--perhaps as little so as any town that I have ever visited. There
are places to which men are attracted by the desire of gain which seem
to be so repulsive that no gain can compensate the miseries incidental
to such an habitation. I have seen more than one such place and have
wondered that under any inducement men should submit themselves, their
wives and children to such an existence. I remember well my impressions
on reaching Charles Dickens’ Eden at the junction of the Ohio and
Mississippi rivers and my surprise that any human being should have
pitched his tent in a place so unwholesome and so hideous. I have found
Englishmen collected on the Musquito Coast, a wretched crew; and having
been called on by untoward Fate and a cruel Government to remain a week
at Suez have been driven to consider whether life would have been
possible there for a month. During my sojourn at Kimberley, though I was
the recipient of the kindest hospitality and met two or three whom I
shall ever remember among the pleasant acquaintances of my life,--yet
the place itself was distasteful to me in the extreme. When I was there
the heat was very great, the thermometer registering 160 in the sun, and
97 in the shade. I was not absolutely ill, but I was so nearly ill that
I was in fear the whole time. Perhaps having been in such personal
discomfort, I am not a fair judge of the place. But an atmosphere
composed of dust and flies cannot be pleasant,--of dust so thick that
the sufferer fears to remove it lest the raising of it may aggravate the
evil, and of flies so numerous that one hardly dares to slaughter them
by the ordinary means lest their dead bodies should be noisome. When a
gust of wind would bring the dust in a cloud hiding everything, a cloud
so thick that it would seem that the solid surface of the earth had
risen diluted into the air, and when flies had rendered occupation
altogether impossible, I would be told, when complaining, that I ought
to be there, in December say, or February,--at some other time of the
year than that then present,--if I really wanted to see what flies and
dust could do. I sometimes thought that the people of Kimberley were
proud of their flies and their dust.
And the meat was bad, the butter uneatable, vegetables a
rarity,--supplied indeed at the table at which I sat but supplied at a
great cost. Milk and potatoes were luxuries so costly that one sinned
almost in using them. A man walking about with his pocket full of
diamonds would not perhaps care for this; but even at Kimberley there
are those who have fixed incomes,--an unfortunate Deputy Governor or the
like,--to whom sugar at 2s. 6d. a pound and other equally necessary
articles in the same proportion, must detract much from the honour and
glory of the position. When I was there “transport,” no doubt, was
unusually high. Indeed, as I arrived, there were muttered threats that
“transport” would be discontinued altogether unless rain would come. For
the understanding of this it must be known that almost everything
consumed at Kimberley has to be carried up from the coast, five hundred
miles, by ox-waggons, and that the oxen have to feed themselves on the
grasses along the road. When there has been a period of drought there
are no grasses, and when there are no grasses the oxen will die instead
of making progress. Periods of drought are by no means uncommon in South
Africa. When I was at Kimberley there had been a period of drought for
many months. There had, indeed, been no rain to speak of for more than a
year. As one consequence of this the grocers were charging 2s. 6d. a
pound for brown sugar. Even the chance of such a state of things
militates very much against the comfort of a residence.
I do not think that there is a tree to be seen within five miles of the
town. When I was there I doubt whether there was a blade of grass within
twenty miles, unless what might be found on the very marge of the low
water of the Vaal river. Every thing was brown, as though the dusty dry
uncovered ugly earth never knew the blessing of verdure. To ascertain
that the roots of grass were remaining one had to search the ground.
There is to be a park; and irrigation has been proposed so that the park
may become green;--but the park had not as yet progressed beyond the
customary brown. In all Kimberley and its surroundings there was nothing
pretty to meet the eye;--except, indeed, women’s faces which were as
bright there as elsewhere. It was a matter of infinite regret to me that
faces so bright should be made to look out on a world so ugly.
The town is built of corrugated iron. My general readers will probably
not have seen many edifices so constructed. But even in England
corrugated iron churches have been erected, when the means necessary for
stone buildings have been temporarily wanting; and I think I have seen
the studios of photographers made of the same material. It is probably
the most hideous that has yet come to man’s hands;--but it is the most
portable and therefore in many localities the cheapest,--in some
localities the only material possible. It is difficult to conceive the
existence of a town in which every plank used has had to be dragged five
hundred miles by oxen; but such has been the case at Kimberley. Nor can
bricks be made which will stand the weather because bricks require to be
burned and cannot well be burned without fuel. Fuel at Kimberley is so
expensive a luxury that two thoughts have to be given to the boiling of
a kettle. Sun-burned bricks are used and form the walls of which the
corrugated iron is the inside casing; but sun-burned bricks will not
stand the weather and can only be used when they are cased. Lath and
plaster for ceilings there is little or none. The rooms are generally
covered with canvas which can be easily carried. But a canvas ceiling
does not remain long clean, or even rectilinear. The invincible dust
settles upon it and bulges it, and the stain of the dust comes through
it. Wooden floors are absolutely necessary for comfort and cleanliness;
but at Kimberley it will cost £40 to floor a moderate room. The
consequence is that even people who are doing well with their diamonds
live in comfortless houses, always meaning to pack up and run after this
year, or next year, or perhaps the year after next. But if they have
done ill with their diamonds they remain till they may do better; and
if they have done well then there falls upon them the Auri sacra fames.
When £30,000 have been so easily heaped together why not have
£60,000;--and when £60,000 why not £100,000? And then why spend money
largely in this state of trial, in a condition which is not intended to
be prolonged,--but which is prolonged from year to year by the desire
for more? Why try to enjoy life here, this wretched life, when so soon
there is a life coming which is to be so infinitely better? Such is
often the theory of the enthusiastic Christian,--not however often
carried out to its logical conclusions. At such a place as Kimberley the
theory becomes more lively; but the good time is postponed till the
capacity for enjoying it is too probably lost.
The town of Kimberley is chiefly notable for a large square,--as large
perhaps as Russell Square. One or two of the inhabitants asked me
whether I was not impressed by the grandeur of its dimensions so as to
feel that there was something of sublimity attached to it! “I thought it
very ugly at first,” said one lady who had been brought out from England
to make her residence among the diamonds;--“but I have looked at it now
till I have to own its magnificence.” I could not but say that
corrugated iron would never become magnificent in my eyes. In Kimberley
there are two buildings with a storey above the ground, and one of these
is in the square. This is its only magnificence. There is no pavement.
The roadway is all dust and holes. There is a market place in the midst
which certainly is not magnificent. Around are the corrugated iron shops
of the ordinary dealers in provisions. An uglier place I do not know
how to imagine. When I was called upon to admire it, I was lost in
wonder; but acknowledged that it was well that necessity should produce
such results.
I think that none of the diamond dealers live in the square. The various
diamond shops to which I was taken were near the mine, or in the streets
leading down from the mine to the square. These were little counting
houses in which the dealers would sit, generally two together, loosely
handling property worth many thousands of pounds. I was taken to them to
see diamonds, and saw diamonds without stint. It seemed that one partner
would buy while another would sort and pack. Parcel after parcel was
opened for me with almost as little reserve as was exhibited when
Lothair asked for pearls. Lothair was an expected purchaser; while the
diamond dealer knew that nothing was to be made by me. I could not but
think how easy it would be to put just one big one into my pocket. The
dealers, probably, were careful that I did nothing of the kind. The
stones were packed in paper parcels, each parcel containing perhaps from
fifty to two hundred according to their size. Then four or five of these
parcels would be fitted into a paper box,--which would again be enclosed
in a paper envelope. Without other safeguard than this the parcels are
registered and sent by post, to London, Paris, or Amsterdam as the case
may be. By far the greater number go to London. The mails containing
these diamonds then travel for six days and six nights on mail carts to
Capetown,--for four-fifths of the way without any guard, and very
frequently with no one on the mail cart except the black boy who drives
it. The cart travels day and night along desolate roads and is often
many miles distant from the nearest habitation. Why the mails are not
robbed I cannot tell. The diamond dealers say that the robber could not
get away with his plunder, and would find no market for it were he to do
so. They, however, secure themselves by some system of insurance. I
cannot but think that the insurers, or underwriters, will some day find
themselves subjected to a heavy loss. A great robbery might be effected
by two persons, and the goods which would be so stolen are of all
property the most portable. Thieves with a capital,--and thieves in
these days do have capital,--might afford to wait, and diamonds in the
rough can not be traced. I should have thought that property of such
immense value would have paid for an armed escort. The gold in
Australia, which is much less portable, is always accompanied by an
escort.[9]
I was soon sick of looking at diamonds though the idea of holding ten or
twenty thousand pounds lightly between my fingers did not quite lose its
charm. I was however disgusted at the terms of reproach with which most
of the diamonds were described by their owners. Many of them were “off
colours,” stones of a yellowish hue and therefore of comparatively
little value, or stones with a flaw, stones which would split in the
cutting, stones which could not be cut to any advantage. There were
very many evil stones to one that was good, so that nature after all did
not appear to have been as generous as she might have been. And these
dealers when the stones are brought to them for purchase, have no
certain standard of value by which to regulate their transactions with
their customers. The man behind the counter will take the stones, one by
one, examine them, weigh them, and then make his offer for the parcel.
Dealing in horses is precarious work,--when there is often little to
shew whether an animal be worth £50, or £100, or £150. But with diamonds
it must be much more so. A dealer offers £500 when the buyer has perhaps
expected £2,000! And yet the dealer is probably nearest to the mark. The
diamonds at any rate are bought and sold, and are sent away by post at
the rate of about £2,000,000 in the year. In 1876 the registered export
of diamonds from Kimberley amounted in value to £1,414,590, and reached
773 pounds avoirdupois in weight. But it is computed that not above
three quarters of what are sent from the place are recorded in the
accounts that are kept. There is no law to make such record necessary.
Any one who has become legally possessed of a diamond may legally take
it or send it away as he pleases.
The diamond dealers whom I saw were the honest men, who keep their heads
well above water, and live in the odour of diamond sanctity, dealing
only with licensed diggers and loving the law. But there are diamond
dealers who buy from the Kafirs,--or from intermediate rogues who
instigate the Kafirs to steal. These are regarded as the curse of the
place, and, as may be understood, their existence is most injurious to
the interests of all who traffic honestly in this article. The law is
very severe on them, imprisoning them, and subjecting them to lashes if
in any case it can be proved that a delinquent has instigated a Kafir to
steal. One such dealer I saw in the Kimberley gaol, a good-looking young
man who had to pass I think two years in durance among black thieves and
white thieves because he had bought dishonestly. I pitied him because he
was clean. But I ought to have pitied him the less because having been
brought up to be clean he, nevertheless, had become a rogue.
Next to diamond dealing the selling of guns used to be the great trade
in Kimberley, the purchasers being Kafirs who thus disposed of their
surplus wages. But when I was there the trade seemed to have come to an
end, the Kafirs, I trust, having found that they could do better with
their money than buy guns,--which they seldom use with much precision
when they have them. There was once a whole street devoted to this
dealing in guns, but the gun shops had been converted to other purposes
when I was there. Great complaint had been made against the Government
of Griqualand West for permitting the unreserved sale of guns to the
Kafirs, and attempts have been made by the two Republics--of the
Transvaal and the Orange Free State--to stop the return of men when so
armed. The guns were taken away from those who had not a pass, and such
passes were rarely given. Now they may travel through the Transvaal with
any number of guns, as the British authorities do not stop them. Why it
has come to pass that the purchases are no longer made I do not
understand. Whether the trade should or should not have been stopped I
am not prepared to say. We have not hesitated to prevent the possession
of arms in Ireland when we have thought that the peace of the country
might be endangered by them. I do not think that the peace of South
Africa has been endangered by the guns which the Kafirs have owned, or
that guns in the hands of Kafirs have been very fatal to us in the still
existing disturbance. But yet the Kafirs are very numerous and the white
men are comparatively but a handful! I would have a Kafir as free to
shoot a buck as a white man. And yet I feel that the Kafir must be kept
in subjection. The evil, if it be an evil, has now been done, for guns
are very numerous among the Kafirs.
There can hardly be a doubt that Kimberley and the diamond fields have
been of great service to the black men who obtain work. No doubt they
are thieves,--as regards the diamonds,--but their thievery will
gradually be got under by the usual processes. To argue against
providing work for a Kafir because a Kafir may steal is the same as to
say that housemaids should not be taught to write lest they should learn
to forge. That argument has been used, but does not now require
refutation. And there can be as little doubt that the finding of
diamonds has in a commercial point of view been the salvation of South
Africa. The Orange Free State, of which “The Fields” at first formed a
part, and which is closely adjacent to them, has been so strengthened by
the trade thus created as to be now capable of a successful and
permanent existence,--a condition of things which I think no observer
of South African affairs would have considered to be possible had not
Kimberley with its eighteen thousand much-consuming mouths been
established on its border. As regards the Cape Colony generally, if
quite the same thing need not be said, it must be acknowledged that its
present comparative success is due almost entirely to the diamonds,--or
rather to the commercial prosperity caused by the consumption in which
diamond finders and their satellites have been enabled to indulge. The
Custom duties of the Cape Colony in 1869, before the diamond industry
existed, were less than £300,000.[10] In 1875 that sum had been very
much more than doubled. And it must be remembered that this rapid
increase did not come from any great increase of numbers. The
diamond-digging brought in a few white men no doubt, but only a few in
comparison with the increase in revenue. There are but 8,000 Europeans
in the diamond fields altogether. Had they all been new comers this
would have been no great increase to a population which now exceeds
700,000 persons. The sudden influx of national wealth has come from the
capability for consumption created by the new industry. White men
looking for diamonds can drink champagne. Black men looking for diamonds
can buy clothes and guns and food. It is not the wealth found which
directly enriches the nation, but the trade created by the finding. It
was the same with the gold in Australia. Of the national benefit arising
from the diamonds there can be no doubt. Whether they have been equally
beneficial to those who have searched for them and found them may be a
matter of question.
What fortunes have been made in this pursuit no one can tell. If they
have been great I have not heard of them. There can be no doubt that
many have ruined themselves by fruitless labours, and that others who
have suddenly enriched themselves have been unable to bear their
prosperity with equanimity. The effect of a valuable diamond upon a
digger who had been working perhaps a month for nothing was in the early
days almost maddening. Now, as with gold in Australia, the pursuit has
settled itself down to a fixed industry. Companies have been formed.
Individuals are not suddenly enriched by the sudden finding of a stone.
Dividends are divided monthly and there is something approaching to a
fixed rate of finding from this claim or from that, from this side of
the mine or from the other. There is less of excitement and consequently
less of evil. Men are no longer prone to the gambler’s condition of mind
which induces an individual to think that he,--he specially,--will win
in opposition to all established odds and chances, and prompts him to
anticipate his winning by lavish expenditure,--to waste it when it does
come by such puerile recourses as shoeing a horse with gold or drinking
champagne out of a bucket. The searching for gold and diamonds has
always had this danger attached to it,--that the money when it has come
has too frequently not been endeared to the finder by hard continuous
work. It has been “easy come and easy gone.” This to some degree is
still the case. There is at Kimberley much more of gambling, much more
of champagne, much more of the rowdy exhilaration coming from sudden
money, than at older towns of the same or much greater population, or of
the same or much greater wealth. But the trade of Kimberley is now a
settled industry and as such may be presumed to be beneficent to those
who exercise it.
Nevertheless there is a stain sticking to the diamonds,--such a stain as
sticks to gold, which tempts one to repeat the poet’s caution:--
Aurum irrepertum, et sio melius situm
Cum terra celat, spernere fortior,
Quam cogere humanos in usus.
It would be untrue to say that he who works to ornament the world is
necessarily less noble than the other workman who supplies it with what
is simply useful. The designer of a room-paper ranks above the man who
hangs it,--and the artist whose picture decorates the wall is much above
the designer of the paper. Why therefore should not the man who finds
diamonds be above the man who finds bread? And yet I feel sure that he
is not. It is not only the thing procured but the manner of procuring it
that makes or mars the nobility of the work. If there be an employment
in which the labourer has actually to grovel in the earth it is this
search for diamonds. There is much of it in gold-seeking, but in the
search after diamonds it is all grovelling. Let the man rise as high as
he may in the calling, be the head of the biggest firm at Kimberley,
still he stands by and sees the grit turned,--still he picks out the
diamonds from the other dirt with his own fingers, and carries his
produce about with him in his own pocket. If a man be working a coal
mine, though he be himself the hardest worked as well as the head
workman in the business, he is removed from actual contact with the
coal. But here, at Kimberley, sharp prying eyes are wanted, rather than
an intelligence fitted for calculations, and patience in manipulating
dirt than skill in managing men or figures.
And the feeling engendered,--the constant recollection that a diamond
may always be found,--is carried so far that the mind never rests from
business. The diamond-seeker cannot get out of his task and take himself
calmly to his literature at 4 P.M. or 5 or 6. This feeling runs through
even to his wife and children, teaching them that dirt thrice turned may
yet be turned a fourth time with some hope of profit. Consequently
ladies, and children, do turn dirt instead of making pretty needle-work
or wholesome mud pies. When I heard of so much a dozen being given to
young bairns for the smallest specks of diamonds, specks which their
young eyes might possibly discover, my heart was bitterly grieved. How
shall a child shake off a stain which has been so early incurred? And
when ladies have told me, as ladies did tell me,--pretty clever
well-dressed women,--of hours so passed, of day after day spent in the
turning of dust by their own fingers because there might still be
diamonds among the dust, I thought that I could almost sooner have seen
my own wife or my own girl with a broom at a street crossing.
There is not so much of this now as there was, and as years roll on,--if
the diamonds still be to be found,--there will be less and less. If the
diamonds still be there in twenty years’ time,--as to which I altogether
decline to give my opinion,--a railway will have been carried on to
Kimberley, and planks will have been carried up, and perhaps bricks from
some more favoured locality, and possibly paving stones, so that the
town shall be made to look less rowdy and less abominable. And pipes
will be laid on from the Vaal river, and there will be water carts. And
with the dust the flies will go into abeyance. And trees will have been
planted. And fresh butter will be made. And there will be a library and
men will have books. And houses will have become pleasant, so that a
merchant may love to sit at home in his own verandah,--which he will
then afford to have broad and cool and floored. And as the nice things
come the nasty habits will sink. The ladies will live far away from the
grit, and small diamonds will have become too common to make it worth
the parents’ while to endanger their children’s eyes. Some mode of
checking the Kafir thieves will perhaps have been found,--and the
industry will have sunk into the usual grooves. Nothing, however, will
tend so much to this as the lessening of the value of diamonds. The
stone is at present so precious that a man’s mind cannot bear to think
that one should escape him.
I should be doing injustice to Kimberley and to those who have managed
Kimberley if I did not say that very great struggles have been made to
provide it with those institutions which are peculiarly needed for the
welfare of an assembled population. Churches are provided
plentifully,--at one of which, at any rate, sermons are to be heard much
in advance of those which I may call the sermon at sermon par. I could
have wished however that the clergymen who preached them had not worn a
green ribbon. And there are hospitals, which have caused infinite labour
and are now successful;--especially one which is nearly self-supporting
and is managed exquisitely by one of those ladies who go out into the
world to do good wherever good may be done. I felt as I spoke to her
that I was speaking to one of the sweet ones of the earth. To bind up a
man’s wounds, or to search for diamonds among the dirt! There is a wide
difference there certainly.
I could have wished that the prison had been better,--that is more
prisonly,--with separate rooms for instance for those awaiting trial and
those committed. But all this will be done within those twenty next
coming years. And I know well how difficult it is to get money to set
such things afloat in a young community.
THE ORANGE FREE STATE.
CHAPTER X.
THE ORANGE FREE STATE.--ITS EARLY HISTORY.
The history of the origin of the Orange Free State, as a certain
district of South Africa is called, is one which when really written
will not I think redound to the credit of England. This I say not
intending to accuse any British statesman of injustice,--much less of
dishonesty. In all that has been done by the Colonial office in
reference to the territory in question the attempt to do right has from
first to last been only too anxious and painstaking. But as is generally
the case when over anxiety exists in lieu of assured conviction, the
right course has not been plainly seen, and the wrong thing has been
done and done, perhaps, in a wrong manner.
Our system of government by Cabinets is peculiarly open to such mistakes
in reference to Colonial matters. At the Foreign office, as is well
known, there is a prescribed course of things and whether Lord Granville
be there or Lord Derby the advice given will probably be the same. At
the Home office the same course is followed whether the gentleman there
be a Liberal or a Conservative, and if one dispenser of the Queen’s
prerogative be more prone than another to allow criminals to escape, the
course of Government is not impeded by his proclivities. But in looking
back at the history of the Colonies during the last fifty years we see
the idiosyncrasies of the individual ministers who have held the office
of Secretary of State rather than a settled course of British action,
and we are made to feel how suddenly the policy of one minister may be
made to give way to the conscientious convictions of another. Hence
there have come changes each of which may be evidence of dogged
obstinacy in the mind of some much respected Statesman, but which seem
to be proof of vacillation in the nation.
It would be thought that a colonizing nation like Great Britain,--now
the only colonizing nation in existence,--should have a policy of
colonization. The Americans of the United States have such a policy,
though they do not colonize in our sense. They will not colonize at all
beyond their own continent, so that all the citizens of their Republic
may be brought into one homogeneous whole. The Spaniards and Dutch who
have been great Colonists have a colonial policy,--which has ever
consisted in getting what can be got for the mother country. Among
ourselves, with all that we have done and all that we are doing, we do
not yet know whether it is our intention to limit or to extend our
colonial empire; we do not yet know whether we purpose to occupy other
lands or to protect in their occupation those who now hold them; we do
not yet know whether as a nation we wish our colonial dependants to
remain always loyal to the British Crown or whether we desire to see
them start for themselves as independent realms. All we do know is that
with that general philanthropy and honesty without which a British
Cabinet cannot now exist we want to do good and to avoid doing evil. But
when we look back, and, taking even three liberal Colonial Secretaries,
see the difference of opinion on colonial matters of such men as Lord
Glenelg, Lord Grey, and Lord Granville, we have to own that our colonial
policy must vacillate.
Are we to extend or are we not to extend our colonial empire? That was a
question on which some years ago it did seem that our Statesmen had come
to a decision. The task we had taken upon us was thought to be already
more than enough for our strength, and we would not stretch our hands
any further. If it might be practicable to get rid of some of the least
useful of our operations it would be well to do so. That dream of a
settled purpose has, however, been very rudely broken. The dreamers have
never been able to act upon it as a policy. It will not be necessary to
do more than name the Fiji Islands,--not the last but one of the last of
our costly acquirements,--to show how unable the Colonial office at home
has been to say, “so far will we go but no farther.” Had the Colonial
office recognised it as a policy that wherever Englishmen settle
themselves in sufficient numbers to make a disturbance if they be not
governed, then government must go after them, then the Fiji Islands
might have been accepted as a necessity. But there is no such policy
even yet;--though the annexation of the Transvaal will go far to
convince men that such must be our practice.
It is because of our vacillation in South Africa,--vacillation which has
come from the varying convictions of varying Ministers and
Governors,--that I say that the history of the Orange Free State will
not be creditable to our discernment and statesmanship. Much heavier
accusations have been brought against our Colonial office in reference
to the same territory by Dutch, American, and by English censors. It has
been said that we have been treacherous, tyrannical, and dishonest. To
none of these charges do I think that the Colonial office is fairly
subject; and though I cannot acquit every Governor of craft,--or perhaps
of tyranny,--I think that there has on the whole been an anxious desire
on the part of the emissaries from Downing Street to do their duty to
their country. But there has been a want of settled purpose as to the
nature and extent of the duties which fell upon England when she became
mistress of the Dutch settlement at the Cape of Good Hope.
There are some who think that we might have confined ourselves to Table
Mountain and Simon’s Bay, drawing a rampart across the isthmus which
divides the Cape from the mainland,--so as to have kept only a station
for the protection of our East India intercourse. But as the Dutch whom
we took upon ourselves to govern had already gone far inland when we
arrived, that would hardly have been possible, and a restriction so
selfish would have been contrary to our instincts. Others would have
limited our power at various boundaries,--especially towards the East,
where were the Kafir tribes, an evident source of coming trouble, should
we meddle with them. The Orange river as a northern boundary did seem to
offer a well-defined geographical limit, which would still allow us
enormous scope for agricultural and pastoral energy within its southern
banks and give sufficient room for every immigrant of whatever nation,
and for every Africander who wished to live under British rule, to find
a home within its borders.
But, as has been told before, the Dutch fled away across the Orange
river as soon as they began to feel the nature of British rule. Then
arose the question, which we have never yet been quite able to answer.
When they went was it our duty to go after them,--not to hinder them
from going but to govern them whither they went? Certainly not; we said,
when they went only in such numbers as to cause us no disturbance by
their removal. But how was it to be when they threatened, without any
consent of ours, to erect a separate nationality on our borders? They
tried it first in Natal, threatening us not only with the rivalry of
their own proposed Republic, but with the hostile support of Holland.
This was not to be allowed and we sent 250 men, very insufficiently, to
put down the New Republic. We did, however, put it down at last.
But the Dutch were determined to go out from us. Our ways were not their
ways. I am now speaking of a period nearly half a century back and of
the following quarter of a century. Our philanthropy disgusted them, and
was to their minds absolutely illogical,--not to be reconciled to that
custom of our nation of landing here and there and taking the land away
from the natives. The custom to them was good enough and seemed to be
clearly the intention of God Almighty. It was the purpose of Providence
that white men should use the land which was only wasted while in the
possession of black men;--and, no doubt, the purpose of Providence also
that black men should be made to work. But that attempt to strike down
the Native with the right hand and to salve the wound with the left was
to the Dutchman simply hypocritical. “Catch the nigger and make him
work.” That was the Dutchman’s idea. “Certainly;--if you can agree about
wages and other such matters,” said the British Authorities.
“Wages,--with this Savage; with this something more but very little more
than a monkey! Feed him, and perhaps baptize him; but at any rate get
work out of him,” said the Dutchman. Of course the Dutchman was
disgusted. And then the slaves had been manumitted. I will not go into
all that again; but I think it must be intelligible that the British
philanthropical system of government was an hypocritical abomination to
the Dutchman who knew very well that in spite of his philanthropy the
Englishman still kept taking the land;--land upon land.
It was natural that the Dutchman should go across the Orange River, and
natural too that the English governor should not quite know how to treat
him when he had gone. But it would have been well if some certain policy
of treatment could have been adopted. Many think that had we not
interfered with him in Natal, had we never established what was called
an Orange River Sovereignty subject to British rule, a Dutch-speaking
nation would have been formed between our Cape Colony and the swarming
native tribes, which would have been a protecting barrier for us and
have ensured the security of our Colony. I myself do not agree with
this. I think that a Dutch Republic if strong enough for this,
stretching from the confluence of the Vaal and Orange rivers down to the
shores of Natal would have been a neighbour more difficult to deal with
than Kafir tribes. My opinion on such a subject goes for very
little;--and there would at any rate have been a policy. Or, when we had
after much hesitation forbidden the Dutch to form a Republic in Natal
and had declared that country to be one among Her Majesty’s possessions,
we might have clung to the South African theory which was then
promulgated. In that case we should have recognized the necessity of
treating those wandering warlike patriarchs as British subjects and have
acknowledged to ourselves that whither they went thither we must go
after them. This, too, would have been a policy. But this we have not
done. At first we went after them. Then we abandoned them. And now that
they are altogether out of our hands in the Free State we are hankering
after them again. It is impossible not to see that the ideas as to
Colonial extension entertained by the late Duke of Newcastle are
altogether different from those held by Lord Carnarvon;--and that the
Colonial office lacks traditions.
In some respects the history of the Orange Free State has been similar
to that of the Transvaal. Its fate has been very different,--a
difference which has resulted partly from the characters of the men
employed, partly from their external circumstances in regard to the
native tribes which have been near to them. Mr. Boshof and Mr. Brand
have been very superior as Statesmen to Mr. Pretorius and Mr. Burgers,
and the Basutos under Moshesh their Chief,--though they almost
succeeded in destroying the Orange Republic,--were at last less
dangerous, at any rate very much less numerous, than Cetywayo and the
Zulus.
The Dutch when they first crossed the Orange River asked whether they
might go, and were then told that the law offered no impediment. “I am
not aware,” said Lieutenant Governor Stockenstrom in answer to a
deputation which appealed to him on the subject, “of any law which
prevents any of His Majesty’s subjects from leaving his dominions and
settling in another country; and such a law, if it did exist, would be
tyrannical and oppressive.” That was in 1835. It was in 1837 that the
migration across the river really began, when many of the wanderers
first found their way down to Natal. Some however settled directly
across the Orange River, where however they soon fell into difficulties
requiring government. While there was fighting with hostile tribes far
north across the Vaal, and while Dingaan was endeavouring to exterminate
the white men in Natal, the farmers across the Orange quarrelled in a
milder way with the bastard Hottentots and Griquas whom they found
there. But there were many troubles. When the Dutch declared themselves
to be supreme,--in reference to the Natives rather than the
British,--there came a British judge across the river, who happened then
to be on circuit in the neighbourhood, and told them that they were all
British subjects. But his assertion was very soon repudiated by the
Governor, Sir George Napier,--for at that time the idea was prevalent at
the Colonial office that England’s hands should be stretched no
further. This, however, did not stand long, and the next Governor, Sir
Peregrine Maitland, found himself compelled by growing troubles to
exercise authority across the rivers. He did not take possession of the
country, but established a resident at the little town of Bloemfontein.
The resident was to keep the peace between the Dutch and the various
tribes;--but had no commission to govern the country. The British had
found it impossible to allow the Dutch to drive the Natives from their
land,--and equally impossible to allow the Natives to slaughter the
Dutch. But yet we were very loth to declare the country British
territory.
It was in 1848 that Sir Harry Smith, who was then in Natal, whither he
had gone intending if possible to conciliate the Dutch would-be
Republicans in that country, at last found himself compelled to claim
for the mother country sovereignty over the region between the Orange
and the Vaal rivers, and this proclamation he had to support by arms.
Pretorius, who had become the leader of the Dutch in Natal, and who on
account of personal slights to himself was peculiarly hostile to the
English, came over the Drakenburg mountains, and put himself at the head
of his countrymen between the rivers. He gathered together an army,--a
commando, as it was then called in South African language,--and coming
near to Bloemfontein ordered Major Warden, the British Resident, to move
himself off into the Cape Colony south of the river with all that he had
about him of soldiers and officials. This the Major did, and then
Pretorius prepared himself to encounter with his Boers the offended
majesty of Great Britain in arms. The reader will perhaps remember that
the Dutch had done the same thing in Natal,--and had at first been
successful.
Then, on 29th August, 1848, was fought the battle of Boom Plats half-way
between the Orange River and Bloemfontein. Sir Harry Smith, the
Governor, had come himself with six or seven hundred English soldiers
and were joined by a small body of Griquas,--who were as a matter of
course hostile to the Dutch. There were collected together about a
thousand Dutch farmers all mounted. They were farmers, ready enough to
fight, but not trained soldiers. More English were killed or wounded
than Dutch. A dozen Dutchmen fell, and about four times that number of
English. But the English beat the Dutch. This decided the fate of that
territory for a short time,--and it became British under the name of the
Orange River Sovereignty. Pretorius with his friends trekked away north,
crossed the Vaal River, and there founded the Transvaal Republic,--as
has been told elsewhere. A reward of £2,000 was offered for his
apprehension;--an offer which might have been spared and which was
happily made in vain.
Major Warden was reinstated as governing Resident, and the British power
was supposed to be so well consolidated that many colonists who had
hitherto remained contented on the south of the river now crossed it to
occupy the lands which the followers of Pretorius had been compelled to
desert. But the British were not very strong. The Basutos, a tribe of
Natives who have now for some years lived in the odour of loyal sanctity
and are supposed to be a pattern to all other Natives, harassed the
Europeans continually. War had to be proclaimed against them. Basuto
Land will be found in the map lying to the north of Kafraria, to the
south east of the Orange Free State, south west of Natal, and north-east
of the Cape Colony,--to which it is bound only by a narrow neck, and of
which it now forms a part. How it became British shall be told
hereafter;--but at the time of which I am now writing, about 1850, it
was very Anti-British, and gave poor Major Warden and the Dutchmen who
were living under his rule a great deal of trouble.
Then, in 1851, the Sovereignty was declared to be to all intents and
purposes a separate Colony,--such as is the Transvaal at this moment. A
Lieutenant Governor was appointed, who with the assistance of a council
was empowered to make laws,--but with a proviso that such laws should
not be binding upon Natives. To speak sooth British laws are not
absolutely binding upon the Natives in any of the South African
Colonies. In the Cape Colony or in Natal a Native may buy a wife,--or
ten wives. There has always been the acknowledged impossibility of
enforcing Africans to live at once after European habits. But here, in
this new Colony which we had at last adopted, there was to be something
peculiarly mild in our dealings with the black men. There was to be no
interference with acts done within the limits of the jurisdiction of any
native Chief. The Lieutenant Governor or “Resident was instructed to
maintain the government of the native Chiefs over their people and lands
in the utmost integrity.”[11] It is odd enough that from this territory,
on which the British Governor or British Colonial Secretary of the day
was so peculiarly anxious to defend the Natives from any touch of
European tyranny, all the native tribes have been abolished, and here
alone in South Africa the European master is fettered by no native
difficulty;--is simply served by native servants. The native locations
were to be peculiarly sacred;--but every Native has been scared away.
The servants and workmen are foreigners who have come into the land in
search of wages and food. The remarkable settlement at Thaba ’Ncho, of
which I shall speak in a following chapter, is no contradiction to this
statement, as the territory of the Baralongs of which Thaba ’Ncho is the
capital is not a portion of the Orange Free State.
But with all our philanthropy we could not make things run smoothly in
our new Colony. Moshesh and the Basutos would have grievances and would
fight. The Governor of the Cape, who should have had no trouble with a
little Colony which had a Governor of its own, and a Council, and
instructions of a peculiarly philanthropic nature in regard to the
Natives, was obliged to fight with these Basutos on behalf of the little
Colony. This cost money,--of which the people in England heard the
facts. It was really too much that after all that we had done we should
be called upon to pay more money for an uncomfortable internal Province
in South Africa which was not of the slightest use to us, which added no
prestige to our name, and of which we had struggled hard to avoid the
possession. There was nothing attractive about it. It was neither
fertile nor pretty,--nor did it possess a precious metal of any kind as
far as we knew. It was inhabited by Dutch who disliked us,--and by a
most ungrateful horde of fighting Natives. Why,--why should we be
compelled to go rushing up to the Equator, crossing river after river,
in a simple endeavour to do good, when the very people whom we wanted to
serve continually quarrelled with us,--and made us pay through the nose
for all their quarrels?
It seems to have been forgotten then,--it seems often to have been
forgotten,--that the good people and the peaceable people have to pay
for the bad people and the quarrelsome people. There would appear to be
a hardship in this;--but if any one will look into it he will see that
after all the good people and the peaceable have much the best of it,
and that the very money which they are called upon to pay in this way is
not altogether badly invested. They obtain the blessing of security and
the feeling, not injurious to their peace of mind, of having obtained
that security by their own exertions.
But the idea of paying money and getting nothing for it does create
irritation. At home in England the new Colony was not regarded with
favour. In 1853 we had quite enough of fighting in hand without having
to fight the Basutos in defence of the Dutch, or the Dutch in defence of
the Basutos. The Colonial Secretary of that time was also War minister
and may well have had his hands full. It was decided that the Orange
Free State should be abandoned. We had claimed the Dutch as our subjects
when they attempted to start for themselves in Natal, and had subjugated
them by force of arms. Then we had repudiated them in the nearer region
across the Orange. Then again we had claimed them and had again
subjugated them by force of arms. Now we again repudiated them. In 1854
we executed, and forced them to accept, a convention by which we handed
over the Government of the country to them,--to be carried on after
their own fashion. But yet it was not to be carried on exactly as they
pleased. There was to be no Slavery. They were to be an independent
people, living under a Republic; but they were not to be allowed to
force labour from the Natives. To see that this stipulation was carried
out it would have been necessary for us to maintain magistrates all over
the country;--or spies rather than magistrates, as such magistrates
could have had no jurisdiction. The Republic, however, assented to a
treaty containing this clause in regard to slavery.
In 1854 we got rid of our Orange River Sovereignty, Sir George Clerk
having been sent over from England to make the transfer;--and we
congratulated ourselves that we had now two independent Republics
between us and the swarming hordes of the north. I cannot say how soon
there came upon Downing Street a desire to resume the territory, but
during the following troubles with the Basutos such a feeling must, one
would say, have arisen. When the Diamond Fields were discovered it is
manifest that the independence of the Orange Free State was very much in
our way. When we were compelled by the run of circumstances to have
dealings with native tribes which in 1854 seemed to us to be too remote
from our borders to need thought, we must have regretted a certain
clause in the convention by which,--we did not indeed bind ourselves to
have no dealings with natives north of the Vaal river, but in which we
declared that we had no “wish or intention” to enter into such treaties.
No doubt that clause was intended to imply only that we had at that time
no hidden notion of interference with the doings of the proposed
Republic by arrangements with its native neighbours,--no notion of which
it was to be kept in the dark. To think the contrary would be to suppose
that the occupants of the Colonial Office at home were ignorant of
language and destitute of honesty. But there soon came troubles from the
clause which must have caused many regrets in the bosoms of Secretaries
and Under Secretaries. Now at any rate we are all sure that Downing
Street must repent her liberality, and wish,--ah, so fruitlessly,--that
Sir George Clerk had never been sent upon that expedition. With a
Permissive South Africa Confederation Bill carried after infinite
trouble, and an independent State in the middle of South Africa very
little inclined to Confederation, the present holder of the Colonial
seals[12] cannot admire much the peculiar virtue which in 1854 induced
his predecessor to surrender the Orange territory to the Dutch in
opposition to the wish of all the then inhabitants of the country.
For the surrender was not made to please the people of the country. Down
in Natal the Dutch had wanted a Republic. Up in the Sovereignty, as it
was then called, they also had wanted a Republic when old Pretorius was
at their head. But since that time there had come troubles with the
Basutos,--troubles which were by no means ended,--and the Dutch were now
willing enough to put up with dependence and British protection. The
Dutch have been so cross-grained that the peculiar colonial virtue of
the day has never been able to take their side. “We have come here only
because you have undertaken to govern us and protect us,” said those of
the Dutch who had followed and not preceded us across the Orange. And it
was impossible to contradict them. I do not think that any body could
now dispassionately inquire into the circumstances of South Africa
without calling in question the wisdom of the Government at home in
abandoning the control of the territory north of the Orange River.
But the Republic was established. For some years it had a most troubled
life. Mr. Boshof was elected the first President and retained that
office till 1859. He seems to have been a man of firmness and wisdom,
but to have found his neighbours the Basutos to be almost too much for
him. There was war with this tribe more or less during his whole time.
There was a branch of the tribe of the Basutos living on a territory in
the Free State,--a people whom I will describe more at length in a
following chapter,--over whom and over whose property Moshesh the Chief
of the Basutos claimed sovereignty; but it was impossible for the Free
State to admit the claim as it could itself only exist by dictating
boundaries and terms to the Baralongs,--which they were willing enough
to receive as being a protection against their enemies the Basutos.
In 1860 Mr. Pretorius became President of the Free State,--the son of
the man who had been the first President of the Transvaal,--and the man
himself who was President of the Transvaal before Mr. Burgers. But the
difficulties were altogether beyond his power, and in 1863 he resigned.
Then Mr. Brand was appointed, the gentleman who now holds the office and
who will hold it probably, if he lives, for many years to come. His
present condition, which is one of complete calm, is very much at
variance with the early years of his Presidency. I should hardly
interest my reader if I were to attempt to involve them in the details
of this struggle. It was a matter of life and death to the young
Republic in which national death seemed always to be more probable than
national life. The State had no army and could depend only on the
efforts of its burghers and volunteers,--men who were very good for a
commando or a spasmodic struggle, men who were well used to sharp
skirmishes in which they had to contend in the proportion of one to ten
against their black enemies. But this war was maintained for four years,
and the burghers and volunteers who were mostly married men could not
long remain absent from home. And when a peace was made at the instance
of the Governor of the Cape Colony and boundaries established to which
Moshesh agreed, the sons of Moshesh broke out in another place, and
everything was as bad as before. All the available means of the Free
State were spent. Blue-backs as they were called were printed, and the
bankers issued little scraps of paper,--“good-fors,” as they were
called,--representing minute sums of money. Trade there was none and the
farmers had to fight the Basutos instead of cultivating their land. At
that time the condition of the Free State was very bad indeed. I think
I may say that its preservation was chiefly due to the firmness of Mr.
Brand.
At length the Basutos were so crushed that they were driven to escape
the wrath of their Dutch enemies by imploring the British to take them
in as subjects. In March 1868 this was done,--by no means with the
consent of the Free State which felt that it ought to dictate terms and
to take whatever territory it might desire from its now conquered
enemy and add such territory to its own. This was the more desirable
as the land of the Basutos was peculiarly good and fit for
cultivation,--whereas that of the Orange Free State was peculiarly bad,
hardly admitting cultivation at all without the expensive process of
irrigation. The English at last made a boundary line, to which the Free
State submitted. By this a considerable portion of the old Basuto land
was given up to them. This they have held ever since under the name of
the Conquered Territory. Its capital is called Ladybrand, and its
possession is the great pride of the Republic. In completing this story
I must say that the Republic has been most unexpectedly able to redeem
every inch of paper money which it created, and now, less than ten years
after a war which quite exhausted and nearly destroyed it, the Orange
Free State stands unburdened by a penny of public debt. This condition
has no doubt come chiefly from its good luck. Diamonds were found, and
the Diamond Fields had to be reached through the Free State. Provisions
of all sorts were required at the Diamond Fields, and thus a market was
created for everything that could be produced. There came a sudden
influx of prosperity which enabled the people to bear taxation,--and in
this way the blue-backs were redeemed.
There were other troubles after 1869;--but the little State has floated
through them all. Its chief subsequent trouble has been the main cause
of its prosperity. The diamonds were found and the Republic claimed the
territory on which they were being collected. On that subject I have
spoken in a previous chapter, and I need not again refer to the details
of the disagreement between Great Britain and the Republic. But it may
be as well to point out that had that quarrel ended otherwise than it
did, the English of the Diamond Fields would certainly have annexed the
Dutch of the Free State, instead of allowing the Dutch of the Free State
to annex them;--and then England would have obtained all the country
between the Orange and the Vaal instead of only that small but important
portion of it in which the diamonds lie. To imagine that Kimberley with
all its wealth would have allowed itself to be ruled by a Dutch
Volksraad at the little town of Bloemfontein, is to suppose that the
tail can permanently wag the dog, instead of the dog wagging the tail.
Diamond diggers are by no means people of a kind to submit quietly to
such a condition of things. It was bitter enough for the Volksraad to
abandon the idea of making laws for so rich and strong a
population,--bitter perhaps for Mr. Brand to abandon the idea of
governing them. But there can now, I think, be no doubt that it was
better for the Free State that Griqualand West and Kimberley should be
separated from it,--especially as Mr. Brand was sent home to England by
his parliament,--where he probably acquired softer feelings than
heretofore towards a nationality with which he had been so long
contending, and where he was able to smooth everything by inducing the
Secretary of State to pay £90,000 by way of compensation to his own
Government. I should think that Mr. Brand looking back on his various
contentions with the British, on the Basuto wars and the Griqualand
boundary lines, must often congratulate himself on the way he has
steered his little bark. There can be no doubt that his fellow citizens
in the Republic are very proud of his success.
Since Mr. Brand returned from London in 1876 nothing material has
happened in the history of the Free State. In regard to all states it is
said to be well that nothing material should happen to them. This must
be peculiarly so with a Republic so small, and of which the success and
the happiness must depend so entirely on its tranquillity. That it
should have lived through the Basuto wars is astonishing. That it should
not continue to live now that it is protected on all sides from the
possibility of wars by the contiguity of British territory would be as
astonishing. It seems to be expected by some politicians in England that
now, in the days of her prosperity, the Republic will abandon her
independence and ask to be received once more under the British ægis. I
cannot conceive anything to be less probable, nor can I see any cause
for such a step. But I will refer again to this matter when attempting
to describe the present condition of the country.
In this little sketch I have endeavoured to portray the Colonial
Ministers at home as actuated by every virtue which should glow within
the capacious bosom of a British Statesman. I am sure that I have
attributed no sinister motive, no evil idea, no blindness to honesty, no
aptitude for craft to any Secretary of State. There are I think no less
than eleven of them still living, all of whom the British public regards
as honourable men who have deserved well of their country. I can
remember almost as many more of whom the same may be said, who are now
at peace beyond the troubles of the Native Question. I will endeavour to
catalogue the higher public virtues by which they have endeared
themselves to their country,--only remarking that those virtues have
not, each of them, held the same respective places in the bosoms of all
of them. A sensitiveness to the greatness and glory of England,--what we
may perhaps call the Rule Britannia feeling,--which cannot endure the
idea that the British foot should ever go back one inch! Is it not
national ardour such as this which recommends our Statesmen to our love?
And then there has been that well-weighed economy which has been
acquired in the closet and used in the House of Commons, without which
no minister can really be true to his country. To levy what taxes be
needed, but to take care that no more is spent than is needed;--is not
that the first duty of a Cabinet Minister? But it has been England’s
destiny to be the arbiter of the fate of hundreds of millions of dusky
human beings,--black, but still brethren,--on distant shores. The Queen
has a hundred coloured subjects to one that is white. It has been the
peculiar duty of the Colonial Minister to look after and to defend the
weakest of these dark-skinned brothers; and this has had to be done in
the teeth of much obloquy! Can any virtue rank higher than the
performance of so sacred a duty? And then of how much foresight have our
ministers the need? How accurately must they read the lessons which
history and experience should teach them if Great Britain is to be saved
from a repetition of the disgrace which she encountered before the
American Colonies declared themselves independent? When we find a man
who can look forward and say to himself,--“while we can hold these
people, for their own content, to their own welfare, so long we will
keep them; but not a moment longer for any selfish aggrandisement of our
own;”--when we find a Statesman rising to that pitch, how fervently
should we appreciate the greatness of the man, and how ready should we
be to acknowledge that he has caught the real secret of Colonial
administration.
These splendid qualities have so shone over our Colonial office that the
sacred edifice is always bright with them. They scintillate on the brows
of every Assistant Secretary, and sit as a coronet on the shining locks
of all the clerks. But unfortunately they are always rotatory, so that
no one virtue is ever long in the ascendant. Rule Britannia! and the
Dutch Member of Parliament has to walk out of his Volksaal and touch his
hat to an English Governor. Downing Street and the Treasury have agreed
to retrench! Then the Dutch Member of Parliament walks back again. We
will at any rate protect the Native! Then the Boer’s wife hides the
little whip with which she is accustomed to maintain discipline over
her apprenticed nigger children. Let these people go forth and govern
themselves! Then the little whip comes out again. Among all these
British virtues what is a bewildered Dutch Colonist to do? If one virtue
would remain always in the ascendant,--though I might differ or
another,--there would be an intelligible policy. If they could be made
to balance each other,--as private virtues do in private bosoms when the
owners of those bosoms are possessed of judgment,--then the policy would
assuredly be good. But while one virtue is ever in the ascendant, but
never long there, the Dutch Colonist, and the English, are naturally
bewildered by the rotation.
CHAPTER XI.
THE ORANGE FREE STATE.--PRESENT CONDITION.
Sir George Grey, who was at that time Governor of the Cape of Good Hope
writing to Lord John Russell on 17th November 1855,--Lord John having
then been Secretary of State for the Colonies,--expresses himself in the
following glowing terms as to the region of which I am now writing. “The
territory of the Orange Free State forms one of the finest pastoral
countries I have ever seen. There is no district of country in Australia
which I have visited which throughout so great an extent of territory
affords so uniformly good a pastoral country.” A short time previous to
this, Sir George Clerk, when he was about to deliver the State up to the
Government of the Dutch, declared,--or at any rate is popularly reported
to have declared,--that the land was a “howling wilderness.” I think
that the one colonial authority was quite as far astray as the other.
Sir George Grey had ever a way with him of contending for his point
either by strong language or by strong action. He was at one time
Governor of South Australia, but perhaps never travelled as far north as
the Salt Bush country of that Colony. The Colony in his time was in its
infancy and was not known as far north as the pastoral district in
question. I do not know whether Sir George ever visited the Riverina in
New South Wales, or the Darling Downs in Queensland. Had he done
so,--and had he then become as well acquainted with the pastoral
properties of land as he has since become,--he would hardly with all his
energy have ventured upon such an assertion. It will be only necessary
for any investigator to look at the prices of Australian and South
African wool to enable him to form an opinion on the subject. The
average price in London of medium Australian wool in 1877 was 1s. 6d. a
pound, and that of South African wool of the same class 1s. 1d. a pound.
In both countries it is common to hear that the land should be stocked
at about the rate of 3 sheep to the acre; but in Australia patches of
land which will bear heavier stocking occur much more numerously than in
South Africa. The Orange Free State has not yet arrived at the ponderous
glory of full statistics so that I cannot give the amount of the wool
produced, nor can I divide her wool from that of the Cape Colony,
through which it is sent to England without special record. But I feel
sure that no one who knows the two countries will venture to compare the
flocks of the Free State with those of either of the four great
Australian Colonies, or with the flocks of New Zealand.
But if Sir George Grey spoke too loudly in one direction Sir George
Clerk spoke very much too loudly in the other. He was probably struck by
the desolate and unalluring appearance of the lands to the north of the
Orange. They are not picturesque. They are not well-timbered. They are
not even well-watered. If Sir George Clerk saw them in a drought, as I
did, he certainly did not look upon a lovely country. But it is a
country in which men may earn easy bread by pastoral and agricultural
pursuits; in which with a certain amount of care,--which has to show
itself mainly in irrigation,--the choicest fruits of the earth can be
plenteously produced; in which the earth never refuses her increase if
she be asked for it with many tears. A howling wilderness certainly it
is not. But Sir George Clerk when he described the country was anxious
to excuse the conduct of Great Britain in getting rid of it, while Sir
George Grey was probably desirous of showing how wrong Great Britain had
been on the occasion.
I do not know that I ever travelled across a less attractive country
than the Orange Free State, or one in which there is less to gratify the
visitor who goes to see things and not to see men and women. And the men
and women are far between; for over an area presumed to include 70,000
square miles, a solid block of territory about 300 miles long by 120
miles broad, there are probably not more than 30,000 white people, and
half that number of coloured people. The numbers I know are computed to
be greater by the officials of the Free State itself,--but no census has
been taken, and with customary patriotism they are perhaps disposed to
overestimate their own strength. They, however, do not give much above
half an inhabitant to every square mile. It must be remembered that in
the Free State the land is all occupied;--but that it is occupied at the
rate I have described. I altogether deny that the Free State is a
howling wilderness, but I do not recommend English autumn tourists to
devote their holydays to visiting the land, unless they have become very
tired indeed of their usual resorts.
The farmer in the Orange Free State is generally a Dutch Boer,--but by
no means always so. During my very short visit I came across various
Englishmen who were holding or who had held land there,--Africanders
perhaps, persons who had been born from British parents in the Gape
Colony,--but altogether British as distinguished from Dutch. In the
towns the shopkeepers are I think as generally English as the farmers
are Dutch in the country. We hear of the Republic as an essentially
Dutch country;--but I think that if a man about to live there had to
choose the possession of but one of the two languages, English would be
more serviceable to him of the two. In another twenty years it certainly
will be so.
I travelled from the Diamond Fields to Bloemfontein and thence through
Smithfield to the Orange River at Aliwal North. I also made a short
excursion from Bloemfontein. In this way I did not see the best district
of the country which is that which was taken from the Basutos,--where
the town of Ladybrand now is,--which is good agricultural land, capable
of being sown and reaped without artificial irrigation. The normal Dutch
farmer of the Republic, such as I saw him, depends chiefly upon his
flocks which are very small as compared with those in Australia,--three
or four thousand sheep being a respectable pastoral undertaking for one
man. He deals in agriculture also, not largely, but much more generally
than his Australian brother. In Australia the squatter usually despises
agriculture, looking upon it as the fitting employment for a little
free-selector,--who is but a mean fellow in his estimation. He grows no
more than he will use about his place for his own cattle. The flour to
be consumed by himself and his men he buys. And as his horses are not
often corn-fed a very few acres of ploughed land suffices for his
purpose. The Dutch patriarch makes his own bread from the wheat he has
himself produced. The bread is not white, but it is so sweet that I am
inclined to say I have never eaten better. And he sells his
produce,--anything which he can grow and does not eat himself. The
Australian woolgrower sells nothing but wool. The Dutch Boer will send
peas twenty miles to market, and will sell a bundle of forage,--hay made
out of unripened oats or barley,--to any one who will call at his place
and ask for it.
A strong Boer will probably have thirty, forty or perhaps fifty acres of
cultivated land round his house,--including his garden. And he will
assuredly have a dam for holding and husbanding his rain water. He would
almost better be without a house than without a dam. Some spot is chosen
as near to his homestead as may be,--towards which there is something,
be it ever so slight, of a fall of ground. Here a curved wall or stoned
bank is made underlying the fall of ground, and above it the earth is
hollowed out,--as is done with a haha fence, only here it is on larger
and broader dimensions,--and into this artificial pond when it is so
made the rain water is led by slight watercourses along the ground
above. From the dam, by other watercourses, the contents are led hither
and thither on to the land and garden as required,--or into the house.
It is the Boer’s great object thus to save enough water to last him
through any period of drought that may come;--an object which he
generally attains as far as his sheep, and cattle, and himself are
concerned;--but in which he occasionally fails in reference to his
ground. I saw more than one dam nearly dry as I passed through the
country, and heard it asserted more than once that half a day’s rain
would be worth a hundred pounds to the speaker.
The Boer’s house consists of a large middle chamber in which the family
live and eat and work,--but do not cook. There is not usually even a
fireplace in the room. It is very seldom floored. I do not know that I
ever saw a Boer’s house floored in the Free State. As the planks would
have had to be brought up four hundred miles by oxen, this is not
wonderful. The Boer is contented with the natural hard earth as it has
been made for him. The furniture of his room is good enough for all
domestic purposes. There are probably two spacious tables, and settees
along the walls of which the seats are made of ox-riems, and open
cupboards in the corners filled not sparingly with crockery. And there
is always a pile of books in a corner of the room,--among which there is
never one not of a religious tendency. There is a large Dutch Bible, and
generally half a dozen Dutch hymn-books, with a smaller Bible or two,
and not improbably an English prayer-book and English hymn-book if any
of the younger people are affecting the English language. The younger
members of the family generally are learning English and seem to be very
much better off in regard to education than are their relations in the
Transvaal.
Opening out of the living room there are generally bedrooms to the right
and left,--probably two at one end and one at the other,--of which the
best will be surrendered to the use of any respectable stranger who may
want such accommodation. It matters not who may be the normal occupant
of the room. He or she,--or more probably they,--make way for the
stranger, thinking no more of surrendering a bedroom than we do of
giving up a chair. The bedroom is probably close and disagreeable,
lacking fresh air, with dark suspicious corners of which the stranger
would not on any account unravel the mysteries. Behind the centre
chamber there is a kitchen to which the stranger does not probably
penetrate. I have however been within the kitchen of a Dutch Boeress and
have found that as I was to eat what came out of it, I had better not
have penetrated so far. It will be understood that a Dutch Boer’s house
never has an upper storey.
The young men are large strapping youths, and well made though awkward
in their gait. The girls can hardly be said to be good-looking though
there is often a healthy bloom about them. One would be inclined to say
that they marry and have children too young were it not that they have
so many children, and afterwards become such stout old matrons. Surely
no people ever attended less to the fripperies and frivolities of dress.
The old men wear strong loose brown clothes well bestained with work.
The old women do the same. And so do the young men, and so do the young
women. There seems to be extant among them no taste whatever for
smartness. None at any rate is exhibited about their own homesteads.
There are always coloured people about, living in adjacent huts,--very
probably within the precincts of the same courtyard. For with the white
children there are always to be seen black children playing. Nor does
there seem to be any feeling of repugnance at such intercourse on the
part of any one concerned. As such children grow up no doubt they are
required to work, but I have never seen among the Dutch any instance of
personal cruelty to a coloured person;--nor, during my travels in South
Africa, did any story of such cruelty reach my ear. The Dutchman would I
think fain have the black man for his slave,--and, could he have his way
in this, would not probably be over tender. But the feeling that the
black man is not to be personally ill-used has I think made its way so
far, that at any rate in the Orange Free State such ill-usage is
uncommon.
In regard to the question of work, I found that in the Free State as in
all the other provinces and districts of the country so much of the work
as is done for wages is invariably done by coloured people. On a farm I
have seen four young men working together,--as far as I could see on
equal terms,--and two have been white and two black; but the white lads
were the Boer’s sons, while the others were his paid servants. Looking
out of a window in a quiet dreary little town in the Free State I saw
opposite to me two men engaged on the plastering of a wall. One was a
Kafir and the other probably was a west coast Negro. Two or three passed
by with loads on their shoulders. They were Bechuanas or Bastard
Hottentots. I strolled out of the village to a country house where a
Fingo was gardener and a Bushman was working under him. Out in the
street the two men who had driven the coach were loafing round it. They
were Cape Boys as they are called,--a coloured people who came from St.
Helena and have white blood in their veins. I had dined lately and had
been waited upon by a Coolie. Away in the square I could see bales of
wool being handled by three Basutos. A couple of Korannas were
pretending to drive oxen through the street but were apparently going
where the oxen led them. Then came another Hottentot with a yoke and
pair of buckets on his shoulder. I had little else to do and watched the
while that I was there;--but I did not see a single white man at work. I
heard their voices,--some Dutch, though chiefly English; but the voices
were the voices of masters and not of men. Then I walked round the place
with the object of seeing, and nowhere could I find a white man working
as a labourer. And yet the Orange Free State is supposed to be the one
South African territory from which the black man has been expelled. The
independent black man who owned the land has been expelled,--but the
working black man has taken his place, allured by wages and diet.
The Dutch Boer does not love to pay wages,--does not love to spend money
in any way,--not believing in a return which is to come, or possibly may
come, from an outlay of capital in that direction. He prefers to keep
what he has and to do what can be done by family labour. He will,
however, generally have a couple of black men about his place, whose
services he secures at the lowest possible rate. Every shilling so paid
is grudged. He has in his heart an idea that a nigger ought to be made
to work without wages.
In the Free State as in the Transvaal I found every Boer with whom I
came in contact, and every member of a Boer’s family, to be courteous
and kind. I never entered a house at which my hand was not grasped at
going in and coming out. This may be a bore, when there are a dozen in
family all shaking hands on both occasions; but it is conclusive
evidence that the Boer is not a churl. He admits freedoms which in more
civilized countries would be at once resented. If you are hungry or
thirsty you say so, and hurry on the dinner or the cup of tea. You
require to be called at four in the morning and suggest that there shall
be hot coffee at that hour. And he is equally familiar. He asks your
age, and is very anxious to know how many children you have and what is
their condition in the world. He generally boasts that he has more than
you have,--and, if you yourself be so far advanced in age, that he has
had grandchildren at a younger age than you. “You won’t have a baby born
to you when you are 67 years old,” an old Boer said to me exulting. When
I expressed a hope that I might be saved from such a fate, he chuckled
and shook his head, clearly expressing an opinion that I would fain have
a dozen children if Juno and the other celestials concerned would only
be so good to me. His young wife sat by and laughed as it was all
explained to her by the daughter of a former marriage who understood
English. This was customary Boer pleasantness intended by the host for
the delectation of his guest.
I was never more convinced of anything than that those people, the Dutch
Boers of the Free State, are contented with their present condition and
do not desire to place themselves again under the dominion of England.
The question is one of considerable importance at the present moment as
the permissive bill for the suggested Confederation of the South African
districts has become law, and as that Confederation can hardly take
place unless the Free State will accept it. The Free State is an
isolated district in South Africa, now surrounded on all sides by
British territory, by no means rich, not populous, in which the Dutch
and English languages prevail perhaps equally, and also Dutch and
English habits of life. It would appear therefore at first sight to be
natural that the large English Colonies should swallow up and assimilate
the little Dutch Republic. But a close view of the place and of the
people,--and of the circumstances as they now exist and would exist
under Dutch rule,--have tended to convince me that such a result is
improbable for at any rate some years to come.
In the Orange Free State the Volksraad or Parliament is
plenipotentiary,--more so if it be possible than our Parliament is with
us because there is but one Chamber and because the President has no
veto upon any decision to which that Chamber may come. The Volksraad is
elected almost exclusively by the rural interest. There are 54 members,
who are returned, one for each chief town in a district, and one for
each Field-Cornetcy,--the Field-Cornetcies being the divisions into
which the rural districts are divided for police and military purposes.
Of these towns, such as they are, there are 13, and from them, if from
any part of the State, would come a desire for English rule. But they,
with the exception of the capital, can hardly be said to be more than
rural villages. It is in the towns that the English language is taught
and spoken,--that English tradesmen live, and that English modes of life
prevail. The visitor to Bloemfontein, the capital, will no doubt feel
that Bloemfontein is more English than Dutch. But Bloemfontein returns
but one member to the Yolksraad. From the rural districts there are 41
members, all of whom are either Boers or have been returned by Boers.
Were the question extended to the division even of the 13 town members I
do not doubt but that the present state of things would be
maintained,--so general is the feeling in favour of the independence of
the Republic. But seeing that the question rests in truth with the
country members, that the country is essentially a farmer’s country, a
country which for all purposes is in the hands of the Dutch Boers, it
seems to me to be quite out of the question that the change should be
voted by the legislature of the country.
An Englishman, or an Africander with an English name and an English
tongue, is under the constitution as capable of being elected as a
Dutchman. A very large proportion of the wealth of the country is in
English hands. The large shopkeepers are generally English; and I think
that I am right in saying that the Banks are supported by English, or at
any rate, by Colonial capital. And yet, looking through the names of the
present Volksraad, I find but two that are English,--and the owner of
one of them I believe to be a Dutchman. How can it be possible that
such a House should vote away its own independence? It is so impossible
that there can be no other way of even bringing the question before the
House than that of calling upon it for a unanimous assertion of its will
in answer to the demand, or request, or suggestion now made by Great
Britain.
Nor can I conceive any reason why the Volksraad should consent to the
proposed change. To a nationality labouring under debt, oppressed by
external enemies, or unable to make the property of its citizens secure
because of external disorders, the idea of annexing itself to a strong
power might be acceptable. To have its debts paid, its frontiers
defended, and its rebels controlled might be compensation for the loss
of that self-rule which is as pleasant to communities as it is to
individuals. Such I believe is felt to be the case by the most Dutch of
the Dutch Boers in the Transvaal. But the Orange Free State does not owe
a penny. Some years since it had been so impoverished by Basuto wars
that it was reduced to the enforced use of paper money which sank to
half its nominal value. Had England then talked of annexation the Boers
might have listened to her offer. But the enormous trade produced by the
sudden influx of population into the Diamond Fields created a wealth
which has cured this evil. The bluebacks,--as the Orange Free State
banknotes were called,--have been redeemed at par, and the Revenue of
the country is amply sufficient for its modest wants. Enemies it has
none, and from its position can have none,--unless it be England. Its
own internal affairs are so quiet and easily regulated that it is hardly
necessary to lock a door. No annexation could make a Boer more secure
in the possession of his own land and his own chattels than he is at
present.
It may of course be alleged that if the State were to join her lot with
that of the Cape Colony or of a wide South African Confederation, she
would increase her own wealth by sharing that of the larger nationality
of which she would become a part,--and that the increase of national
wealth would increase the means of the individuals forming the nation.
This, however, is an argument which, even though it were believed, would
have but little effect on the minds of a class of men who are peculiarly
fond of self-government but are by no means desirous of a luxurious mode
of life. It is often said that the Boer is fond of money. He is
certainly averse to spending it and will grasp at it when it comes
absolutely in his way; but he is the last man in the world to trust to
its coming to him from a speculative measure of which he sees the
certain immediate evil much more clearly than the possible future
advantage.
There is one source of public wealth from which the Orange Free State is
at present debarred by the peculiarity of its position, and of which it
would enjoy its share were it annexed to the Cape Colony or joined in
some federation with it. But I hope that no British or Colonial
Statesman has trusted to force the Republic to sacrifice herself for the
sake of obtaining justice in this respect. If, as I think, wrong is
being done to the Orange Free State in this matter that wrong should be
remedied for the sake of justice, and not maintained as a weapon to
enforce the self-annihilation of a weak neighbour. On whatever produce
from the world at large the Free State consumes, the Free State receives
no Custom duties. The duties paid are levied by the Cape Colony, and are
spent by it as a portion of its own revenues. The Free State has no
seaboard and therefore no port.[13] Her sugar, and tea, and whisky come
to her through Capetown, or Fort Elizabeth, or East London, and there
the Custom duties are collected,--and retained. I need hardly point out
to English readers that the Custom duties of a country form probably the
greatest and perhaps the least objectionable portion of its revenue. It
will be admitted, at any rate, that to such extent as a country chooses
to subject its people to an increased price of goods by the addition of
Custom duties to the cost of production, to that extent the revenue of
the consuming country should be enriched. If I, an individual in
England, have to pay a shilling on the bottle of French wine which I
drink, as an Englishman I am entitled to my share of the public
advantage coming from that shilling. But the Republican of the Orange
Free State pays the shilling while the Colonist of the Cape has the
spending of it. I hope, I say, that we on the south side of the Orange
River do not cling to this prey with any notion that by doing so we can
keep a whip hand over our little neighbour the Republic.
Two allegations are made in defence of the course pursued. It is said
that the goods are brought to the ports of the Colony by Colonial
merchants and are resold by them to the traders of the Orange Free
State, so as to make it impossible for the Colony to know what is
consumed within her own borders and what beyond. Goods could not
therefore be passed through in bond even if the Cape Government would
permit it. They go in broken parcels, and any duties collected must
therefore be collected at the ports whence the goods are distributed.
But this little difficulty has been got over in the intercourse between
Victoria and New South Wales. A considerable portion of the latter
Colony is supplied with its seaborne goods from Melbourne, which is the
Capital and seaport of Victoria. Victoria collects the duties on those
goods, and, having computed their annual amount, pays a certain lump sum
to New South Wales in lieu of the actual duties collected. Why should
not the Cape Colony settle with the Orange Republic in the same way?
The other reason put forward for withholding the amount strikes me as
being--almost mean. I have heard it put forward only in conversation,
and I am bringing no charge against any Statesman in the Cape Colony by
saying this. I trust that the argument has had no weight with any
Statesman at the Cape. The Cape Colony makes the roads over which the
goods are carried up to the Free State. She does do so,--and the
railroads. But she collects toll on the former, and charges for carriage
on the latter. And she enjoys all the money made by the continued
traffic through her territory. And she levies the port duties, which no
one begrudges her. I felt it to be a new thing to be informed that a
country was so impoverished by being made the vehicle for traffic from
the sea to the interior that it found itself compelled to reimburse
itself by filching Custom Duties.[14] England might just as well claim
the customs of the Cape Colony because she protects the seas over which
the goods are carried.
But the Orange Free State can carry on her little business even without
the aid of Custom Duties, and will certainly not be driven back into the
arms of the mother who once repudiated her by the want of them. She can
pay her modest way; and while she can do so the Boer of the Volksraad
will certainly not be induced to give up the natural delight which he
takes in ruling his own country. The Free State might send perhaps six
members to the central Congress of a South African Federation, where
they would be called upon to hear debates, which they would be unable to
share or even to understand because spoken in a foreign language. They
would be far from their farms and compelled to live in a manner
altogether uncomfortable to them. Is it probable that for this privilege
they will rob themselves of the honour and joy they now have in their
own Parliament? In his own Parliament the Boer is close, phlegmatic, by
no means eloquent, but very firm. The two parliamentary ideas most
prominent in his mind are that he will vote away neither his
independence nor his money. It is very hard to get from him a sanction
for any increased expenditure. It would I think be impossible to get
from him sanction for a measure which would put all control over
expenditure out of his own hands. “We will guard as our choicest
privilege that independence which Her Majesty some years since was
pleased to bestow upon us.” It is thus that the Boer declares
himself,--somewhat sarcastically,--when he is asked whether he does not
wish to avail himself of the benefit of British citizenship.
Somewhat sarcastically;--for he is well aware that when England
repudiated him,--declaring that she would have nothing to do with him
across the Orange River, she did so with contempt and almost with
aversion. And he is as well aware that England now wants to get him back
again. The double consciousness is of a nature likely to beget sarcasm.
“You thought nothing of me when I came here a poor wanderer, daring all
dangers in order that I might escape from your weaknesses, your
absurdities, your mock philanthropies,--when I shook off from the sole
of my foot the dust of a country in which the black Savage was preferred
to the white Colonist; but now,--now that I have established myself
successfully,--you would fain have me back again so that your broad
borders may be extended, and your widened circle made complete. But, by
the Providence of God, after many difficulties we are well as we
are;--and therefore we are able to decline your offers.” That is the
gist of what the Boer is saying when he tells us of the independence
bestowed upon him by Her Majesty.
Thinking as I do that Great Britain was wrong when she repudiated the
Orange Free State in 1854, believing that there was then a lack of
patience at the Colonial Office and that we should have been better
advised had we borne longer with the ways of the Dutch, I must still
acknowledge here that they were a provoking people, and one hard to
manage. Omitting small details and some few individual instances of
misrule, I feel that when the Dutch complained of us they complained of
what was good in our ways and not of what was evil. It was with this
conviction that we repudiated both the Transvaal and the other younger
but more stable Republic. Good excuses can be made for what we did,--not
the worst of which is the fact that a people whom we desired to rule
themselves, have ruled themselves well. But we did repudiate them, and I
do not know with what face we can ask them to return to us. If the offer
came from them of course we could assent; but that offer will hardly be
made.
We could certainly annex the Republic by force,--as we have done the
Transvaal. If we were to send a High Commissioner to Bloemfontein with
thirty policemen and an order that the country should be given up to us,
I do not know that President Brand and the Volksraad could do better
than comply,--with such loudest remonstrance as they might make. “The
Republic cannot fight Great Britain,” President Brand might say, as
President Burgers said when he apologised for the easy surrender of his
Republic. But there are things which a nation can not do and hold up its
head, and this would be one of them. There could be no excuse for such
spoliation. It is not easy to justify what we have done in the
Transvaal. If there be any laws of right and wrong by which nations
should govern themselves in their dealings with other nations it is hard
to find the law in conformity with which that act was done. But for that
act expediency can be pleaded. We have taken the Transvaal not that we
might strengthen our own hands, not that we might round our own borders,
not that we might thus be enabled to carry out the policy of our own
Cabinet,--but because by doing so we have enabled Englishmen, Dutchmen!
and natives to live one with another in comfort. There does seem to have
been at any rate expedience to justify us in the Transvaal. But no such
plea can be put forward in reference to the Free State. There a quiet
people are being governed after their own fashion. There a modest people
are contented with the fruition of their own moderate wealth. There a
secure and well ordered people are able to live without fear. I cannot
see any reason for annexing them;--or any other excuse beyond that
spirit of spoliation which has so often armed the strong against the
weak, but which England among the strong nations has surely repudiated.
The Legislature of the Orange Republic consists, as I have said, of a
single House called the Volksraad, which is elected for four years, of
which one half goes out at the end of every two years, so that the
change is not made all at once as with us, half the House being
dissolved at the end of one period of two years, and half at the end of
another. The members are paid 20s. a day while the House is sitting. The
House elects its own Speaker, at the right hand of whom the President
has a chair. This he may occupy or not as he pleases; but when he is
not there it is expected that his place shall be filled by the
Government Secretary. The President can speak when he likes but cannot
vote. The House can, if it please, desire him to withdraw, but, I was
informed, had never yet exercised its privilege in this respect.
The President is elected for a term of five years and may, under the
present Constitution, be re-elected for any number of terms. The present
President has now nearly served his third term, and will no doubt be
re-elected next year. But there is a bill now before the Volksraad by
which the renewal of the President’s term is to be confined to a single
reappointment. One re-election only will be allowed. This change has
received all the sanction which one Session can give it. The period of
the term is also to be curtailed from five to four years. It is
necessary however that such a change in the Constitution shall be passed
by the House in three consecutive Sessions, and on each occasion by a
three-fourth majority. It is understood also that the bill if passed
will not debar the existing President from one re-election after the
change. President Brand therefore will be enabled to serve for five
terms, and should he live to do so will thus have been the Head of the
Executive of the Free State for a period of twenty-four years,--which is
much longer than the average reign of hereditary monarchs. His last term
will in this case have been shortened one year by the new law. It would
be I think impossible to overrate the value of his services to the
country which adopted him. He was a member of Assembly in the Cape
Colony when he was elected, of which House his father was then Speaker.
A better choice could hardly have been made. It is to his patience, his
good sense, his exact appreciation of both the highness and the lowness
of the place which he has been called on to occupy, that the Republic
has owed its security. I have expressed an opinion as to the
qualifications of President Burgers for a similar position. It is
because President Brand has been exactly the reverse of President
Burgers, that he is now trusted by the Volksraad and loved by the
people. It would be hard to find a case in which a man has shewn himself
better able to suit himself to peculiar duties than has been done by the
President of this little Republic.
The right of voting in the Free State belongs to the burghers, and the
burghers are as follows;--
1. All white male persons born in the State.
2. All white male persons who have resided one year in the State,
and are registered owners of property to the value of £150.
3. All white male persons who have lived for three consecutive
years in the State.
Those however who are included in the 2nd and 3rd clauses will not be
recognized as burghers unless they produce to the State President a
certificate of good conduct from the authorities of their last place of
abode and a written promise of allegiance to the State.
Burghers who have attained the age of 16, and all who at a later age
shall have acquired citizenship are bound to enrol themselves under
their respective field-cornets and to be liable to burgher duty,--which
means fighting,--till they be 60 years old.
Burghers of 18 are entitled to vote for Field Cornets and Field
Commandants. To vote for a member of the Volksraad or for the President
a burgher must be 21, must have been born in the State,--when no
property qualification is necessary,--or must be the registered owner of
property to the value of £150, or be the lessor of a property worth £36
per annum; or have a yearly income of £200, or possess moveable property
worth £300.
From this it will be seen that the parliamentary system of the Republic
is protected from a supposed evil by a measure of precaution which would
be altogether inadmissible in any Constitution requiring the sanction of
the British Crown. No coloured person can vote for a Member of
Parliament. However expedient it may be thought by Englishmen to exclude
Kafirs or Zulus from voting till such changes shall have been made in
their habits as to make them fit for the privilege, the restrictions
made for that purpose must with us be common both to the coloured and to
the white population. We all feel that no class legislation as to the
privilege of voting should be adopted and that in giving or withholding
qualification no allusion should be made to race or colour. But the
Dutch of the Free State have no such scruple. They at once proclaim that
this privilege shall be confined to those in whose veins European blood
runs pure. I will here say nothing as to the comparative merits of
British latitude or of Dutch restraint, but I will ask my readers to
consider whether it be probable that a people who have not scrupled to
make for themselves such a law of exclusion will willingly join
themselves to a nationality which is absolutely and vehemently opposed
to any exclusion based on colour.
In the Free State the executive power is in the hands of the President
in which he is assisted by a Council of five, of whom two are official.
There is now a bench of three judges who go circuit, and there is a
magistrate or Landroost sitting in each of the thirteen districts and
deciding both civil and criminal cases to a certain extent. The religion
and education of the State will both require a few words from me, but
they will come better when I am speaking of Bloemfontein, the capital.
The Revenue of the country is something over £100,000 a year, and the
expenditure has for many years been kept within the Revenue. It has been
very fluctuating, having sunk below £60,000 in 1859 when the war with
the Basutos had crippled all the industries of the country and had
forced the burghers to spend their time in fighting instead of
cultivating their lands and looking after their sheep. There is nothing,
however, that the Boer hates so much as debt, and the Boer of the
Volksraad has been very careful to free his country from that incubus.
Land in the Orange Free State is very cheap, an evil condition of things
which has been produced by the large grants of land which were made to
the original claimants. The average value throughout the State may now
be fixed at about 5s. an acre. It is said that in the whole State there
are between six and seven thousand farms.
CHAPTER XII.
BLOEMFONTEIN.
Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange Republic, is a pleasant little
town in the very centre of the country which we speak of as South
Africa, about a hundred miles north of the Orange River, four hundred
north of Port Elizabeth whence it draws the chief part of its supplies,
and six hundred and eighty north east of Capetown. It is something above
a hundred miles from Kimberley which is its nearest neighbour of any
importance in point of size. It is about the same distance from Durban,
the seaport of Natal, as it is from Port Elizabeth;--and again about the
same distance from Pretoria the capital of the Transvaal. It may
therefore be said to be a remote town offering but little temptations to
its inhabitants to gad about to other markets. The smaller towns within
the borders of the Republic are but villages containing at most not more
than a few hundred inhabitants. I am told that Bloemfontein has three
thousand; but no census has as yet been taken, and I do not know whether
the number stated is intended to include or exclude the coloured
population,--who as a rule do not live in Bloemfontein but at a
neighbouring hamlet, devoted to the use of the natives, called Wray
Hook. I found Bloemfontein a pleasant place when I was there, but one
requiring much labour and trouble both in reaching and leaving. For a
hundred miles on one side and a hundred on the other I saw hardly a
blade of grass or a tree. It stands isolated in the plain,--without any
suburb except the native location which I have named,--with as clearly
defined a boundary on each side as might be a town built with a pack of
cards, or one of those fortified citadels with barred gates and
portcullises which we used to see in picture books. After travelling
through a country ugly, dusty and treeless for many weary hours the
traveller at last reaches Bloemfontein and finds himself at rest from
his joltings, with his bones not quite dislocated, in the quiet little
Dutch capital, wondering at the fate which has led him to a spot on the
world’s surface, so far away, apparently so purposeless, and so unlike
the cities which he has known.
I heard of no special industry at Bloemfontein. As far as I am aware
nothing special is there manufactured. It is needful that a country
should have a Capital, and therefore the Orange Free State has
Bloemfontein. I was told that some original Boer named Bloem first
settled there by the side of the stream in which water runs when there
has been rain, and that hence has come the name. But the little town has
thriven with a success peculiarly its own. Though it would seem to have
no raison d’etre just there where it stands,--though it has been
encouraged and fostered by no peculiar fertility, adorned with no scenic
beauty, enriched by no special gifts of water or of metals, even though
the population has not grown beyond that of the suburb of some European
town, still it carries its metropolitan honours with a good air, and
shocks no one by meanness, dirt, or poverty. It certainly is not very
grand, but it is grand enough. If there be no luxury, everything is
decent. The members of the Volksraad are not carried about in gorgeous
equipages, but when they have walked slowly to their Chamber they behave
themselves there with decorum. There is nothing pretentious in
Bloemfontein,--nothing to raise a laugh at the idea that a town with so
small a population should call itself a capital.
It is a town, white and red, built with plastered walls or of
brick,--with a large oblong square in the centre; with four main streets
running parallel to each other and with perhaps double that number of
cross streets. The houses are generally but one storey high, though this
is not so invariably the case as at Kimberley. I do not remember,
however, that I was ever required to go up-stairs,--except at the
schools. The supply of water is I am assured never-failing, though in
dry weather it has to be drawn from tanks. A long drought had prevailed
when I reached the place, and the bed of the riverlet had been dry for
many days; but the supply of water seemed to be sufficient. Fuel is very
scarce and consequently dear. This is of the less importance as but
little is wanted except for the purpose of cooking.
At one extreme end of the town are the public buildings in which the
Volksraad is held and the judges sit. Here also are the offices of the
President and the Secretary. Indeed all public business is here carried
on. The edifice has but the ground floor with a clock tower rising from
the centre. It is long and roomy and to my eye handsome in its white
neatness. I have heard it laughed at and described as being like a
railway station. It seems to be exactly that which such a Capital and
such a Republic would require. The Volksraad was not sitting when I was
there and I therefore could only see the beautiful arm-chairs which have
lately been imported at a considerable expense for the use of the
Members;--£13 10s. a chair I think I was told! It is impossible to
conceive that gentlemen who have been accommodated with such chairs
should wilfully abandon any of the dignity attached to them. For a
central parliament the chairs may be fitting, but would be altogether
out of place in a small provincial congress. Except the churches and the
schools there are not any public buildings of much note in
Bloemfontein,--unless the comfortable residence of the President may be
so called. This belongs to the State but is not attached to the House of
Parliament.
My residence when I was at Bloemfontein was at the Free State Hotel, and
I do not know that I was ever put up much better. Two circumstances
militated against my own particular comfort, but they were circumstances
which might probably recommend the house to the world at large. I was
forced to take my meals in public at stated hours;--and I had a great
deal too much put before me to eat. I am bound, however, to say that all
I had given to me was good, though at that time it must have been very
difficult to supply such luxuries. The butter had to be bought at 5s.
6d. a pound, but was as plentiful as though the price had been only a
shilling,--and it was good which I had not found to be the case
elsewhere in South Africa. What was paid for the peas and beans and
cauliflowers I don’t know; but I did know that the earth around was dry
and parched and barren everywhere,--so that I was almost ashamed to eat
them. These details may be of interest to some readers of my pages, as
the place of which I am speaking is becoming at present the sanitorium
to which many an English consumptive patient is sent. Such persons, at
any rate when first reaching Bloemfontein, are obliged to find a home in
an hotel, and will certainly find one well provided at the Free State.
It commended itself to me especially because I found no difficulty in
that very serious and often troublesome matter of a morning tub.
Bloemfontein is becoming another Madeira, another Algiers, another Egypt
in regard to English sufferers with weak chests and imperfect lungs. It
seems to the ignorant as though the doctors were ever seeking in
increased distance that relief for their patients which they cannot find
in increased skill. But a dry climate is now supposed to be necessary
and one that shall be temperate without great heat. This certainly will
be found at Bloemfontein, and perhaps more equably so through the entire
year than at any other known place. The objection to it is the expense
arising from the distance and the great fatigue to patients from the
long overland journey. Taking the easiest mode of reaching the capital
of the Free State the traveller must be kept going six weary days in a
Cobb’s coach, being an average of about thirteen hours a day upon the
road. This is gradually and very slowly becoming lightened by the
opening of bits of the railway from Fort Elizabeth; but it win be some
years probably before the coaching work can be done in less than five
days. The road is very rough through the Catberg and Stromberg
mountains,--so that he who has made the journey is apt to think that he
has done something considerable. All this is so much against an invalid
that I doubt whether they who are feeble should be sent here. There can
I imagine be no doubt that the air of the place when reached is in the
highest degree fit for weak lungs.
There is at present a difficulty felt by those who arrive suddenly at
Bloemfontein in finding the accommodation they desire. The hotel, as I
have said above, is very good; but an hotel must of its nature be
expensive and can hardly afford the quiet which is necessary for an
invalid. Nor during my sojourn there did I once see a lady sitting at
table. There is no reason why she should not do so, but the practice did
not seem as yet to have become common. I am led by this to imagine that
a house comfortably kept for the use of patients would well repay a
medical speculator at Bloemfontein. It should not be called a
sanitarium, and should if possible have the name of the doctor’s wife on
the brass plate on the door rather than that of the doctor. And the
kitchen should be made to do more than the dispensary,--which should be
kept a little out of sight. And there should be fiddles and novels and
plenty of ribbons. If possible three or four particularly healthy guests
should be obtained to diminish the aspect of sickness which might
otherwise make the place gloomy. If this could be done, and the coach
journey somewhat lightened, then I think that the dry air of
Bloemfontein might be made very useful to English sufferers.
In reference to the fatigue, tedium, and expense of the coach
journey,--a seat to Bloemfontein from the Fort Elizabeth railway costs
£18, and half a crown a pound extra is charged for all luggage beyond a
small bag,--it may be as well to say that in the treaty by which £90,000
have been given by Great Britain to the Free State to cover any damage
she may have received as to the Diamond Fields, it is agreed that an
extra sum of £15,000 shall be paid to the Free State if she shall have
commenced a railway with the view of meeting the Colonial railway within
a certain period. As no Dutchman will throw over a pecuniary advantage
if it can be honestly obtained, a great effort will no doubt be made to
secure this sum. It may be difficult to decide, when the time comes,
what constitutes the commencement of a railway. It appears impossible
that any portion of a line shall be opened in the Free State till the
entire line shall have been completed from the sea to the borders of the
State, as every thing necessary for the construction of a line,
including wooden sleepers, must be conveyed overland. As the bulk so to
be conveyed will necessarily be enormous it can only be carried up by
the rail as the rail itself progresses. And there must be difficulty
even in surveying the proposed line till it be known actually at what
point the colonial line will pass the Orange River or which of the
colonial lines will first reach it. Nevertheless I feel assured that the
Dutchman will get his £15,000. When an Englishman has once talked of
paying and a Dutchman has been encouraged to think of receiving! the
money will probably pass hands.
A railway completed to Bloemfontein would double the value of all
property there and would very soon double the population of the town.
Everything there used from a deal plank or a bar of iron down to a pair
of socks or a pound of sugar, has now to be dragged four hundred miles
by oxen at an average rate of £15 a ton. It is not only the sick and
weakly who are prevented from seeking the succour of its climate by the
hardness of the journey, but everything which the sick and weakly can
require is doubled in price. If I might venture to give a little advice
to the Volksraad I would counsel them to open the purse strings of the
nation, even though the purse should be filled with borrowed money, so
that there should be no delay on their part in joining themselves to the
rest of the world. They should make their claim to the £15,000 clear and
undoubted.
At present there is no telegraph to Bloemfontein, though the line of
wires belonging to the Cape Colony passes through a portion of the State
on its way to Kimberley,--so that there is a telegraph station at
Fauresmith, a town belonging to the Republic. An extension to the
capital is much wanted in order to bring it within the pale of modern
civilization.
The schools at Bloemfontein are excellent, and are peculiarly
interesting as showing the great steps by which the English language is
elbowing out the Dutch, This is so marked that though I see no necessity
for a political Confederation in South Africa I think I do see that
there will soon be a unity of language. I visited all the schools that
are supported or assisted by Government, as I did also those which have
been set on foot by English enterprise. In the former almost as fully as
in the latter English seemed to be the medium of communication between
scholar and teacher. In all the public schools the Head Teacher was
either English or Scotch. The inspector of schools for the Republic is a
Scotch gentleman, Mr. Brebner, who is giving himself heart and soul to
the subject he has in hand and is prospering admirably. Even in the
infant school I found that English was the language of the great
majority of the children. In the upper schools, both of the boys and
girls, I went through the whole establishment, visiting the bedrooms of
the pupils. As I did so I took the opportunity of looking at the private
books of the boys and girls. The books which I took off the shelves were
all without exception English. When I mentioned this to one of the
teachers who was with me in the compartment used by a lad who had well
provided himself with a little library, he made a search to show me that
I was wrong, and convicted me by finding--a Dutch dictionary. I pointed
out that the dictionary joined to the fact that the other books were
English would seem to indicate that the boy was learning Dutch rather
than reading it. I have no hesitation in saying that in these Dutch
schools,--for Dutch they are as being supported in a Dutch Republic by
grants of Dutch money voted by an exclusively Dutch Volksraad,--English
is the more important language of the two and the one the best
understood.
I say this rather in a desire to tell the truth than in a spirit of
boasting. I do not know why I should wish that the use of my own tongue
should supersede that of the native language in a foreign country. And
the fact as I state it will go far with some thinkers to prove the
arguments to have been ill-founded with which I have endeavoured to shew
that the Republic will retain her independence. Such persons will say
that this preference for the English language will surely induce a
preference for English Government. To such persons I would reply first
that the English language was spoken in the United States when they
revolted. And I would then explain that the schools of which I am
speaking are all in the capital, which is undoubtedly an English town
rather than Dutch. In the country, from whence come the Members of the
Volksraad, the schools are probably much more Dutch, though by no means
so Dutch as are the Members themselves. The same difference prevails in
all things in which the urban feeling or the rural feeling is exhibited.
Nothing can be more Dutch than the Volksraad. Many members, I was
assured, cannot speak a word of English. The debates are all in Dutch.
But the President was chosen from a British community, having been a
member of the Cape House of Assembly, and the Government Secretary was
imported from the same Colony,--and the Chief Justice. As I have said
above the Inspector of Schools is a Scotchman. The Boers of the Orange
Free State have been too wise to look among themselves for occupants for
these offices. But they believe themselves to be perfectly capable of
serving their country as legislators. Nothing can be better than these
public schools in Bloemfontein, giving another evidence of the great
difference which existed in the internal arrangements of the two
Republics. Large grants of public money have been made for the support
of the Free State schools. In 1875 £18,000 was voted for this purpose,
and in 1876 £10,000. Money is also set aside for a permanent educational
fund which is to be continued till the amount in hand is £176,800. This
it is thought will produce an income sufficient for the required
purpose.
There are two thoroughly good English schools for pupils of the better,
or at any rate, richer class, as to which it has to be said that they
are set on foot and carried on by ladies and gentlemen devoted to High
Church doctrines. I could not speak of these schools fairly without
saying so. Having so liberated my conscience I may declare that their
pupils are by no means drawn specially from that class and that as far
as I could learn nothing is inculcated to which any Protestant parent
would object. When I was at Bloemfontein the President had a daughter at
the girls’ school and the President is a Member of the Dutch Reformed
Church. The Government Secretary had four daughters at the same school.
There was at least one Roman Catholic educated there. It is in fact a
thoroughly good school and as such of infinite value in that far distant
place. The cost of board and education is £60 for each girl, which with
extra charges for music and other incidental expenses becomes £80 in
most cases. I thought this to be somewhat high; but it must be
remembered that the 400 miles and the bullock wagons affect even the
price of schools. The boys’ school did not seem to have been so
prosperous, the number educated being much less than at the other. The
expense is about the same and the advantages given quite as great. At
both establishments day scholars are taken as well as boarders. The
result is that Bloemfontein in respect to climate and education offers
peculiar advantages to its residents. It is not necessary to send a
child away either for English air or for English teaching.
In church matters Bloemfontein has a footing which is peculiarly its
own. The Dutch Reformed Church is the Church of the people. There are
18,--only 18,--congregations in the State, of which 16 receive
Government support. The worshippers of the Free State must, it is
feared, be called upon to travel long distances to their churches. As a
rule those living in remote places, have themselves taken by their
ox-wagons into the nearest town once in three months for the
Nichtmaal,--that is for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper; and on
these occasions the journey there and back, together with a little
holyday-making in the town, takes a week or ten days. In this there is
nothing singular, as it is the custom of the Dutch in South Africa,--but
the Anglican Church in Bloemfontein is peculiar. There is a Bishop of
Bloemfontein, an English Bishop, consecrated I think with the assistance
of an English Archbishop, appointed at any rate with the general
sanction and approval of the English Church. The arrangement has no
doubt been beneficial and is regarded without disfavour by the ruling
powers of the State in which it has been made;--but there is something
singular in the position which we as a people have assumed. We first
repudiate the country and then we take upon ourselves to appoint a high
church dignitary whom we send out from England with a large
accompaniment of minor ecclesiastics. In the United States they have
bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church as well as of the Roman
Catholic. But they are not Bishops of the Church of England. Here, in
Bloemfontein, the Church is English, and prays for the Queen before the
President,--for which latter it sometimes does pray and sometimes does
not. I attended the Cathedral service twice and such was my experience.
This is strange to an Englishman who visits the Republic prepared to
find it a nationality of itself,--what in common language we may call a
foreign country. There are English bishops also among savage nations,--a
bishop for instance of Central Africa who lives at present at Zanzibar.
But in the Free State we are among a civilized people who are able to
manage their own affairs. I am very far from finding fault. The Church
in Bloemfontein has worked very well and done much good. But in
acknowledging this I think we ought to acknowledge also that very much
is due to the forbearance of the Boers.
The Bishop of Bloemfontein with his numerous staff gives to the town a
special ecclesiastical hue. It is quite true that his presence and their
presence adds to the importance of the place, and that their influence
is exercised all for good. The clergymen as a set are peculiarly
clerical. Were I to call them High Church it might be supposed that I
were accusing them of a passion for ribbons. I did see a ribbon or two
but not vehemently pronounced. There is a Home too, to which the girls’
school is attached,--which has attracted various young ladies who have
come as assistants to the good work. The Bishop too has attracted
various young men in orders. There has I think been some gentle feeling
of disappointment in serious clerical minds at Bloemfontein created by
the natural conclusion brought about by this state of things. All the
clerical young men, who were perhaps intended to be celebate, had when I
was at Bloemfontein become engaged to all the clerical young
ladies,--from whom also something of the same negative virtue may have
been expected. There has, I think, been something of a shock! I was
happy enough to meet some of the gentlemen and some of the ladies, and
am not at all surprised at the happy result which has attended their
joint expatriation.
The stranger looking at Bloemfontein, and forgetting for a while that it
is the capital of a country or the seat of a Bishop, will behold a
pretty quiet smiling village with willow trees all through it, lying in
the plain,--with distinct boundaries, most pleasing to the eye. Though
it lies in a plain still there are hills close to it,--a little hill on
the east on which there is an old fort and a few worn-out guns which
were brought there when the English occupied the country, and a higher
one to the west which I used to mount when the sun was setting, because
from the top I could look down upon the place and see the whole of it.
The hill is rocky and somewhat steep and, with a mile of intervening
ground, takes half an hour in the ascent. The view from it on an evening
is peculiarly pleasing. The town is so quiet and seems to be so happy
and contented, removed so far away from strife and want and disorder,
that the beholder as he looks down upon it is tempted to think that the
peace of such an abode is better than the excitement of a Paris, a
London, or a New York. I will not say that the peace and quiet can be
discerned from the hill top, but he who sits there, knowing that the
peace and quiet are lying beneath him, will think that he sees them.
Nor will I say that Bloemfontein is itself peculiarly beautiful. It has
no rapid rivers running through it as has the capital of the Tyrol, no
picturesqueness of hills to make it lovely as has Edinburgh, no glory of
buildings such as belongs to Florence. It is not quaint as Nuremberg,
romantic as Prague, or even embowered in foliage as are some of the
Dutch villages in the western province of the Cape Colony. But it has a
completeness and neatness which makes it very pleasant to the eye. One
knows that no one is over-hungry there, or over-worked. The work indeed
is very light. Friday is a half holyday for everybody. The banks close
at one o’clock on Saturday. Three o’clock ends the day for all important
business. I doubt whether any shop is open after six. At eight all the
servants,--who of course are coloured people,--are at home at their own
huts in Wray Hook. No coloured person is allowed to walk about
Bloemfontein after eight. This, it may be said, is oppressive to them.
But if they are expelled from the streets, so also are they relieved
from their work. At Wray Hook they can walk about as much as they
please,--or go to bed.
There is much in all this which is old-fashioned,--contrary to our
ideas of civilization, contrary to our ideas of liberty. It would also
be contrary to our ideas of comfort to have no one to wait upon us after
eight o’clock. But there is a contentment and general prosperity about
Bloemfontein which is apt to make a dweller in busy cities think that
though it might not quite suit himself, it would be very good for
everybody else. And then there comes upon him a question of conscience
as he asks himself whether it ought not to be very good for him also.
NATIVE TERRITORIES.
CHAPTER XIII.
THABA ’NCHO.
The name written above is to be pronounced Tabaancho and belongs to one
of the most interesting places in South Africa. Thaba ’Ncho is a native
town in which live about 6,000 persons of the Baralong tribe under a
Chief of their own and in accordance with their own laws. There is
nothing like this elsewhere on the continent of South Africa, or, as I
believe, approaching it. Elsewhere it is not the custom of the South
African Natives to live in towns. They congregate in kraals, more or
less large,--which kraals are villages surrounded generally by a fence,
and containing from three or four huts up to perhaps a couple of
hundred. Each hut has been found to contain an average of something less
than four persons. But Thaba ’Ncho is a town, not fenced in, with
irregular streets, composed indeed of huts, but constructed with some
idea of municipal regularity. There has been no counting of these
people, but from what information I could get I think I am safe in
saying that as many as 6,000 of them live at Thaba ’Ncho. There are not
above half-a-dozen European towns in South Africa which have a greater
number of inhabitants, and in the vicinity of Thaba ’Ncho there are
other Baralong towns or villages,--within the distance of a few
miles,--containing from five hundred to a thousand inhabitants each.
They possess altogether a territory extending about 35 miles across each
way, and within this area fifteen thousand Natives are located, living
altogether after their own fashion and governed in accordance with their
own native laws.
Their position is the more remarkable because their territory is
absolutely surrounded by that of the Orange Free State,--as the
territory of the Orange Free State is surrounded by the territories of
Great Britain. The Republic which we know as the Free State is as it
were an island within the ocean of the British Colonies, and the land of
the Baralongs is again an island circled by the smaller sea of the
Republic. And this is still more remarkable from the fact that whereas
the Natives have been encouraged on all sides to make locations on
British territory they have been altogether banished as a land-holding
independent people from the Free State. Throughout the British Colonies
of South Africa the number of the Natives exceeds that of the Europeans
by about eight to one. In the Republic the Europeans exceed the Natives
by two to one. And the coloured people who remain there,--or who have
emigrated thither, which has been more generally the case,--are the
servants employed in the towns and by the farmers. And yet, in spite of
this, a separate nation of 15,000 persons lives quietly and, I must say,
upon the whole prosperously within the Free State borders, altogether
hemmed in, but in no way oppressed.
It would take long to explain how a branch of the great tribe of the
Bechuanas got itself settled on this land,--on this land, and probably
on much more;--how they quarrelled with their cousins the Basutos, who
had also branched off from the Bechuanas; and how in the wars between
the Free State and the Basutos, the Baralongs, having sided with the
Dutch, have been allowed to remain. It is a confused story and would be
interesting to no English reader. But it may be interesting to know that
there they are, established in their country by treaty, with no fear on
their part that they will be swallowed up, and with no immediate
intention on the part of the circumambient Dutchmen of swallowing them.
I went to visit the Chief, accompanied by Mr. Höhne the Government
Secretary from Bloemfontein, and was very courteously received. I stayed
during my sojourn at the house of Mr. Daniel the Wesleyan Minister where
I was very comfortably entertained, finding him in a pretty cottage
surrounded by flowers, and with just such a spare bedroom as we read of
in descriptions of old English farmhouses. There was but one spare
bedroom; but, luckily for us, there were two Wesleyan Ministers. And as
the other Wesleyan Minister also had a spare bedroom the Government
Secretary went there. In other respects we divided our visit, dining at
the one house and breakfasting at the other. There is also a clergyman
of the Church of England at Thaba ’Ncho; but he is a bachelor and we
preferred the domestic comforts of a family. Mr. Daniel does, I think,
entertain all the visitors who go to Thaba ’Ncho, as no hotel has as yet
been opened in the city of the Baralongs.
Maroco is the Chief at present supreme among the Baralongs, an old man,
very infirm by reason of weakness in his feet, who has not probably
many more years of royalty before him. What few Europeans are living in
the place have their houses low on the plain, while the huts of the
Natives have been constructed on a hill. The word Thaba means hill in
Maralong language,--in which language also the singular Maralong becomes
Baralong in the plural. The King Maroco is therefore “the Maralong” par
excellence;--whereas he is the King of the Baralongs. The Europeans
living there,--in addition to the Ministers,--are three or four
shopkeepers who supply those wants of the Natives with which an approach
to civilization has blessed them. We walked up the hill with Mr. Daniel
and had not been long among the huts when we were accosted by one Sapena
and his friends. Now there is a difficulty with these people as to the
next heir to the throne,--which difficulty will I fear be hard of
solving when old King Maroco dies. His son by his great wife married in
due order a quantity of wives among whom one was chosen as the “great
wife” as was proper. In a chapter further on a word or two will be found
as to this practice. But the son who was the undoubted heir died before
his great wife had had a child. She then went away, back to the
Bechuanas from whom she had come, and among whom she was a very royal
Princess, and there married Prince Sapena. This marriage was blessed
with a son. But by Bechuana law, by Baralong law also,--and I believe by
Jewish law if that were anything to the purpose,--the son of the wife of
the heir becomes the heir even though he be born from another father.
These people are very particular in all matters of inheritance, and
therefore, when it began to be thought that Maroco was growing old and
near his time, they sent an embassy to the Bechuanas for the boy. He had
arrived just before my visit and was then absent on a little return
journey with the suite of Bechuanas who had brought him. By way of final
compliment he had gone back with them a few miles so that I did not see
him. But his father Sapena had been living for some time with the
Baralongs, having had some difficulties among the Bechuanas with the
Royal Princess his wife, and, being a man of power and prudence, had
become half regent under the infirm old Chief. There are fears that when
Maroco dies there may be a contest as to the throne between Sapena and
his own son. Should the contest amount to a war the Free State will
probably find it expedient to settle the question by annexing the
country.
Sapena is a well built man, six feet high, broad in the shoulders, and
with the gait of a European. He was dressed like a European, with a
watch and chain at his waistcoat, a round flat topped hat, and cord
trowsers, and was quite clean. Looking at him as he walks no one would
believe him to be other than a white man. He looks to be about thirty,
though he must be much older. He was accompanied by three or four young
men who were all of the blood royal, and who were by no means like to
him either in dress or manner. He was very quiet, answering our
questions in few words, but was extremely courteous. He took us first
into a large hut belonging to one of the family, which was so
scrupulously clean as to make me think for a moment that it was kept as
a show hat; but those which we afterwards visited, though not perhaps
equal to the first in neatness, were too nearly so to have made much
precaution necessary. The hut was round as are all the huts, but had a
door which required no stooping. A great portion of the centre,--though
not quite the centre,--was occupied by a large immoveable round bin in
which the corn for the use of the family is stored. There was a chair,
and a bed, and two or three settees. If I remember right, too, there was
a gun standing against the wall. The place certainly looked as though
nobody was living in it. Sapena afterwards took us to his own hut which
was also very spacious, and here we were seated on chairs and had Kafir
beer brought to us in large slop-bowls. The Kafir beer is made of Kafir
corn, and is light and sour. The Natives when they sit down to drink
swallow enormous quantities of it. A very little sufficed with me, as
its sourness seemed to be its most remarkable quality. There were many
Natives with us but none of them drank when we did. We sat for ten
minutes in Sapena’s house, and then were taken on to that of the King. I
should say however that in the middle of Sapena’s hut there stood a
large iron double bedstead with mattras which I was sure had come from
Mr. Heal’s establishment in Tottenham Court Road.
Round all these huts,--those that is belonging to the royal family and
those no doubt of other magnates,--there is a spacious courtyard
enclosed by a circular fence of bamboo canes, stuck into the ground
perpendicularly, standing close to each other and bound together. The
way into the courtyard is open, but the circle is brought round so as
to overlap the entrance and prevent the passer-by from looking in. It is
not, I imagine, open to every one to run into his neighbour’s
courtyard,--especially into those belonging to royalty. As we were going
to the King’s Palace the King himself met us on the road surrounded by
two or three of his councillors. One old councillor stuck close to him
always, and was, I was told, never absent from his side. They had been
children together and Maroco cannot endure to be without him. We had our
interview out in the street, with a small crowd of Baralongs around us.
The Chief was not attired at all like his son’s wife’s husband. He had
an old skin or kaross around him, in which he continually shrugged
himself as we see a beggar doing in the cold, with a pair of very old
trowsers and a most iniquitous slouch hat upon his head. There was
nothing to mark the King about his outward man;--and, as he was dressed,
so was his councillor. But it is among the “young bloods” of a people
that finery is always first to be found.
Maroco shook hands with each of us twice before he began to talk, as did
all his cortege. Then he told us of his bodily ailments,--how his feet
were so bad that he could hardly walk, and how he never got any comfort
anywhere because of his infirmity. And yet he was standing all the time.
He sent word to President Brand that he would have been in to see him
long ago,--only that his feet were so bad! This was probably true as
Maroco, when he goes into Bloemfontein, always expects to have his food
and drink found for him while there, and to have a handsome present to
carry back with him. He grunted and groaned, poor old King, and then
told Sapena to take us to his hut, shaking hands with us all twice
again. We went to his hut, and there sitting in the spacious court we
found his great wife. She was a woman about forty years of age, but
still remarkably handsome, with brilliant quick eyes, of an olive rather
than black colour. She wore a fur hat or cap,--somewhat like a pork-pie
hat,--which became her wonderfully; and though she was squatting on the
ground with her knees high and her back against the fence,--not of all
attitudes the most dignified,--still there was much of dignity about
her. She shook hands with us, still seated, and then bade one of the
girls take us into the hut. There was nothing in this especial, except
that a portion of it was screened off by furs, behind which we did not
of course penetrate. All these huts are very roomy and perfectly light.
They are lofty, so that a man cannot touch the roof in the centre, and
clean. Into the ordinary Kafir hut the visitor has to creep,--and when
there he creeps out at once because of the heat, the smell, and the
smoke. These were of course royal huts, but the huts of all the
Baralongs are better than those of the Kafirs.
The King or Chief administers justice sitting outside in his Court with
his Councillors round him; and whatever he pronounces, with their
assistance,--that is law. His word without theirs would be law too,--but
would be law probably at the expense of his throne or life if often so
pronounced. There are Statutes which are well understood, and a Chief
who persistently ignored the Statutes would not long be Chief. For all
offences except one the punishment is a fine,--so many cattle. This if
not paid by the criminal must be paid by the criminal’s family. It may
be understood therefore how disagreeable it must be to be nearly
connected by blood with a gay Lothario or a remorseless Iago. The result
is that Lotharios and Iagos are apt to come to sudden death within the
bosoms of their own families. Poisoning among the Baralongs is common,
but no other kind of violence. The one crime beyond a fine,--which has
to be expiated by death from the hand of an executioner,--is rebellion
against the Chief. For any mutiny Death is the doom. At the time of my
visit Sapena was exercising the chief authority because of Maroco’s
infirmity. Everything was done in Maroco’s name, though Sapena did it.
As to both,--the old man and the young,--I was assured that they were
daily drunk. Maroco is certainly killing himself by drink. Sapena did
not look like a drunkard.
President Brand assured me that in nothing that they do are these people
interfered with by the Free State or its laws. If there be thieving over
the border of the Free State the Landroost endeavours to settle it with
the Chief who is by no means averse to summary extradition. But there is
not much of such theft, the Baralongs knowing that their independence
depends on their good behaviour. “But a bloody Chief,”--I asked the
President,--“such as Cetywayo is represented to be among the Zulus! If
he were to murder his people right and left would that be allowed by
your Government?” He replied that as the Baralongs were not given to
violent murder, there would never probably be a case requiring decision
on this point. In my own mind I have no doubt but that if they did
misbehave themselves badly they would be at once annexed.
Maroco and all his family, and indeed the great body of the people, are
heathen. There is a sprinkling of Christianity, sufficient probably to
justify the two churches, but I doubt whether Thaba ’Ncho is peculiarly
affected by missionary zeal. There are schools there, and, as it
happened, I did hear some open air singing,--in the open air because the
chapel was under repair. But I was not specially invited “to hear our
children sing a hymn,” as was generally the case where the missionary
spirit was strong. At Thaba ’Ncho the medical skill of the pastor seemed
to be valued quite as much as his theological power. There was no other
doctor, and as Mr. Daniel attended them without fee it is not surprising
that much of his time was occupied in this manner.
I have mentioned the extent of the land belonging to the people. On the
produce of this land they live apparently without want. They cultivate
much of it, growing mealies, or maize, and Kafir corn. They also have
flocks of cattle and sheep,--and earn some money by the sale of wool.
But it seems to me that so large a number of people, living on such an
extent of land, which of course is not closely cultivated, may be
subject at any time to famine. If so they could apply only to the Free
State for assistance, and such assistance, if given to any extent, would
probably lead to annexation. The distribution of the land is altogether
in the hands of the Chief who apportions it as he pleases, but never, it
seems, withdraws that which has been given, without great cause. It is
given out to sub-tribes and again redistributed among the people.
That it cannot as yet have been found to be scanty I gather from the
fact that on the road between Thaba ’Ncho and Bloemfontein I found an
intelligent Scotch Africander settled on a farm within the territory of
the Baralongs. Here he had built for himself a comfortable house, had
made an extensive garden,--with much labour in regard to
irrigation,--and had flocks and herds and corn. I questioned him as to
his holding of the land and he told me that it had been given to him
without rent or payment of any kind by Maroco, because he was a friend
of the tribe. But he perfectly understood that he held it only during
Maroco’s pleasure, which could not be valid for a day after Maroco’s
death. Nevertheless he was going on with his irrigation and spoke of
still extended operations. When I hinted that Maroco was mortal, he
admitted the precarious nature of his tenure, but seemed to think that
the Baralongs would never disturb him. No doubt he well understood his
position and was aware that possession is nine points of the law among
the Baralongs as it is among the English or Scotch. Even should the
territory be annexed, as must ultimately be its fate, his possession
will probably be strengthened by a freehold grant.
CHAPTER XIV.
KRELI AND HIS KAFIRS.
At the time in which I am writing this chapter Kreli and his sons
suppose themselves to be at war with the Queen of England. The Governor
of the Gape Colony, who has been so far troubled in his serenity as to
have felt it expedient to live away from his house for the last three or
four months near to the scene of action, supposes probably that he has
been called upon to put down a most unpleasant Kafir disturbance. He
will hardly dignify the affair with the name of a war. When in Ireland
the Fenians were put down by the police without direct military
interference we felt that there had been a disagreeable row,--but
certainly not a civil war, because the soldiers had not been employed.
And yet we should hardly have been comfortable while the row was going
on had we not known that there were soldiers at hand in Ireland. For
some months it was much the same with Kreli and his rebellious Kafirs.
In South Africa there was comfort in feeling that there were one or two
regiments near the Kei River,--at head quarters, with a General and
Commissaries and Colonels at King Williamstown, where the Governor is
also stationed, and that there were soldiers also at East London, on the
coast, ready for an emergency should the emergency come. But the
fighting up to that time had been done by policemen and
volunteers,--and it was hoped that it might be so to the end. Towards
the close of November 1877 the end was thought to have almost come;
though there were even then those who believed that when we had subdued
the Galekas who are Kreli’s peculiar people, the Gaikas would rise
against us. They are Sandilli’s people and live on this, or the western,
side of the Kei territory, round about King Williamstown in what we call
British Kafraria. Many hundreds of them are working for wages within the
boundaries of what was formerly their own territory. I cannot but think
that had the Gaikas intended to take part with their Transkeian brethren
they would not have waited till Kreli and his Galekas had been so nearly
beaten. But now we know that an ending to this trouble so happy as that
which was at first anticipated has not been quite accomplished. British
troops have entered the territory on the other side of the Kei, and are
at present probably engaged in putting down some remnant of the Galekas.
There is nothing more puzzling in South Africa than the genealogy and
nomenclature of the Kafir tribes, and nothing, perhaps, less interesting
to English readers. In the first place the authorities differ much as to
what is a Kafir. In a book now before me on Kafir Laws and Customs,
written by various hands and published in 1858 by Colonel Maclean who
was Governor of British Kafraria, we are told that “The general
designation of Kafraria has been given to the whole territory extending
from the Great Fish River to Delagoa Bay.” This would include Natal and
all Zululand. But if there be one native doctrine more stoutly
enunciated in and about Natal than another, it is that the Zulus and
Kafirs are a different people. The same passage, however, goes on to say
that, properly speaking, that territory only should be included which is
occupied by the Amaxosa and Abatembu tribes, the Amampondo and the
Amazulu being--different. An English reader must be requested to reject
as surplusage for his purpose the two first syllables in all these
native names when they take the shape of Ama or Aba or Amam. They are
decorous, classical, and correct as from Kafir scholars, but are simply
troublesome among simple people who only want to know a little. The Amam
Pondos, so called from one Pondo a former chief, are familiarly called
Pondos. The Aba Tembus,--from Tembu a chief thirteen or fourteen chiefs
back from the present head of the tribe,--are Tembus. They have been
also nick-named Tambookies, an appellation which they themselves do not
acknowledge, but which has become common in all Kafir dissertations. The
Amaxosas, who among the Kafirs are certainly the great people of all, in
the same way are Xosas, from Xosa a chief eleven chiefs back from Kreli.
But these Xosas, having been divided, have taken other names,--among
which the two principal are the Galekas of which Kreli is king, from
Galeka Kreli’s great-grandfather; and the Gaikas, of which Sandilli is
chief,--from Gaika, Sandilli’s father. But the student may encounter
further difficulty here as he will find this latter name learnedly
written as Ngqika, and not uncommonly spelt as Ghika. The spelling I
have adopted is perhaps a little more classical than the latter and
certainly less pernicious than the former.
But though, as above stated, one of the authors of the book from which I
have quoted has eliminated the Pondos as well as the Zulus from the
Kafirs, thus leaving the descendants of Xosa and of Tembu to claim the
name between them, I find in the same book a genealogical table,
compiled by another author who includes the Pondos among the Kafirs, and
derives the Galekas, Ghikas, Pondos, and Tembus from one common ancestor
whom he calls Zwidi, who was fifteen chiefs back from Kreli, and whom we
may be justified in regarding as the very Adam of the Kafir race since
we have no information of any Kafir before him.
The Galekas, the Pondos, and Tembus will be found in the map in their
proper places on the eastern side of the Kei River; and, as being on the
eastern side of the Kei River, they were not British subjects when this
chapter was written. When the reader shall have this book in his hand
they may probably have been annexed. The Gaikas, I am afraid he will not
find on the map. As they have been British subjects for the last
twenty-five years the spaces in the map of the country in which they
live have been wanted for such European names as Frankfort and King
Williamstown. Those however whom I have named are the real
Kafirs,--living near the Kei whether on one side of the river or the
other. The sharp-eyed investigating reader will also find a people
called Bomvana, on the sea coast, north of the Galekas. They are a
sub-tribe, under Kreli, who have a sub-chief, one Moni, and Moni and the
Bomvanas seem to have been troubled in their mind, not wishing to wage
war against the Queen of England, and yet fearing to disobey the
behests of their Great Chief Kreli.
It will thus be seen that the Kafirs do not occupy very much land in
South Africa, though their name has become better known than that of any
South African tribe,--and though every black Native is in familiar
language called a Kafir. The reason has been that the two tribes, the
Gaikas and the Galekas, have given us infinitely more trouble than any
other. Sandilli with his Gaikas have long been subjected, though they
have never been regarded as quiet subjects, such as are the Basutos and
the Fingos. There has ever been a dread, as there was notably in 1876,
that they would rise and rebel. The alarmists since this present affair
of Kreli commenced have never ceased to declare that the Gaikas would
surely be up in arms against us. But, as a tribe, they have not done so
yet,--partly perhaps because their Chief Sandilli is usually drunk. The
Galekas, however, have never been made subject to us.
But the Galekas and Kreli were conquered in the last Kafir war, and the
tribe had been more than decimated by the madness of the people who in
1857 had destroyed their own cattle and their own corn in obedience to a
wonderful prophecy. I have told the story before in one of the early
chapters of my first volume. Kreli had then been driven with his people
across the river Bashee to the North,--where those Bomvanas now are; and
his own territory had remained for a period vacant. Then arose a
question as to what should be done with the land, and Sir Philip
Wodehouse, who was then Governor of the Cape Colony, proposed that it
should be given out in farms to Europeans. But at that moment economy
and protection for the Natives were the two virtues shining most
brightly at the Colonial Office, and, as such occupation was thought to
require the presence of troops for its security, the Secretary of the
day ordered that Kreli should be allowed to return. Kreli was badly off
for land and for means of living across the Bashee, and was very urgent
in requesting permission to come back. If he might come back and reign
in a portion of his old land he would be a good neighbour. He was
allowed to come back;--and as a Savage has not kept his word badly till
this unfortunate affair occurred.
Among the printed papers which I have at hand as to this rebellion one
of the last is the following government notice;--
“KING WILLIAMSTOWN, CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.
“_13th November, 1877._
“Applications will be received by the Honourable the Commissioner
of Crown Lands and Public Works for grants of Land in the
Westernmost portion of Galekaland, formerly known as Kreli’s
country, between the Cogha and Kei Rivers, from those willing to
settle in that country. The condition of the grants,--which will be
limited in size to 300 acres,--include immediate settlement and
bonâ fide occupation, and may be ascertained----&c. &c.”
Thus, in 1877, we are again attempting to do that which was recommended
twenty years before. On this occasion I presume that no sanction from
the Colonial Office at home was needed, as at the date of the notice
such sanction could hardly have been received. This is a matter which I
do not profess to understand, but the present Governor of the Cape
Colony,--who in this war acts as High Commissioner and in that capacity
is not responsible to his Ministers,--is certainly not the man to take
such a step without proper authority. I hope we are not counting our
chickens before they are hatched. I feel little doubt myself but that
the hatching will at last be complete.
Though the disturbance has hardly been a war,--if a war, it would have
to be reckoned as the sixth Kafir war,--it may be well to say a few
words as to its commencement. To do so it will be necessary to bring
another tribe under the reader’s notice. These are the Fingos, who among
South African natives are the special friends of the Britisher,--having
precedence in this respect even of the Basutos. They appear to have been
originally,--as originally, at least, as we can trace them
back,--inhabitants of some portion of the country now called Natal, and
to have been driven by Chaka, the great King of the Zulus, down among
the Galekas. Here they were absolutely enslaved, and in the time of
Hintsa, the father of Kreli, were called the Kafirs’ dogs. Their
original name I do not know, but Fingo means a dog. After one of the
Kafir wars, in 1834, they were taken out from among the Galekas by
British authority, relieved from the condition of slavery, and settled
on locations which were given to them. They were first placed near the
coast between the Great Fish River and the Keiskamma; but many were
subsequently moved up to a district which they still occupy, across the
Kei, and close to their old masters the Galekas,--but on land which was
under British government and which became part of British Kafraria. Here
they have been as good as their old masters,--and as being special
occupants of British favour perhaps something better. They have been a
money-making people, possessing oxen and waggons, and going much ahead
of other Kafirs in the way of trade. And as they grew in prosperity, so
probably they grew in pride. They were still Fingos;--but not a Fingo
was any longer a Galeka’s dog,--which was a state of things not
agreeable to the Galekas. This too must have been the more intolerable
as the area given up to the Fingos in this locality comprised about
2,000 square miles, while that left to the Galekas was no more than
1,600: The Galekas living on this curtailed territory were about 66,600
souls, whereas only 50,000 Fingos drew their easier bread from the
larger region. In August last the row began by a quarrel between the
Galekas and the Fingos. There was a beer-drinking together on the
occasion of a Fingo wedding to which certain Galekas had been invited.
The guests misbehaved themselves, and the Fingos drove them away. Upon
that a body of armed Galekas returned, and a tribal war was started. But
the Fingos as being British subjects were not empowered to conduct a war
on their own account. It was necessary that we should fight for them or
that there should be no fighting. The Galekas were armed,--as they might
choose to arm themselves, or might be able; while the Fingos could only
possess such arms as we permitted them to use. It thus became necessary
that we should defend them.
When it came to this pass Kreli, the old Chief, is supposed to have been
urgent against any further fighting. Throughout his long life whatever
of misfortune he had suffered, had come from fighting with the English,
whatever of peace he had enjoyed had come from the good will of the
English. Nor do I think that the Galekas as a body were anxious for a
war with the English though they may have been ready enough to bully the
Fingos. They too had much to lose and nothing to gain. Ambition probably
sat lightly with them, and even hatred for the Fingos by that time must
nearly have worn itself out among the people. But the Chief had sons,
and there were other Princes of the blood royal. With such as they
ambition and revenge linger longer than with the mass. Quicquid delirunt
reges plectuntur Achivi. The Kafirs had to fight because royal blood
boiled high. The old King in his declining years was too weak to
restrain his own sons,--as have been other old Kings. Arms having been
taken up against the Fingos were maintained against the protectors of
the Fingos. It might be that after all the long prophesied day had now
come for driving the white men out of South Africa. Instead of that the
day has probably at last come for subjugating the hitherto unsubjugated
Kafirs.
I have before me all the details of the “war” as it has been carried on,
showing how in the first battle our one gun came to grief after having
been fired seven times, and how the Fingos ran away because the gun had
come to grief;--how in consequence of this five of our mounted
policemen and one officer were killed by the Galekas; how in the next
engagement the Fingos behaved much better,--so much better as to have
been thanked for their gallantry; and how from that time to this we have
driven poor old Kreli about, taking from him his cattle and his
country,--determined if possible to catch him but not having caught him
as yet. Colonial history will no doubt some day tell all this at length;
but in a work so light as mine my readers perhaps would not thank me for
more detailed circumstances.
On the 5th of October, when the affair was becoming serious, the
Governor of the Gape, who is also High Commissioner for the management
of the natives, issued a proclamation in which he sets forth Kreli’s
weakness or fault. “Kreli,” he says, “either had not the will or the
power to make his people keep the peace,” and again--“The Chief Kreli
having distinctly expressed his inability to punish his people, or to
prevent such outrages for the future, Commandant Griffith has been
directed to advance into Kreli’s country, to put down by force, if
necessary, all attempts to resist the authority of the British
Government or to molest its subjects, and to exact full reparation for
the injuries inflicted on British subjects by Kreli’s people.”
Read by the assistance of South African commentaries this means that
Kreli’s country is to be annexed, and for such reading the later
proclamation as to 300-acre farms adds an assured light. That it will be
much better so, no one doubts. Let the reader look at the map and he
cannot doubt. Can it be well that a corner, one little corner should be
kept for independent Kafirs,--not that Kafirs unable to live with the
British might run into it as do the American Indians into the Indian
Territory or the Maories of New Zealand into the King-County there;--but
that a single tribe may entertain dreams of independence and dreams of
hostility? Whether we have done well or ill by occupying South Africa, I
will not now stop to ask. But if ill, we can hardly salve our
consciences by that little corner. And yet that little corner has always
been the supposed focus of rebellion from which the scared colonist has
feared that war would come upon him. Of what real service can it be to
leave to the unchecked dominion of Kafir habits a tract of 1,600 square
miles when we have absorbed from the Natives a territory larger than all
British India. We have taken to ourselves in South Africa within this
century an extent of land which in area is the largest of all Her
Majesty’s dominions, and have been wont to tell ourselves that as
regards the Natives it is all right because we have left them their own
lands in Kafraria Proper. Let the Briton who consoles himself with this
thought,--and who would still so console himself,--look at the strip on
the map along the coast, an inch long perhaps and an inch deep; and then
let him measure across the continent from the mouth of the Orange River
to the mouth of the Tugela. It makes a Briton feel like the American who
would not swear to the two hundredth duck.
We have not caught Kreli yet. When we have, if we should catch him, I do
not in the least know what we shall do with him. There is a report which
I do not believe that the Governor has threatened him with Robben
Island. Robben Island is a forlorn isle lying off Capetown which has
been utilized for malefactors and lunatics. Langalibalele has a
comfortable farm house on the Gape Flats where he has a bottle of wine
and a bottle of beer allowed him a day,--and where he lives like a
second Napoleon at a second St. Helena. I trust that nothing of the kind
will be done with Kreli. There is an absurdity about it which is
irritating. It is as though we were playing at Indian princes among the
African black races. The man himself has not risen in life beyond the
taste for squatting in his hut with a dozen black wives around him and a
red blanket over his shoulders. Then we put him into a house where he
squats on a chair instead, and give him wine and beer and good clothes.
When we take the children of such a one and do something in the way of
educating them, then the expenditure of money is justified. Many
Kafirs,--many thousand Kafirs have risen above squatting in huts and red
blankets; but they are the men who have learned to work, as at the
Kimberley mine, and not the Chiefs. The only excuse for such treatment
as that which Langalibalele receives, which Kreli if caught would
probably receive, is that no one knows what else to propose. I am almost
inclined to think it better that Kreli should not be caught. Prisoners
of that nature are troublesome. What a blessing it was to France when
Marshal Bazaine escaped.
I was told before leaving the Cape that the trouble would probably not
cost above £50,000. So cheap a disturbance certainly should not be
called a war. The cattle taken would probably be worth the money;--and
then the 300-acre farms, if they are ever allotted, will it is presumed
be of some value. But now I fear that £50,000 will not pay half the
bill. There is no luxury on earth more expensive than the British
soldier.
It is well that we should annex Kreli’s country;--but there is something
for the lovers of the picturesque to regret in that the Kafir should no
longer have a spot on which he can live quite in accordance with his own
habits, in which there shall be no one to bid him cover his nakedness.
Though by degrees the really independent part of Kafraria Proper has
dwindled down to so small dimensions, there has always been the feeling
that the unharassed unharnessed Kafir had still his own native wilds in
which to disport himself as he pleased, in which the Chief might rule
over his subjects, and in which the subjects might venerate their Chiefs
without the necessity of obeying any white man. On behalf of such lovers
of the picturesque it should be explained that in making the Kafirs
subject to Great Britain, Great Britain interferes but very little with
their habits of life. There is hardly any interference unless as an
introduction of wages among them may affect them. The Gaika who has been
subjugated has been allowed to marry as many wives as he could get as
freely as the hitherto unsubjugated Galeka. Unless he come into the
European towns breeches have not been imposed upon him, and indeed not
then with any rigorous hand. The subject Kafirs are indeed made to pay
hut tax,--10s. a hut in the Cape Colony and 14s. in Natal; but this is
collected with such ease as to justify me in saying that they are a
people not impatient of taxation. The popular idea seems to be that the
10s. demanded has to be got as soon as possible from some European
source,--by a week’s work, by the sale of a few fowls, or perhaps in
some less authorized manner. A sheep or two taken out of the nearest
white man’s flock will thoroughly indemnify the native for his tax.
But their habits of life remain the same, unless they be openly
renounced and changed by the adoption of Christianity; or until work
performed in the service of the white man gradually induces the workman
to imitate his employer. I think that the latter cause is by far the
more operative of the two. But even that must be slow, as a population
to be counted by millions can not be taught to work all at once.
A short catalogue of some of the most noticeable of the Kafir habits may
be interesting. I have taken my account of them from the papers
published under Colonel Maclean’s name. As polygamy is known to be the
habit of Kafirs, usages as to Kafir marriages come first in interest. A
Kafir always buys his wife, giving a certain number of cattle for her as
may be agreed upon between him and the lady’s father. These cattle go to
the father, or guardian, who has the privilege of selling the young
lady. A man therefore to have many wives must have many cattle,--or in
other words much wealth, the riches of a Kafir being always vested in
herds of oxen. Should a man have to repudiate his wife, and should he
show that he does so on good ground, he can recover the cattle he has
paid for her. Should a man die without children by a wife, the cattle
given for her may be recovered by his heirs. But should a woman leave
her husband before she had had a child, he may keep the cattle. Should
only one child have been born when the husband dies, and the woman be
still young and marriageable, a part of the cattle can be recovered. I
have known it to be stated,--in the House of Commons and
elsewhere,--that wives are bought and sold among the Kafirs. Such an
assertion gives a wrong idea of the custom. Wives are bought, but are
never sold. The girl is sold, that she may become a wife; but the
husband cannot sell her. The custom as it exists is sufficiently
repulsive. As the women are made to work,--made to do all the hard work
where European habits have not been partially introduced,--a wife of
course is valuable as a servant. To call them slaves is to give a false
representation of their position. A wife in England has to obey her
husband, but she is not his slave. The Kafir wife though she may hoe the
land while the husband only fights or searches for game, does not hold a
mean position in her husband’s hut. But the old are more wealthy than
the young, and therefore the old and rich buy up the wives, leaving no
wives for the young men,--with results which may easily be understood.
The practice is abominable,--but we shall not alter it by conceiving or
spreading false accounts of it. In regard to work it should be
understood that the men even in their own locations are learning to
become labourers and to spare the women. The earth used to be turned
only by the hoe, and the hoe was used by the women. Ploughs are now
quite common among the Kafirs, and the ploughing is done by men.
There is no system of divorce; but a man may repudiate his wife with or
without reason, getting back the cattle or a part of them. A wife often
leaves her husband, through ill-usage or from jealousy,--in which case
the cattle remain with the husband and, if not as yet paid in full, can
be recovered. According to law not only the cattle agreed upon but the
progeny of the cattle can be recovered;--but it seldom happens that more
than the original number are obtained. When there is a separation the
children belong to the father.
When a man has many wives he elects one as his “great wife,”--who may
not improbably be the youngest and last married. The selection is
generally made in accordance with the rank of the woman. Her eldest son
is the heir. Then he makes a second choice of a “right hand
wife,”--whose eldest son is again the heir of some portion of the
property which during the father’s life has been set apart for the right
hand house. If he be rich he may provide for other children, but the
customs of his tribe do not expect him to do so. If he die without
having made such selections, his brothers or other relatives do it for
him.
A husband may beat his wife,--but not to death. If he do that he is
punished for murder,--by a fine. If he knock out her eye, or even her
tooth, he is fined by the Chief. The same law prevails between parents
and children as long as the child remains domiciled in the parents’
family. A father is responsible for all that his child does, and must
pay the fines inflicted for the child’s misdeeds;--unless he has
procured the outlawing of his child, which he can do if the child has
implicated him in many crimes and caused him to pay many fines. Near
relations of criminals must pay, when the criminals are unable to do so.
Kafir lands are not sold or permanently alienated. Any man may occupy
unoccupied land and no one but the Chief can disturb him. Should he quit
the land he has occupied, and another come upon it, he can recover the
use of the land he has once cultivated.
Murder is punished by a fine,--which seems to be of the same amount
whatever be the circumstances of the murder. The law makes no difference
between premeditated and unpremeditated murder,--the injury done being
considered rather than the criminality of the doer. A husband would be
fined for murder if he killed an adulteress, let the proof have been
ever so plain. Even for accidental homicide a Chief will occasionally
fine the perpetrator,--though in such case the law does not hold him to
be guilty. For adultery there is a fine of cattle, great or small in
accordance with the rank of the injured husband. Rape is fined, the
cattle going to the husband, if the woman be married. If a girl be
seduced, the seducer is fined,--perhaps three head of cattle. The young
man probably has not got three head of cattle. Then his older friends
pay for him. Among Kafir customs there are some which might find
approbation with a portion of our European communities. It cannot, at
any rate, be said that the Kafirs have a bloody code.
All theft is punished by a fine of cattle, the fine being moderated if
the property stolen be recovered. But the fine is great or small
according to the rank of the injured person. If a Chief have been robbed
general confiscation of every thing is the usual result of detection.
The fine is paid to the injured person. A Chief cannot be prosecuted for
theft by one of his own tribe. The children of Chiefs are permitted to
steal from people of their own tribe, and no action can be brought
against them. Should one be taken in the fact of so stealing and be
whipped, or beaten, all the property of the whipper or beater may be
confiscated by the Chief. There was a tribe some years ago in which
there were so many royal offshoots, that not a garden, not a goat was
safe. A general appeal was made to the paramount Chief and he decided
that the privilege should in future be confined to his own immediate
family.
For wilful injury a man has to pay the full amount of damage; but for
accidental injury he pays nothing. This seems to be unlike the general
Kafir theory of law. There is no fine for trespass; the idea being that
as all lands are necessarily and equally open, the absence of any
recovery on account of damage is equal to all. When fencing has become
common this idea will probably vanish. If cattle that are trespassing be
driven off and injured in the driving, fines can be recovered to the
amount of the damage done.
When illness comes a doctor is to be employed. Should death ensue
without a doctor a fine is imposed,--which goes to the Chief.
There are many religious rites and ceremonies and many laws as to
cleanness and uncleanness; but it would hardly interest the reader were
I to describe them at length. At the age of puberty, or what is so
considered among the Kafirs, both boys and girls go through certain
rites by which they are supposed to be introduced to manhood and
woman-hood. There is much in these ceremonies which is disgusting and
immoral, and it has been the anxious endeavours of missionaries to cause
their cessation. But such cessation can only come by the gradual
adoption of European manners. Where the Kafirs have lived in close
connexion with the Europeans many of these customs have already been
either mitigated or abandoned.
When a child dies but little notice is taken of the circumstance. Among
adults, the dying man or woman, when known to be dying, is taken away to
die in a ditch. So at least the Rev. Mr. Dugmore says in one of the
papers from which I am quoting. When death has occurred the family
become unclean and unable to mix in society for a certain period. It
used to be the custom to cast the dead body forth to be devoured by
beasts, the privilege of burial being only accorded to the Chiefs. But
now all are buried under the ground, a hole being dug not far from the
hut. The funeral of a Chief is attended with many ceremonies, his arms
and ornaments being buried with him. Friends are appointed to watch by
the grave,--for longer or lesser periods according to the rank of the
deceased. If he have been a great Chief, the period is sometimes a year,
during which the watchers may do nothing but watch. These watchers,
however, become sacred when the watch is done. Cattle are folded upon
the grave which may never after be slaughtered;--nor can anything be
done with their increase till the last of the original cattle have died.
The grave of the Chief becomes a sanctuary at which an offender may
take refuge. The death of the Chief is made known to all other Chiefs
around,--who shave their heads and abstain for a time from the use of
milk. From all which it may be seen that a Kafir Chief is considered to
be a very big person.
Justice is administered by the Chief assisted by Councillors. The Chief,
however, is not absolutely bound by the advice of his Councillors. He is
compelled to some adhesion to justice or to the national laws by the
knowledge that his tribe will dwindle and depart from him if he gives
unbearable offence. Cases of gross injustice do occur;--but on the whole
the Kafir Chiefs have endeavoured to rule in accordance with Kafir
customs. A certain amount of arbitrary caprice the people have been
willing to endure;--but they have not been as long-suffering as the
Zulus under Dingaan,--nor as the Romans under Nero. Disobedience to a
Chief is punished by a fine;--but the crime has been unpopular in the
tribes, and though doubtless committed daily under the rose is one of
which a Kafir does not wish to have been thought guilty. The very
essence of Kafir customs and Kafir life is reverence for the Chief.
I cannot close this short catalogue of Kafir customs without alluding to
witch-doctors and rain-makers. Witch-doctoring is employed on two
occasions--1st, when a true but of course mistaken desire exists in a
kraal or family village to find out who is tormenting the community by
making some member or members of it ill,--and, 2nd, when some Chief has
a desire to get rid of a political enemy, or more probably to obtain the
cattle of a wealthy subject. In either case a priest is called in who
with many absurd ceremonies goes about the work of selecting or
“smelling out” a victim, whom of course he has in truth selected before
the ceremonies are commenced. In the former case, after much howling and
beating of drums, he names the unfortunate one, who is immediately
pounced upon and tormented almost to death; and at last forced, in his
own defence, to own to some kind of witchcraft. His cattle are seized
which go to the Chief,--and then after a while he is purified and put
upon his legs again, impoverished indeed, and perhaps crippled, but a
free man in regard to the Devil which is supposed to have been driven
out of him. In the second case the treatment is the same;--only that the
man whose wealth is desired, or whose political conduct has been
objectionable, does not often recover.
The rain-maker is used only in time of drought, when the Chief sends to
him desiring that he will make rain, and presenting him with a head of
cattle to assist him in the operation. The profession is a dangerous
one, as the Chief is wont to sacrifice the rain-maker himself if the
rain is postponed too long. It is the rain-maker’s trade to produce
acceptable excuses till the rain shall come in its natural course. It is
not expected till the bones of the ox shall have been burned after
sacrifice,--which may be about the third day. Then it may be asserted
that the beast was not good enough, or unfortunately of an unacceptable
colour; and there is some delay while a second beast comes. Then it is
alleged that there is manifestly a witch interfering, and the
witch-doctoring process takes place. It is bad luck indeed if rain do
not come by this time;--but, should it not come soon after the
witch-doctor’s victim has gone through his torments, then the rain-maker
is supposed to be an impostor, and he is at once drowned by order of the
Chief. Mr. Warner, from whose notes this account is taken, says that the
professional rain-maker was not often a long lived man.
I did not myself visit the Transkeian territory, but in passing from
East London to Durban the small steamer which carried me ran so near the
land that I was enabled to see the coast scenery as well as though I
were in a rowing boat just off the shore. We could see the Kafirs
bathing and the cattle of the Kafirs roaming upon the hills. It is by
far the prettiest bit of coast belonging to South Africa. The gates of
St. John, as the rocks forming the mouth of the river are called, are
peculiarly lovely. When I was there the rebellion had not been
commenced, but even then I thought it a pity that English vessels should
not be able to run in among that lovely paradise of hills and rocks and
waters.
I insert here a table of the population of the Transkeian tribes, giving
the estimated numbers of the people and the supposed number of fighting
men which each tribe contains. They are all now regarded as Kafirs
except the inhabitants of Adam Kok’s Land and the district called the
Gatberg, who are people that have migrated from the west.
ESTIMATED POPULATION OF THE TRANSKEIAN TERRITORIES.
+---------------------------------+--------------+--------------+
| | Total | Fighting |
| | Population. | Men. |
+---------------------------------+--------------+--------------+
| Fingos | 45,000 | 7,000 |
| Idutywa Reserve | 17,000 | 3,000 |
| Emigrant Tembus | 40,000 | 7,000 |
| Tembus (Tembuland Proper) | 60,000 | 10,000 |
| Gatberg {Bastards, 1,000} | 6,000 | 1,000 |
| {Basutos, 5,000} | | |
| Griqualand East, or {including} | 40,000 | 7,000 |
| Adam Kok’s Land {the Bacas} | | |
| Galekas (Kreli) | 66,000 | 11,000 |
| Bomvanas (Moni) | 15,000 | 2,000 |
| Pondomisi | 12,000 | 2,000 |
| Pondos | 200,000 | 30,000 |
| | --------- | ------- |
| Total Transkei | 501,000 | 80,000 |
+---------------------------------+--------------+--------------+
The number of fighting men has been arrived at by taking one-sixth
of the total population.
The number here will be seen to amount to 500,000, whereas the Galekas
of whom alone we are speaking when we talk of the hostile Kafirs across
the Kei are not in this return given as being more than 66,000. It must
always be remembered that there has been no census taken of these tribes
and that many of these numbers are estimated by little more than guess
work. The Fingos and the mixed inhabitants of the district called the
Idutywa Reserve are already British subjects. The Tembus are not so
nominally; but are for the most part obedient to British magistrates who
live among them. The inhabitants of the Gatberg are natives who live
there because the place is vacant for them,--also with a British
magistrate. They certainly cannot be regarded as an independent tribe.
The Griquas of Adam Kok’s Land are bastard Hottentots who have been
moved west from one locality to another, and now inhabit a country which
used to be called No Man’s Land and which was probably cleared of its
old inhabitants by Chaka, the great Zulu king. They are British
subjects. Of the Galekas and Bomvanas I have said enough. The Pondomisi
are a small tribe of independent Kafirs among whom a British magistrate
lives. Then we come to the Pondos, the most numerous tribe of all,--so
much so that the reader will be inclined to say that, while the Pondos
remain independent, Kafraria cannot become English. But the Pondos are a
very much less notorious people than the Galekas,--and constitute a
tribe who will probably be willing to annex themselves when the Bomvanas
and Galekas are annexed. Their present condition is rather remarkable.
The person most dominant among them is one Mrs. Jenkins, the widow of a
missionary, who is said to rule them easily, pleasantly, and prudently.
Mrs. Jenkins, however, cannot live for ever. But it is thought that the
Pondos will of their own accord become British subjects even during the
reign of Mrs. Jenkins. The mouth of the St. John’s River is in the
country of the Pondos, and it would be greatly to the benefit of South
Eastern Africa generally that a harbour for the purposes of commerce
should be opened on that portion of the coast.
CHAPTER XV.
THE BASUTOS.
Of the Basutos I have said something in my attempt to tell the story of
the Orange Free State; but the tribe still occupy so large a space in
South Africa and has made itself so conspicuous in South African affairs
as to require some further short mention for the elucidation of South
African history. They are a people who have been moved, up and down,
about South Africa and have thus travelled much, who have come to be
located on the land they now hold partly as refugees and partly as
conquerors, who thirty years ago had a great Chief called Moshesh of
whom some have asserted that he was a Christian, and others that he was
a determined Savage, who are still to be found in various parts of South
Africa, and who perhaps possess in their head-quarters of Basuto Land
the very best agricultural soil on the continent. There are at present
supposed to be about 127,000 of them settled on this land, among whom
there would be according to the general computation about 21,000
fighting warriors. The fighting men are estimated to be a sixth of the
whole tribe,--so that every adult male not incapacitated by age or
misfortune is counted as a fighting man. To imagine, however, that if
the Basutos were to go to war they could bring an army of 20,000 men
into the field, would be to pay an unmerited compliment to their power
of combination, to their commissariat supplies, and to their general
patriotism. But as in late years they have bought a great many ploughs,
as they are great growers of corn, and as they have become lovers of
trade, lovers of money, growers of wool, and friends of the English,--as
they are loyal English subjects,--we will not be indignant with them on
account of any falling off in their military capacity.
The Basutos are not Kafirs or Zulus. They are a branch of the Bechuanas
a large tribe or rather race of Natives whose own territory lies west of
the Transvaal, and between that and the great Kalahari Desert. I have
already spoke of the Baralongs of Thaba ’Ncho as having come out from
among the same race. Were I to say much of the Bechuanas I should find
myself wandering again all over South Africa. I will therefore not
pursue them further, merely remarking that they too are become
irrepressible, and that before long we shall find ourselves compelled to
annex one branch of them after another in connection with Griqualand
West and the Diamond Fields.
The first record, in date, which I have read of the Basutos is in a
simple volume written by a Missionary, the Rev. E. Cassalis, who was one
of a party of French Protestants sent out nearly 50 years ago from Paris
to the Cape with the double object of comforting the descendants of the
French emigrants and of converting the Natives. It was the fate of M.
Cassalis,--who though he writes in English I presume to have been a
Frenchman,--to establish a mission at a place called Moriah in
Basutoland in 1833, and to write a book about Basuto Manners. He does
not really tell us very much about the people, as, with laudable
enthusiasm, he is more intent on the ways of Providence than on the
details of history. If hardships and misfortunes come he recognises them
as precious balms. If they are warded off he sees the special mercy of
the Lord to him and his flock. The hyænas were allowed to take his
sheep, but an “inexorable lion,” who made the “desert echo with the
majestic sounds of his voice,” was not permitted by Providence to touch
himself. Something, however, is to be gleaned from his tale. The people
among whom he had come were harassed terribly by enemies. They were
continually attacked by Moselekatze, the Chief of the Matabeles, whom M.
Cassalis calls Zulus;[15]--and also by roaming bands of the Korannas, a
tribe of Bedouin South African Savages, only one degree, if one degree,
better than the Bushmen. With these Moshesh was always fighting,
entrenching himself when hard pressed on a high rock called Thaba Bosio
or Thaba Bosigo, from whence he would hurl down stones upon his
assailants very much to their dismay. The Basutos seem to have been a
brave people, but reduced by their enemies to very hard straits, so that
they were driven by want, in those comparatively modern days,--for we
are speaking of a period within the lifetime of the father of the
existing Chief of the tribe,--to have resort to cannibalism for
support.
It has been asserted, with general truth, that cannibalism has not been
a vice of South African Natives. It was not found among the Hottentots,
nor even among the Bushmen except with rare instances, nor among the
Kafirs or Zulus. There is no reason to believe that the Basutos brought
the practice with them from among their ancestors the Bechuanas. But
there is ample evidence that they practised it during the time of their
wars with the Matabeles and Korannas, and reason to suppose that it has
been carried on in a hidden, shame-faced way, in opposition to the
endeavours of their Chiefs, down to within a very modern date. M.
Cassalis tells us the stories of cannibalism which he had heard from
Natives on his arrival in the country, and, giving 1820 as a date, says
that Moshesh put an end to these horrors. He acknowledges in a note that
he has been accused of inventing these details for the sake “of giving a
dramatic interest to our recital,”--and goes on to declare that when he
was in the country, “there were thirty or forty villages the entire
population of which is composed of those who were formerly cannibals and
who make no secret of their past life.” Had I read all this without
light from subsequent record, I should have felt that M. Cassalis was a
writer far too simple and too honest to have invented anything for the
sake of “dramatic interest:”--but that he was a man who might have been
hoaxed even by thirty or forty villages. Having been taught to believe
that Cannibalism had not prevailed in South Africa, I think I might have
doubted the unaided testimony of the French missionary. But there is a
testimony very much subsequent which I cannot doubt.
In November 1869 there appeared a paper in “Once a Week” called
“Ethnological Curiosities from South Africa.” From whom it was supplied
to that periodical neither do I know,--nor does the gentleman by whom
the body of the paper was written. The assumed name of “Leyland” is
there given to that gentleman, without any authority for the change, and
it is told that he had contributed the narrative to the Ethnological
Society and had called it a visit to the Cannibal Caves. This is true;
but the name of the gentleman was Mr. Bowker who was the first
Government Agent in Basutoland. He was not at all sorry to see his paper
reappearing in so respectable a periodical, but has never known how it
reached “Once a Week,” or why he was called Mr. Leyland. This is not of
much general interest; but he goes on to describe how he, and a party
with him, were taken by guides up the side of a mountain, and by a
difficult pathway into a cave. The date is not given, but the visit
occurred in 1868. The cavern is then described as being black with the
smoke of fires, and the floor as being strewn with the bones of human
beings,--chiefly those of women and children. “The marrow bones were
split into small pieces, the rounded joints alone being left unbroken.
Only a few of these bones were charred by fire, showing that the
prevailing taste had been for boiled rather than for roast meat.” Again
he says, “I saw while at the cavern unmistakeable evidence that the
custom has not been altogether abandoned, for among the numerous bones
were a few that appeared very recent. They were apparently those of a
tall bony individual with a skull hard as bronze. In the joints of
these bones the marrow and fatty substances were still evident, showing
but too plainly that many months had not elapsed since he met his fate.”
This was as late as 1868.
Again. “There are still a good many old Cannibals in existence. On the
day that we visited the cavern I was introduced to one of them, who is
now living not very far from his former dwelling-place. He is a man of
about sixty, and, not to speak from prejudice, one of the most God-lost
looking ruffians that I ever beheld in my life. In former days when he
was a young man dwelling in the cavern, he captured during one of his
hunting expeditions three young women. From these he selected the
best-looking as a partner for life. The other two went to stock his
larder.”
This comes from a gentleman who saw the ghastly remains, who well knows
the people of whom he is speaking, and who from his official position
has had better means of knowing than any other European. They come, too,
from a gentleman who is still alive to answer for his story should a
doubt be thrown upon it. His idea is that a certain number of the
Basutos had been driven into the terrible custom by famine caused by
continued wars, and had afterwards carried it on from addiction to the
taste which had been thus generated. M. Cassalis, who was right enough
in saying that the Basutos were Cannibals, was wrong only in supposing
that his disciple Moshesh had been able to suppress the abomination.
There is, however, reason to believe that it has now been suppressed.
The noble simplicity of individual missionaries as to the success of
their own efforts is often charming and painful at the same
time;--charming as shewing their complete enthusiasm, and painful when
contrasted with the results. M. Cassalis tells us how Moshesh used to
dine with him in the middle of the day, on Sunday, because, having come
down from his mountain to morning service, he could not go up the hill
for dinner, and so be back again in time for afternoon prayers. Moshesh
used to have his dinner inside the missionary’s house, and the rest of
the congregation from the mountain would remain outside, around, not
wasting their time, but diligently learning to read. And yet I fear that
there are not many Christians now on the mountain, which is still well
known as Thaba Bosigo.
But Moshesh though he was not a Christian was a great Chief, and
gradually under him the Basutos became a great tribe. Probably their
success arose from the fact that the land on which they lived was
fertile. The same cause has probably led to their subsequent
misfortunes,--the fertility of the land having offered temptation to
others. Their mountains and valleys became populated, and,--as the
mountains and valleys of a still uncivilized race,--very rich. But there
arose questions of boundaries, which so often became questions of
robbery. I have already told how Maroco the Chief of the Baralongs at
Thaba ’Ncho held that the land he occupied was his by right of purchase,
and how Moshesh had declared that he had never sold an inch of his land.
Moshesh was very fond of allegory in his arguments. The Baralongs were
certainly living on land that had belonged to the Basutos; but Moshesh
declared that, “he had lent them the cow to milk; they could use her;
but he could not sell the cow.” For the full understanding of this it
must be known that no Kafir, no Zulu, no Basuto can bear the idea of
selling his cattle. And then the Boers of the Free State who had settled
upon Basutoland, would have it that they owned the land. There came days
of terrible fighting between the Basutos and the Boers,--and of renewed
fighting between the Basutos and other tribes. One can imagine that they
should again have been driven by famine to that cannibalism of which Mr.
Bowker saw the recent marks. They were at a very low ebb at Thaba
Bosigo, being at last almost eaten up by President Brand, and the Boers.
Then they asked for British intervention, and at last, in 1868, Sir
Philip Wodehouse issued a proclamation in which he declared them to be
British subjects. A line of boundary was established between them and
the Orange Republic, giving the Orange Republic the “Conquered
Territory” which they still call by that objectionable name, but leaving
to the Basutos the possession of a rich district which seems to be
sufficient for their wants. The Orange Republic, or Free State, did not
at all like what was done by the British. Their politicians still
insisted that Great Britain was precluded by treaty from concerning
itself with any native tribe north of the Orange River. It tried to make
the most of its position,--naturally enough. Perhaps it did make the
most of its position, for it now holds the peaceable possession of a
great portion of the land of its late enemies, and no longer has a
single hostile nation on its borders. We may say that the possibility of
a hostile nation has passed away. Nothing can be more secure than the
condition of the Orange Republic since Great Britain has secured her
borders. There was a convention at Aliwal North, and the boundary line
was permanently settled on March 12, 1869.
Since that time the Basutos have been a peculiarly flourishing people,
living under the chieftainship of a junior Moshesh, but undoubted
subjects of the Queen of England. Their territory is a part of the Cape
Colony, which they help to support by the taxes they pay. Their hut tax,
at the rate of 10s. a hut amounts to £4,000 a year. Why it should not
come to more I do not understand, as, according to the usual calculation
of four to a hut, there should be about 32,000 huts among them, which
would give £16,000. They also contribute £2,000 a year in other taxes.
In the year ended 30 June, 1876, they were governed, instructed, and
generally provided for at the rate of £7,644 15s. 1d. As their revenue
is hardly £5,000, this would shew a serious deficiency,--but they who do
the finance work for Basutoland have a very large balance in hand,
amounting, after the making up of all deficiencies at the date above
named, to £22,577 4s. These figures are taken from the last published
financial Report of the Cape of Good Hope. I need not tell an
experienced reader that no book or document is produced so
unintelligible to an uninitiated reader as an official financial report.
Why should Basutoland with a revenue of £5,000 a year have a Treasury
Balance of £22,577 4s.? Every clerk concerned in the getting up of that
report no doubt knows all about it. It is not perhaps intended that any
one else should understand it. I have said above that the Basutos are
governed and instructed. Alas, no! Under the general head of
expenditure, education is a conspicuous detail; but it is followed by no
figures. It seems to be admitted that something should be expended for
the teaching of the Basutos; but that the duty so acknowledged is not
performed.
CHAPTER XVI.
NAMAQUALAND.
A glance at the map of South Africa will shew two regions on the Western
side of the Continent to which the name of Namaqualand is given, north
and south of the Orange River. The former is Great Namaqualand and
cannot as yet be said to form a part of the British Empire. But as it at
present belongs to nobody, and is tenanted,--as far as it is tenanted at
all,--by a very sparse sprinkling of Hottentots, Bushmen, and Korannas,
and as it is undoubtedly metalliferous, it is probable that it will be
annexed sooner or later.[16] Copper has been found north of the Orange
River and that copper will not long be left undisturbed. North of Great
Namaqualand is Damaraland, whence too have come tokens of copper and
whisperings of gold. Even to these hard hot unfertile sandy regions
Dutch farmers have trekked in order that they might live solitary,
unseen, and independent. We need not, however, follow them at present to
a country which is almost rainless and almost uninhabited, and for which
we are not as yet responsible. Little Namaqualand, south of the Orange
River, is one of the electoral divisions of the Cape Colony, and to that
I will confine the few remarks which I will make as to this
uncomfortable district.
It is for its copper and for its copper alone that Little Namaqualand is
of any real value. On looking at the printed reports of the Commissioner
and Magistrate for the division, made in 1874, 1875, and 1876, I find
nothing but misfortune mentioned,--except in regard to the copper mines.
“1874,” says the report for that year, “has been a very bad year.”
“There has, so to say, been no corn in the land.” “One person after
thrashing out his corn obtained three pannicans.” Poor farmers! “Living
is very expensive, and were it not for the tram line”--a railroad made
by the Copper Company nearly to Springbok Fontein, which is the seat of
government and the magistrate’s residence,--“we would have been on the
verge of starvation.” Poor magistrate! Then the report goes on. “The
Ookiep mine is steadily progressing.” “The yield of ore during the year
has been 10,000 tons.” It is pretty nearly as bad in 1875. “The rain
came late in the year, and the yield in corn was very small.” “It is
almost impossible to describe the poverty in which the poorer classes
exist in a severe drought.” And a severe drought is the normal condition
of the country in which the fall of rain and dew together does not
exceed five inches in the year. But the copper enterprise was
flourishing. “The Ookiep mine,” says the same report, “has been steadily
progressing, its yield being now 1,000 tons per month.” In 1876 rural
matters were not much better. “The water supply all over the country
has much decreased, and the farmers have been put to great straits in
consequence.” But there is comfort in the copper. “The Ookiep mine still
continues in the same flourishing condition.” What most raises our
surprise in this is that there should be farmers at all in such a
country as Namaqualand.
The following is Mr. Theal’s description of the district. “A long narrow
belt, twenty thousand square miles in extent, it presents to the eye
nothing but a dismal succession of hill and gorge and sandy plain, all
bare and desolate.” “A land of drought and famine, of blinding glare and
fiery blast,--such is the country of the Little Namaquas. From time
immemorial it has been the home of a few wretched Hottentots who were
almost safe in such a desert from even European intruders. Half a dozen
missionaries and two or three score of farmers were the sole
representatives of civilization among these wandering Savages. One
individual to about three square miles was all that the land was capable
of supporting.”
But there is copper in the regions near the coast and consequently
Little Namaqualand is becoming an important and a rich district. Before
the Dutch came the Hottentots had found copper here and had used it for
their ornaments. In 1683, when the Dutch government was still young and
the Dutch territory still small, an expedition was sent by the Dutch
Governor in search of copper to the very region in which the Cape Copper
Company is now carrying on its works. But the coast was severe and the
land hard to travellers, and it was found difficult to get the ore down
to the sea. The Dutch therefore abandoned the undertaking and the copper
was left at rest for a century and a half. The first renewed attempt was
made in 1835, and that was unsuccessful. It was not till 1852 that the
works were commenced which led to the present flourishing condition of
the South African copper mines.
For some few years after this there seems to have been a copper mania in
South Africa,--as there was a railway mania in England, and a gold mania
in Australia, and a diamond mania in Griqualand West. People with a
little money rushed to the country and lost that little. And those who
had none rushed also to the copper mines and failed to enrich themselves
as they had expected. In 1863 Messrs. Phillips and King, who had
commenced their work in 1852, established the company which is still
known as the Cape Copper Mining Company,--and that company has been
thoroughly successful altogether, through the Ookiep mine to which the
magistrate in all the reports from which I have quoted has referred as
the centre and source of Namaqualand prosperity.
About four hundred miles north-west of the Cape and forty-five miles
south of the Orange River there is a little harbour called Port Nolloth
in Robben Bay. The neighbourhood is described as being destitute of all
good things. The country in this neighbourhood is sandy and barren, and
without water. We are told that water may be obtained by digging in the
sand, but that when obtained it is brackish. But here is the outlet for
South African copper, and therefore the little port is becoming a place
of importance. Sailing vessels come from Swansea for the ore, and about
once a fortnight a little steamer comes here from Capetown bringing
necessaries of life to its inhabitants and such comforts as money can
give in a place so desolate and hideous.
From hence there is a railway running 60 miles up to the foot of the
mountains constructed by the Copper Mining Company for the use of their
men and for bringing down the ore to the coast. This railway goes to
Great Ookiep mine, which is distant but a few miles from the miserable
little town called Springbok Fontein, which is the capital of the
district. The Ookiep mine is thus described in the Gazeteer attached to
Messrs. Silver’s South African Guide Book. It is “one of the most
important copper mines in existence, its annual production of very rich
ore being nearly 7,000 tons;”--since that was written the amount has
been considerably increased;--“and the deeper the shafts are sunk the
more extensive appears the area of ore producing ground. The mine is now
sunk to a depth of 80 fathoms, but exhibits no sign of decreasing
production.” “These Ookiep ores are found in Europe to be easier smelted
than the ores of any other mines whatever, and the deposit of copper ore
in the locality seems quite unlimited.”
There have been various other mines tried in the vicinity, and there can
be no doubt from the indications of copper which are found all around
that the working of copper in the district will before long be carried
very much further than at present. But up to this time the Ookiep mine
is the only one that has paid its expenses and given a considerable
profit. During the copper fury various attempts were made all of which
failed. The existing Company, which has been as a whole exceedingly
prosperous, has made many trials at other spots none of which according
to their own report have been altogether successful. I quote the
following extracts from the report made by its own officers and
published by the Company in 1877. “The operations at Spectakel Mine have
been attended with almost unvarying ill fortune.” “It is thought that
the Kilduncan centre has had fair trial and as the ground looks
unpromising the miners have been withdrawn.” “Although yielding
quantities of low class ore the workings at Narrap have not so far
proved remunerative.” “The levels at Karolusberg have also failed to
reveal anything valuable.” “A good deal of preparatory work has been
done at this place,”--Nabapeep. “This may be regarded as the most
promising trial mine belonging to the Company.” These are all the
adventures yet made except that of the Ookiep mine, but that alone has
been so lucky that the yield in 1876 amounted to “10,765 tons of 21
cwt., nett dry weight, averaging 28½? per cent.” This perhaps, to the
uninitiated mind may give but a hazy idea of the real result of the
speculation. But when we are told that only £7 a share has been paid up,
and that £4 per annum profit has been paid on each share, in spite of
the failure of other adventures, then the success of the great Ookiep
mine looms clear to the most uninstructed understanding.
There can be no doubt but that Namaqualand will prove to be one of the
great copper producing countries of the earth; and as little, I fear,
that it is in all other respects one of the most unfortunate and
undesirable. I have spoken to some whose duties have required them to
visit Springbok Fontein or to frequent Port Nolloth, and they have all
spoken of their past experiences without expressing any wish to revisit
those places. Missionaries have gone to this land as elsewhere, striving
to carry Christianity among, perhaps, as low a form of humanity as there
is on the earth,--with the exception of the quickly departing Australian
aboriginal. They have probably done something, if only a little, both
towards raising the intellect and relieving the wants of those among
whom they have placed themselves. But the Bushmen and the Korannas are
races very hopeless. Men who have been called upon by Nature to live in
so barren a region,--a country almost destitute of water and therefore
almost destitute of grass, can hardly be expected to raise themselves
above the lowest habits and the lowest tastes incident to man. If
anything can give them a chance of rising in the world it will be such
enterprise as that of the Cape Mining Company, and such success as that
of the Ookiep mine.
CHAPTER XVII.
CONCLUSION.
I have now finished my task and am writing my last chapter as I make my
way home across the Bay of Biscay. It has been laborious enough but has
been made very pleasant by the unvarying kindness of every one with whom
I have come in contact. My thanks are specially due to those who have
travelled with me or allowed me to travel with them. I have had the good
fortune never to have been alone on the road,--and thus that which would
otherwise have been inexpressibly tedious has been made pleasant. I must
take this last opportunity of repeating here, what I have said more than
once before, that my thanks in this respect are due to the Dutch as
warmly as to the English. I am disposed to think that a wrong impression
as to the so-called Dutch Boer of South Africa has become common at
home. It has been imagined by some people,--I must acknowledge to have
received such an impression myself,--that the Boer was a European who
had retrograded from civilization, and had become savage, barbarous, and
unkindly. There can be no greater mistake. The courtesies of life are as
dear to him as to any European. The circumstances of his secluded life
have made him unprogressive. It may, however, be that the same
circumstances have maintained with him that hospitality for strangers
and easy unobtrusive familiarity of manners, which the contests and
rapidity of modern life have banished from us in Europe. The Dutch Boer,
with all his roughness, is a gentleman in his manners from his head to
his heels.
When a man has travelled through a country under beneficent auspices,
and has had everything shewn to him and explained to him with frank
courtesy, he seems to be almost guilty of a breach of hospitality if, on
his coming away, he speaks otherwise than in glowing terms of the
country where he has been so received. I know that I have left behind me
friends in South Africa who, when they shall have read my book or shall
hear how I have spoken of their Institutions, will be ill satisfied with
me. I specially fear this in regard to the Cape Colony where I can go on
all fours neither with the party in power who think that parliamentary
forms of Government must be serviceable for South Africa, because they
have been proved to be so for Canada, Australia, and New Zealand; nor
with those opposed to them who would fain keep the native races in
subjection by military power. I would make the Kafir in all respects
equal to the white man;--but I would give him no voting power till he is
equal to the white man in education as in other things.
It will be brought against me as an accusation that I have made my
enquiries and have written my book in a hurry. It has been done
hurriedly. Day by day as I have travelled about the continent in the
direction indicated in its pages I have written my book. The things
which I have seen have been described within a few hours of my seeing
them. The words that I have heard have been made available for what
they were worth,--as far as it was within my power to do so,--before
they were forgotten. A book so written must often be inaccurate; but it
may possibly have something in it of freshness to atone for its
inaccuracies. In writing such a book a man has for a time to fill
himself exclusively with his subject,--to make every thought that he has
South African for the time, to give all his energy to the work in hand,
to talk about it, fight about it, think about it, write about it, and
dream about it. This I have endeavoured to do, and here is the result.
To spend five years in studying a country and then to come home and
devote five more to writing a book about it, is altogether out of my
way. The man who can do it will achieve much more than I shall. But had
I ever attempted it in writing other books I should have failed worse
than I have done. Had I thought of it in regard to South Africa my book
would never have been written at all.
I fancy that I owe an apology to some whom I have answered rather
shortly when they have scolded me for not making a longer stay in their
own peculiar spots. “You have come to write a book about South Africa
and you have no right to go away without devoting a day to my ----” sugar
plantation, or distillery, or whatever the interesting enterprise may
have been. “You have only been three days in our town and I don’t think
you are doing us justice.” It has been hard to answer these accusations
with a full explanation of all the facts,--including the special
fact,--unimportant to all but one or two, that South Africa with all its
charms is not so comfortable at my present age as the arm-chair in my
own book room. But in truth the man who has an interesting enterprise of
his own or who patriotically thinks that his own town only wants to be
known to be recognized as a Paradise among municipalities would, if
their power were as great as their zeal, render such a task as that I
have undertaken altogether impossible. The consciousness of their own
merit robs them of all sense of proportion. Such a one will acknowledge
that South Africa is large;--but South Africa will not be as large to
him as his own mill or his own Chamber of Commerce, and he will not
believe that eyes seeing other than his eyes can be worthy of any
credit. I know that I did not go to see this gentleman’s orchard as I
half promised, or the other gentleman’s collection of photographs, and I
here beg their pardons and pray them to remember how many things I had
to see and how many miles I had to travel.
That I have visited all European South Africa I cannot boast. The
country is very large. We may say so large as to be at present
limitless. We do not as yet at all know our own boundaries. But I
visited the seat of Government in each district, and, beyond the
Capitals, saw enough of the life and ways of each of them to justify me,
I hope, in speaking of their condition and their prospects. I have also
endeavoured to explain roughly the way in which each of these districts
became what it now is. In doing this I have taken my facts partly from
those who have gone before me in writing the history of South
Africa,--whose names I have mentioned in my introductory
chapter,--partly from official records, and partly from the words of
those who witnessed and perhaps bore a share in the changes as they
were made. The first thing an Englishman has to understand in the story
of South Africa is the fact that the great and almost unnatural
extension of our colonization,--unnatural when the small number of
English emigrants who have gone there is considered,--has been produced
by the continued desire of the Dutch farmers to take themselves out of
the reach of English laws, and English feelings. The abolition of
slavery was the great cause of this,--though not the only cause; and the
abolition of slavery in British dominions is now only forty years old.
Since that time Natal, the Transvaal, the Orange Free State, and
Griqualand West have sprung into existence, and they were all, in the
first instance, peopled by sturdy Dutchmen running away from the to them
disgusting savour of Exeter Hall. They would encounter anything, go
anywhere, rather than submit to British philanthropy. Then we have run
after them with our philanthropy in our hands,--with such results as I
have endeavoured to depict in these pages.
This is the first thing that we shall have to understand,--but as the
mind comes to dwell on the subject it will not be the chief thing. It
must be the first naturally. To an Englishman the Cape of Good Hope, and
Natal, and now the Transvaal are British Colonies,--with a British
history, short or long. The way in which we became possessed of these
and the manner in which they have been ruled; the trouble or the glory
which have come to us from them; the success of them or the failure in
affording homes for our ever-increasing population;--these are the
questions which must affect us first. But when we learn that in those
South African Colonies though we may not have succeeded in making homes
for many English,--not even comparatively for many Europeans,--we have
become the arbiters of the homes, the masters of the destinies, of
millions of black men; when we recognize the fact that here we have
imposed upon us the duty of civilizing, of training to the yoke of
labour and releasing from the yoke of slavery a strong, vital,
increasing and intelligent population; when this becomes plain to us, as
I think it must become plain,--then we shall know that the chief thing
to be regarded is our duty to the nations over which we have made
ourselves the masters.
South Africa is a country of black men,--and not of white men. It has
been so; it is so; and it will continue to be so. In this respect it is
altogether unlike Australia, unlike the Canadas, and unlike New Zealand.
And, as it is unlike them, so should it be to us a matter of much purer
gratification than are those successful Colonies. There we have gone
with our ploughs and with our brandy, with all the good and with all the
evil which our civilization has produced, and throughout the lands the
native races have perished by their contact with us. They have withered
by commune with us as the weaker weedy grasses of Nature’s first
planting wither and die wherever come the hardier plants, which science
added to nature has produced. I am not among those who say that this has
been caused by our cruelty. It has often been that we have struggled our
very best to make our landing on a shore an unmixed blessing to those to
whom we have come. In New Zealand we strove hard for this;--but in New
Zealand the middle of the next century will probably hear of the
existence of some solitary last Maori. It may be that this was
necessary. All the evidence we have seems to show that it was so. But it
is hardly the less sad because it was necessary. In Australia we have
been successful. We are clothed with its wools. Our coffers are filled
with its gold. Our brothers and our children are living there in
bounteous plenty. But during the century that we have been there we have
caused the entire population of a whole continent to perish. It is
impossible to think of such prosperity without a dash of suffering,
without a pang of remorse.
In South Africa it is not so. The tribes which before our coming were
wont to destroy themselves in civil wars have doubled their population
since we have turned their assagais to ploughshares. Thousands, ten
thousands of them, are working for wages. Even beyond the realms which
we call our own we have stopped the cruelties of the Chiefs and the no
less fatal superstitions of the priests. The Kafir and the Zulu are free
men, and understand altogether the privileges of their freedom. In one
town of 18,000 inhabitants, 10,000 of them are now receiving 10s. a week
each man, in addition to their diet. Here at any rate we have not come
as a blighting poison to the races whom we have found in the country of
our adoption. This I think ought to endear South Africa to us.
But it must at the same time tell us that South Africa is a black
country and not a white one;--that the important person in South Africa
is the Kafir and the Zulu, the Bechuana and the Hottentot;--not the
Dutchman or the Englishman. On the subject of population I have already
shewn that the information at my command is a little confused. Such
confusion cannot be avoided when only estimates are made. But if I take
credit for 340,000 white people in South Africa, I certainly claim as
many as the country holds;--and I am probably within the mark if I say
that our direct influence extends over 3,000,000 of Natives. What is the
number of British subjects cannot even be estimated, because we do not
know our Transvaal limits. There are also whole tribes to the
North-West, in Bechuanaland, Damaraland, and Namaqualand anxious to be
annexed but not yet annexed. To all those we owe the duty of protection,
and all of them before long will be British subjects. As in India or
Ceylon, where the people are a coloured people, Asiatic and not
European, it is our first duty to govern them so that they may prosper,
to defend them from ill-usage, to teach them what we know ourselves, to
make them free, so in South Africa it is our chief duty to do the same
thing for the Natives there. The white man is the master, and the master
can generally protect himself. He can avail himself of the laws, and
will always have so many points in his favour that a paternal government
need not be much harassed on his account. Compared with the Native he is
numerically but one to ten. But in strength, influence, and capacity he
has ten to one the best of it.
What is our duty to the Kafir or Zulu? There are so many views of our
duty! One believes that we have done the important thing if we teach him
to sing hymns. Another would give him back,--say a tenth of the land
that has been taken away from him, and then leave him. A third, the most
confident of them all, thinks that everything hangs on “a rod of
iron,”--between which and slavery the distance is very narrow. The rod
of iron generally means compelled work, the amount of wages to be
settled by the judgment of the master. A fourth would give him a
franchise and let him vote for a Member of Parliament,--which of course
includes the privilege of becoming a Member of Parliament, and of
becoming Prime Minister if he can get enough of his own class to back
him.
I am afraid that I cannot agree altogether with any of these four. The
hymns, which as I speak of them include all religious teaching, have as
yet gone but a very little way. Something has been done,--that something
having shewn itself rather in a little book-learning than in
amelioration of conduct as the result of comprehended Christianity. But
the work will progress. In its way it is good, though the good done is
so little commensurate with the missionary labour given and the
missionary money spent!
The land scheme,--the giving up of locations to the people,--is good
also to some extent if it be unmixed with such missionary attempts as
some which I have attempted to describe as existing in the western
province of the Cape Colony. There is a certain justice in it, and it
enables the people to fall gradually into the way of working for wages.
It has on the other hand the counterbalancing tendency of teaching the
people to think that they can live idle on their own land,--as used to
be the case with the Irishmen who held a couple of acres of ground.
“The iron rod” is to me abominable. It means always some other treatment
for the coloured man than that which is given to the white man. There
can be no good done till the two stand before the law exactly on the
same ground. The “iron-rodder” desires to get work out of the black
man;--and so do I, and so does every friend of the black man. The
question is how the work shall be got out of them. “Make him work,” says
the iron-rodder. “There he is, idle, fat as a pig on stolen mutton, and
doing nothing; with thews and sinews by which I could be made so
comfortable, if only I could use them.” “But how are you entitled to his
work?” is the answer readiest at hand. “Because he steals my cattle,”
says the iron-rodder, generally with a very limited amount of truth and
less of logic. Because his cattle have been stolen once or twice he
would subject the whole race to slavery,--unconscious that the slave’s
work, if he could get it, would in the long run be very much less
profitable to him than the free labour by which, in spite of all his
assertions to the contrary, he does till his land, and herd his cattle,
and shear his sheep and garner his wealth.
Then comes the question of the franchise. He who would give the black
man a vote is generally the black man’s most advanced friend, the direct
enemy of the iron-rodder, and is to be found in London rather than in
South Africa. To such a one I would say certainly let the black man have
the franchise on the same terms as the white man. In broadening or
curtailing the privilege of voting there should be no expressed
reference to colour. The word should not appear in any Act of any
Parliament by which the franchise is regulated. If it be so expressed
there cannot be that equality before the law without which we cannot
divest ourselves of the sin of selfish ascendancy. But the franchise may
be so regulated that the black man cannot enjoy it till he has
qualified himself,--as the white man at any rate ought to qualify
himself. Exclusion of this nature was intended when the existing law of
the Cape Colony was passed. A man cannot vote till he has become a fixed
resident, and shall be earning 10s. a week wages and his diet. When this
scale was fixed it was imagined that it would exclude all but a very
small number of Kafirs. But a few years has so improved the condition of
the Kafirs that many thousands are now earning the wages necessary for a
qualification. “Then by all means let them vote,” will say the friend of
the Negro in Exeter Hall or the House of Commons,--perhaps without
giving quite time enough to calculating the result. Does this friend of
the Negro in his heart think that the black man is fit to assume
political ascendancy over the white;--or that the white man would remain
in South Africa and endure it? The white man would not remain, and if
the white man were gone, the black man would return to his savagery.
Very much has been done;--quite as much probably as we have a right to
expect from the time which has been employed. But the black man is not
yet civilized in South Africa and, with a few exceptions, is not fit for
political power. The safeguard against the possible evil of which I have
spoken is the idea that the Kafir is not as yet awake to the meaning of
political power and therefore will not exercise the privilege of voting
when it is given to him. It may be so at present, but I do not relish
the political security which is to come, not from the absence of danger
but from the assumed ignorance of those who might be dangerous. An
understanding of the nature of the privilege will come before fitness
for its exercise;--and then there may be danger. Thus we are driven back
to the great question whether a country is fit for parliamentary
institutions in which the body of the population is unfit for the
privilege of voting.
Our duty to the Kafir of course is to civilize him,--so to treat him
that as years roll on he will manifestly be the better for our coming to
his land. I do not think that missionaries will do this, or fractions of
land,--little Kafrarias, as it may be, separated off for their uses. The
present position of Kreli and his Galekas who were to have dwelt in
peace on their own territory across the Kei, is proof of this. The iron
rod certainly will not do it. Nor will the franchise. But equality of
law, equality of treatment, will do it;--and, I am glad to say, has
already gone far towards doing it. The Kafir can make his own contract
for his own labour the same as a white man;--can leave his job of work
or take it as independently as the white workman;--but not more so.
Encouraged by this treatment he is travelling hither and thither in
quest of work, and is quickly learning that order and those wants which
together make the only sure road to civilization.
The stranger in South Africa will constantly be told that the coloured
man will not work, and that this is the one insuperable cause by which
the progress of the country is impeded. It will be the first word
whispered into his ear when he arrives, and the last assurance hurled
after him as he leaves the coast. And yet during his whole sojourn in
the country he will see all the work of the world around him done by
the hands of coloured people. It will be so in Capetown far away from
the Kafirs. It will be so on the homesteads of the Dutch in the western
province. It will be so in the thriving commercial towns of the eastern
province. From one end of Natal to the other he will find that all the
work is done by Zulus. It will be the same in the Transvaal and the same
even in the Orange Free State. Even there whenever work is done for
wages it is done by coloured hands. When he gets to the Diamond Fields,
he will find the mines swarming with black labour. And yet he will be
told that the “nigger” will not work!
The meaning of the assertion is this;--that the “nigger” cannot be made
to work whether he will or no. He will work for a day or two, perhaps a
week or two, at a rate of wages sufficient to supply his wants for
double the time, and will then decline, with a smile, to work any longer
just then,--let the employer’s need be what it may. Now the employer has
old European ideas in his head, even though he may have been born in the
Colony. The poor rural labourer in England must work. He cannot live for
four days on the wages of two. If he were to decline there would be the
poor house, the Guardians, and all the horrors of Bumbledom before him.
He therefore must work. And that “must,” which is known to exist as to
the labouring Englishman and labouring Frenchman, creates a feeling that
a similar necessity should coerce the Kafir. Doubtless it will come to
be so. It is one of the penalties of civilization,--a penalty, or, shall
we say, a blessing. But, till it does come, it cannot be
assumed,--without a retrogression to slavery. Men in South Africa, the
employers of much labour and the would-be employers of more, talk of the
English vagrancy laws,--alleging that these Kafirs are vagrants, and
should be treated as vagrants would be treated in England;--as though
the law in England compelled any man to work who had means of living
without work. The law in England will not make the Duke of ---- work; nor
will it make Hodge work if Hodge has 2s. a day of his own to live on and
behaves himself.
This cry as to labour and the want of labour, is in truth a question of
wages. A farmer in England will too often feel that the little profit of
his farm is being carried away by that extra 2s. a week which the state
of the labour market compels him to pay to his workmen. The rise of
wages among the coloured people in South Africa has been much quicker
than it ever was in England. In parts of Natal a Zulu may still be hired
for his diet of Indian corn and 7s. a month. In Kafraria, about King
Williamstown, men were earning 2s. 6d. a day when I was there. I have
seen coloured labourers earning 4s. 6d. a day for the simple duty of
washing wool. All this has to equalize itself, and while it is doing so,
of course there is difficulty. The white man thinks that the solution of
the difficulty should be left to him. It is disparaging to his pride
that the black man should be so far master of the situation as to be
able to fix his own wages.
In the meantime, however, the matter is fixed. The work is done by black
men. They plough, they reap; they herd and shear the sheep; they drive
the oxen; they load the waggons; they carry the bricks; they draw the
water; they hew the wood; they brush the clothes; they clean the boots;
they run the posts; they make the roads; they wait at table; they cook
the food; they wash the wool; they press the grapes; they kill the beef
and mutton; they dig the gardens; they plaster the walls; they feed the
horses;--and they find the diamonds. A South African farmer and a South
African wool grower and a South African shopkeeper will all boast that
South Africa is a productive country. If it be so she is productive
altogether by means of black labour.
Another allegation very common in the mouth of the “iron-rodders” is
that the Kafir--steals. “A nasty beastly thief that will never leave
your cattle alone.” The eastern province Cape Colony farmer seems to
think that he of all men ought to be made exempt by some special law
from the predatory iniquities of his neighbours. I fear the Kafir does
occasionally steal sheep and cattle. Up in the Diamond Fields he steals
diamonds,--the diamonds, that is, which he himself finds. The
accusations which I have heard against Kafirs, as to stealing, begin and
end here. It is certainly the case that a man used to the ways of the
country will leave his money and his jewelry about among Kafirs, with a
perfect sense of security, who will lock up everything with the greatest
care when some loafing European is seen about. I remember well how I was
warned to be careful about my bag at the little Inn in Natal, because a
few British soldiers had quartered themselves for the night in front of
the house. The Innkeeper was an Englishman, and probably knew what he
was talking about.
The Kafirs ought not to steal cattle. So much may be admitted. And if
everything was as it ought to be there would be no thieves in London.
But perhaps of all dishonest raids the most natural is that made by a
Savage on beasts which are running on the hills which used to belong to
his fathers. Wealth to him is represented by cattle, and the wealth of
his tribe all came from its land. To drive cattle has to his mind none
of the meanness of stealing. How long is it since the same feeling
prevailed among Englishmen and Scotchmen living on the borders? It is
much the same in regard to diamonds. They are found in the ground, and
why should not the treasures of the ground be as free to the Kafir as to
his employer? I am using the Kafir’s argument;--not my own. I know, as
does my reader, and as do the angry white men in South Africa, that the
Kafir has contracted for wages to give up what he finds to his employer.
I know that the employer has paid for a license to use the bit of land,
and that the Kafir has not. I know that a proper understanding as to
meum and tuum would prevent the Kafir from secreting the little stone
between his toes. But there is much of this which the Kafir cannot yet
have learned. Taking the honesty and the dishonesty of the Kafir
together, we shall find that it is the former which is remarkable.
The great question of the day in England as to the countries which I
have just visited is that of Confederation. The Permissive Bill which
was passed last Session,--1877,--entitles me to say that it is the
opinion of the Government at home that such Confederation should be
consummated in South Africa within the next three or four years. Then
there arise two questions,--whether it is practicable, and if
practicable whether it is expedient. I myself with such weak voice as I
possess have advocated Australian Confederation. I have greatly rejoiced
at Canadian Confederation. My sympathies were in favour of West Indian
Confederation. I left England hoping that I might advocate South African
Confederation. But, alas, I have come to think it inexpedient,--and, if
expedient, still impracticable. A Confederation of States implies some
identity of interests. In any coming together of Colonies under one
flag, one Colony must have an ascendancy. Population will give this, and
wealth,--and the position of the chosen capital. It clearly was so in
Canada. In South Africa that preponderance would certainly be with the
Cape Colony. I cannot conceive any capital to be possible other than
Capetown. Then arises the question whether the other provinces of South
Africa can improve their condition by identifying themselves with the
Cape Colony. They who know Natal will I think agree with me that Natal
will never consent to send ten legislators to a Congress at Capetown
where they would be wholly inefficient to prevent the carrying of
measures agreeable to the Constitution of the Cape Colony but averse to
its own theory of Government. I have described the franchise of the Cape
Colony. I am well aware that Confederation would not compel one State to
adopt the same franchise as another. But Natal will never willingly put
herself into the same boat with a Colony in which the negro vote may in
a few years become predominant over the white. In Natal there are
320,000 coloured people to 20,000 white. She might still exclude the
coloured man from her own hustings as she does now; but she will hardly
allow her own poor ten members of a common Congress to be annihilated
by the votes of members who may not improbably be returned by coloured
persons, and who may not impossibly be coloured persons themselves.
With the Transvaal the Government at home may do as it pleases. At the
present moment it is altogether at the disposal of the Crown. If the
Cape Colony would consent to take it the Transvaal can be annexed
to-morrow without any ceremony of Confederation. The Cape Colony would
in the first place probably desire to be secured from any repayment of
the debts of the late Republic. This would not be Confederation, though
in this way the Cape Colony, which will soon have swallowed up
Griqualand West, would be enabled to walk round the Free State. But the
Boers of the Transvaal would, if consulted, be as little inclined to
submit themselves to the coloured political influence of the Cape as
would the people of Natal. What should they do in a Parliament of which
they do not understand the language? Therefore I think Confederation to
be inexpedient.
But though the Cape Colony were to walk round the Free State so as to
join the Transvaal,--though it were even to walk on and reach the
Eastern Sea by including Natal,--still it would only have gone round the
Free State and not have absorbed it. I understand that Confederation
without the Free State would not be thought sufficiently complete to
answer the purpose of the Colonial Office at home. And as I think that
the Free State will not confederate, for reasons which I have given when
writing about the Free State, I think that Confederation is
impracticable.
It is again the great question of coloured races,--the question which
must dominate all other questions in South Africa. Confederation of
adjacent Colonies may be very good for white men who can rule
themselves, and yet not suit the condition of territories in which
coloured men have to be ruled under circumstances which may be
essentially different in different States.
Looking back at our dominion over South Africa which has now lasted for
nearly three quarters of a century I think that we have cause for
national pride. We have on the whole been honest and humane, and the
errors into which we have fallen have not been greater than the extreme
difficulty of the situation has made, if not necessary, at any rate
natural. When we examine the operations of different Governors as they
have succeeded each other, and read the varying instructions with which
those Governors have been primed from the Colonial Office, it is
impossible not to see that the peculiar bias of one Secretary of State
succeeding to that of another has produced vacillations. There has been
a want of what I have once before ventured to call “official tradition.”
The intention of Great Britain as to her Colonies as expressed by
Parliament has not been made sufficiently plain for the guidance of the
Colonial Office. This shewed itself perhaps more signally than elsewhere
in Lord Glenelg’s condemnation of Sir Benjamin D’Urban at the close of
the third Kafir war in 1835, when he enunciated a policy which was not
compatible with the maintenance of British authority in South
Africa,--which had to be speedily revoked,--but which could not be
revoked till every Kafir had been taught that England, across the seas,
was afraid of him. Again I think that by vacillating policy we foolishly
forced upon the Dutch the necessity of creating Republics, first across
the Vaal and then between the Vaal and the Orange, when, but a short
time before, we had refused them permission to do the same thing in
Natal. I myself think that there should have been no Republic;--that in
the Transvaal, and in the Orange State, as in Natal, we should have
recognized the necessity of providing Government for our migrating
subjects.
But in all this there has been no lust of power, no dishonesty. There
has been little, if anything, of mean parsimony. In that matter of the
Diamond Fields as to which the accusations against the Colonial Office
have been the heaviest, I feel assured not only of the justice but of
the wisdom of what was done. Had we not assumed the duty of government
at Kimberley, Kimberley would have been ungovernable.
But the question which is of all the one of moment is the condition of
the coloured races. Just now there is still continued among a small
fraction of them a disturbance which the opponents of the present
Government in the Cape Colony delight to call a War. In spite of this,
throughout the length and breadth of South Africa,--even in what is
still called Kreli’s country,--the coloured man has been benefitted by
our coming. He has a better hut, better food, better clothing, better
education, more liberty, less to fear and more to get, than he had when
we came among him, or that he would have enjoyed had we not come. If
this be so, we ought to be contented with what our Government has done.
INDEX.
THE CAPE COLONY.
Acres under cultivation, i. 232
Bain’s Kloof, i. 130
Bathurst, i. 177
Bowker, Mr., i. 93
Brandy, i. 232
British troops, i. 194
Caledon, i. 156
Caledon Missionary Institution, i. 150
Cango Caves, i. 117
Cape Carta, i. 185
Cape Smoke, i. 116
Capetown, i. 68
Catberg, i. 226
Cathedral, The, i. 73
Ceres, i. 133
Cogman’s Pass, i. 145
Confederation, i. 49
Constantia, i. 82
Debe Nek, i. 193
Diamonds found, i. 44
Diaz, Bartholomew, i. 10
D’Urban, Sir Benjamin, i. 37
Dutch and English Languages, i. 32
Dutch, as divided from English, i. 56
Dutch, First condition of, i. 13
East London, i. 202
Education of Kafirs, i. 209
English occupation, i. 25
Esselin, M., i. 136
Feathers, manner of selling, i. 163
Federation, i. 49
Fort Brown, i. 186
Franchise, The, i. 89
French, Coming of, i. 20
George, i. 103
Germans, in British Kafraria, i. 184
Glenelg, Lord, i. 37
Grahamstown, i. 167
Healdtown, i. 187, 211
Hot Spring, i. 139
Hottentots, Manumission of, i. 33
Hottentots, their name, i. 16
Hunting a buck, i. 155
Hunting in Kafraria, i. 190
“Iron Rod” School, i. 227
Irrigation, i. 143, 232
Kafir Chiefs, i. 199
Kafir Famine, i. 43
Kafir Hymns, i. 213
Kafir Labour, i. 178
Kafir Schools, i. 207
Kafir War, 1st, i. 29
“ 2nd, i. 36
“ 3rd, i. 36
“ 4th, i. 39
“ 5th, i. 41
Kafirs at school, i. 221
Kafirs, Treatment of, i. 182
Kafraria, British, i. 181
Kalk Bay, i. 81
Karoo, The, i. 115
King Williamstown, i. 198
Knysna, The, i. 105
Legislative Assembly, i. 95
Legislative Council, i. 87
Library, The Capetown, i. 74
Lovedale, i. 217
Malmesbury, i. 122
Mitchell’s Pass, i. 131
Molteno, Mr., i. 95
Montague Pass, i. 113
Mossel Bay, i. 99
Mountains, i. 141
Mounted Police, i. 201
Museum, The, i. 73
Observatory, The, i. 78
Oodtahoorn, i. 115
Orange Free State, i. 52
Ostriches, i. 170
Paarl, The, i. 123
Pacaltsdorp, i. 111
Panmure, i. 206
Parliamentary Government, i. 45, 90
Peeltown, i. 223
Population of South Africa, i. 51, 234
Port Alfred, i. 176
Port Elizabeth, i. 160
Portuguese, The, i. 10
Provinces, i. 47
Queenstown, i. 226
Railways, i. 48, 79, 123
Riebeek, Jan van, i. 13
Robertson, i. 145
Sandilli, Chief of the Gaikas, i. 198
Siwani, i. 199
Slagter’s Nek, i. 30
Slavery, Abolition of, i. 33
Slaves, First landed, i. 14
Slaves, their manumission, i. 35
Solomon, Mr. Saul, i. 96
Somerset, East, i. 157
Stellenbosch, i. 157
Swellendam, i. 148
Tradouw, The, i. 149
Uitenhage, i. 163
Vasco da Gama, i. 11
Vines, i. 232
Wages, i. 235
Wagon-makers’ valley, i. 130
Wheat, i. 231
Wine, i. 127, 232
Wool, i. 228
Wool-washing, i. 101
Worcester, i. 135
Wynberg, i. 80
Zonnebloom, i. 211
NATAL.
Apollo, i. 279
Bar, The sand bar at Durban, i. 264
Bathing, i. 298
Berea, The, i. 275
Cathedral, The, i. 284
Cetywayo, i. 307
Chaka, the Zulu Chief, i. 243, 306
Coal, i. 352
Colenso, Bishop, i. 258, 284
Coolie Labour, i. 270
Delagoa Bay, i. 307
Dingaan, the Zulu Chief, i. 247, 307
Durban, i. 243
Dutch, The. How they entered Natal, i. 246
Estcourt, i. 348
Executive, The, i. 295
Expense of living, i. 287
Farewell, Mr., i. 243
Farmer, English, i. 299
German village, i. 300
Glenelg, Lord, i. 251
Greyton, i. 304
Kafir Labour, i. 273
Langalibalele, i. 258, 311, 327
Legislative Council, Members of, i. 260
Legislature, The, i. 295
Maritz, Gerrit, i. 245
Missionaries, The, i. 311
Newcastle, i. 344, 349
Park, The, i. 276
Pieter Maritzburg, i. 285
Pine, Sir B., Second Governor, i. 258
Pinetown, i. 283
Population, i. 277
Potgieter, Hendrick, i. 245
Pretorius, Andreas, i. 256
Railways, i. 265
Retief, Pieter, i. 247
Soldiers in Natal, i. 292
Speaking, After dinner, i. 291
Sugar, i. 267
Travelling, Difficulties of, i. 340
Trees, Planting of, i. 302
Volksraad, The, i. 255
War declared with the Dutch, i. 252
West, Mr., First Governor, i. 256
Wolseley, Sir Garnet; his coming, i. 260
York, Emigrants from, i. 258
Zulu dress, i. 318
Zulu honesty, i. 322
Zulu Labour, i. 273, 323
Zululand, i. 313
Zulus, i. 306
Zulus, Scarcity of, i. 347
THE TRANSVAAL.
Annexation, Effects of, ii. 61
Apprentices, ii. 33
Blignaut’s punt, ii. 127
Bloomhof, ii. 123
Boers, ii. 9
Boundaries, ii. 26
Burgers, Mr., ii. 39, 47, 65
Carnarvon, Lord, to Mr. Burgers, ii. 47
Christiana, ii. 123
Coal, ii. 20, 96
Copper, ii. 96
Cost of Living, ii. 77
Dishonesty, ii. 14
Domestic service, ii. 77
Dutchmen, old and new, ii. 115
Education, ii. 13, 81
Eersteling, ii. 93
Elton, Captain, ii. 93
Farmers’ houses, ii. 11
Farms, The size of, ii. 21
Freying, ii. 15
Fruits, ii. 111
Gardens, ii. 71
Gold, ii. 90
Heidelberg, ii. 23
Hollander, The, ii. 18
House on fire, ii. 52
Keate’s award, ii. 39, 123
Klerksdorp, ii. 32
Land, Division of, ii. 108
Loan, Proposed, for railway, ii. 101
Lydenburg district, ii. 94
Marabas Stad, ii. 93
Mazulekatze, ii. 31
Nichtmaal, The, ii. 75
Pilgrim’s Rest, ii. 94
Potchefstroom, ii. 32, 118
Pretoria, ii. 25, 67
Pretorius, Andreas, or the elder, ii. 32, 68
Pretorius, M. W., the younger, ii. 37, 69
Proclamation, The, ii. 55
Railways, ii. 98
Saltpan, The, ii. 86
Secocoeni, ii. 46
Shepstone, Sir Theophilus, ii. 47, 53
Slavery, ii. 35
Standees Drift, ii. 4, 19
Tatin, ii. 91
Taxes not paid, ii. 48
Transvaal, Condition of, ii. 52, 89
Transvaal Mails, ii. 8
Troops in the Transvaal, ii. 22
Wheat, ii. 107
Wonder Fontein, ii. 116
GRIQUALAND WEST.
Annexation to Cape Colony, ii. 151
Barkly, ii. 164
Brand, Mr., ii. 150
British rule--a blessing, ii. 148
Bultfontein, ii. 169
Churches at Kimberley, ii. 206
Colesberg Kopje, ii. 163, 169
Custom Duties, Increase of, ii. 200
De Beer, ii. 163
Diamond dealers, ii. 196
Diamond Fields a separate Colony, ii. 137, 151
Diamond-stealing, ii. 182, 197
Diamonds, how sent to Europe, ii. 195
Diamonds, imperfect, ii. 202
Diamonds, Notice of, in 1760, ii. 161
Diamonds--Off colours, ii. 196
Du Toit’s Pan, ii. 169
Franchise, The, ii. 167
Guns, Sale of, ii. 198
Hebron, ii. 164
Hospitals at Kimberley, ii. 205
Jacobs, Mr., ii. 162
Kimberley, ii. 173, 186
Kimberley Mine, ii. 169, 172, 174
Klipdrift, ii. 164
Kok, Adam, ii. 138
Lanyon, Major, ii. 137
Mine, Subdivision of, ii. 177
Modder, The, ii. 168
Morton, Mr., ii. 161
New Hush, The, ii. 173
No Man’s Land, ii. 140
Old De Beers, ii. 169
Orange Free State: its claims, ii. 139;
compensation given, ii. 140
O’Reilly, Mr., ii. 162
Population, ii. 166
Prison at Kimberley, ii. 206
Religion for Kafirs, ii. 188
River diggings, ii. 167
Southey, Mr., ii. 164
Star of South Africa, ii. 163
Vaal, The, ii. 168
Van Niekerk, Mr., ii. 162
Van Wyk, Mr., ii. 169
Vooruitzuit Farm, ii. 153, 172
Waterboer, Andreas, ii. 140, 141
Waterboer, Nicholas, ii. 138, 144
Work for Kafirs, ii. 187
THE ORANGE FREE STATE.
Baralongs, The, ii. 224
Basutos, ii. 218, 224
Bloemfontein, ii. 217, 236, 266, 261
Boers, The, ii. 235, 241
Boom Plats, Battle of, ii. 218
Boshof, Mr., ii. 216, 224
Boundaries of the Cape Colony, ii. 212
Brand, Mr., ii. 215, 226, 227, 262
Burgers, Mr., ii. 216
Cetywayo, ii. 216
Churches, ii. 267
Clerk, Sir George, ii. 223, 232
Custom Duties, ii. 246
Dams for water, ii. 236
Difficulties of the State, ii. 225
English language, ii. 235, 265
Executive, The, ii. 255
Fiji Islands, ii. 211
Franchise, The, ii. 253
Grey, Sir George, ii. 232
Hotel, The, ii. 259
Independence, Love of, ii. 243, 249
Irrigation, ii. 237
Maitland, Sir Peregrine, ii. 217
Ministers, Colonial, ii. 229
Moshef, ii. 215, 224
Napier, Sir George, ii. 216
Nichtmaal, The, ii. 267
Pretorius, Mr., ii. 215, 217, 224
Public offices, ii. 258
Railway, Proposed, ii. 263
Schools, ii. 263
Sovereignty, The, established, ii. 219;
abandoned, ii. 221
Telegraph wires, ii. 263
Treaty, Our, with the Free State, ii. 223
Vacillation of our policy, ii. 210
Volksraad, The, ii. 243, 251
Warden, Major, ii. 217
NATIVE TERRITORIES.
Aliwal North, Convention at, ii. 318
Baralong Law, ii. 282
Baralong, The tribe, ii. 275, 311
Basutos, The, ii. 277, 308, 310
Bechuanas, The, ii. 276, 311
Bomvanas, The, ii. 289, 308
Bowker, Mr., ii. 314
British Kafraria, ii. 287
Burial of a Chief, ii. 304
Bushmen, ii. 313, 326
Cannibalism, ii. 313
Casselin, M., ii. 313
Cogha, The River, ii. 291
Conquered Territory, ii. 317
Copper, ii. 321
Cultivation of land, ii. 284
Damaraland, ii. 320
Daniel, Mr., ii. 277
East London, ii. 286
Expense of the wars, ii. 297
Fingos, The, ii. 292, 308
Gaikas, ii. 287, 298
Galekaland, Occupation of, ii. 291
Galekas, ii. 287, 298, 308
Gatberg, The, ii. 307
Great Fish River, ii. 287, 292
Griquas--Bastards, ii. 308
Hintsa, ii. 292
Höhne, Mr., ii. 277
Hottentots, ii. 320
Huts at Thaba ’Ncho, ii. 279
Jenkins, Mrs., ii. 309
Justice, Administration of, ii. 305
Kafir habits, ii. 299
Kafir, What is a, ii. 287
Kafraria, ii. 287
Keiskamma, The, ii. 292
Kei, The River, ii. 286, 291
King Williamstown, ii. 286
Kok’s, Adam, Land, ii. 307
Korannas, ii. 320, 326
Kreli, ii. 286, 291, 294
Langalibalele, ii. 297
Maralong, The, language, ii. 278
Maroco, The Baralong Chief, ii. 277, 281, 316
Moni, a sub chief, ii. 289
Moriah, ii. 312
Moshesh, ii. 315
Namaqualand, ii. 320
Ngquika, ii. 288
Ookiep Mine, ii. 321, 324
Phillips and King, Messrs., ii. 323
Poisoning, ii. 283
Pondomisi, ii. 308
Pondos, ii. 288, 308
Population of Transkeian districts, ii. 308
Port Nolloth, ii. 323
Rain-makers, ii. 306
Robben Island, ii. 296
Sandilli, ii. 287
Sapena, The Assistant Chief, ii. 278
Scotchman at Thaba ’Ncho, ii. 285
South Africa--British annexation, ii. 296
Springbok Fontein, ii. 321
St. John River, ii. 307, 309
Tambookies, ii. 288
Taxes in Basutoland, ii. 318
Tembus, ii. 288, 308
Thaba Bosio, ii. 312
Thaba ’Ncho, ii. 275, 311
Theal, Mr., his description of Namaqualand, ii. 322
Transkeian Territory, ii. 307
Witch-doctors, ii. 306
Wodehouse, Sir P., ii. 290, 317
Xosas, ii. 288
Zwidi, ii. 289
THE END.
PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO., LIMITED, CITY ROAD, LONDON.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In 1864 by a treaty between the Portuguese and the Republic the
Lobombo range of mountains was agreed upon as a boundary between
them, but I am not aware that the natives living to the east of these
mountains were ever made a party to this treaty.
[2] Vol. ii. p. 164.
[3] “South Africa,” by John Noble, p. 173 B.
[4] The Italics are my own.
[5] I believe he did receive the stipend all through.
[6] The purchasers were in treaty for De Beer’s farm at the time when
the first diamond was found by a lady’s parasol on the little hill
where is now the Kimberley mine, and £600 was added to the purchase
money in consequence. It is calculated that diamonds to the value of
£12,000,000 have since been extracted from the mine.
[7] I find the story told with slight variation by different persons.
I have taken the version published in the second edition of Messrs.
Silver’s Handbook, having found ample reason to trust the accuracy of
that compilation. See p. 378 of that volume.
[8] This is an abominable word, coined as I believe for the use of the
British Diamond Fields;--but it has become so common that it would be
affectation to avoid the use of it.
[9] Since this was written a mail steamer with a large amount of these
diamonds among the mails has gone to the bottom of the sea. The mails,
and with the mails, the diamonds have been recovered; but in such a
condition that they cannot be recognised and given up to the proper
owners. They are lying at the General Post Office, and how to dispose
of them nobody knows.
[10] In 1869 the amount was £295,661. In 1875 it was £735,380. In 1869
the total revenue was £580,026. In 1875 it was £1,602,918; the increase
being nearly to three-fold. The increase in the expenditure was still
greater;--but that only shews that the Colony found itself sufficiently
prosperous to be justified in borrowing money for the making of
railroads. The reader must bear in mind that these Custom Duties were
all received and pocketed by the Cape Colony, though a large proportion
of them was levied on goods to be consumed in the Diamond Fields. As
I have stated elsewhere, the Cape Colony has in this respect been a
cormorant, swallowing what did not rightfully belong to her.
[11] Mr. Theal’s “History of South Africa,” vol. ii. p. 147.
[12] Lord Carnarvon was Colonial Secretary when this was written.
[13] Nevertheless there is a beautifully self-asserting clause in a
treaty made in 1876 between the Orange Free State and Portugal, which
provides--“That ships sailing under the flag of the Orange Free State
shall in every respect enjoy the same treatment and shall not be liable
to higher duties than Portuguese vessels.”
[14] What I have said here as to duties levied say at Fort Elizabeth
on goods for the Orange Free State applies equally to goods for the
Transvaal landed in Natal at Durban.
[15] Moselekatze himself was no doubt a Zulu; but the Matabeles whom he
ruled were probably a people over whom he had become master when he ran
away from Zululand.
[16] The Legislature of the Cape of Good Hope has already taken steps
towards the annexation of this territory by sending a Commissioner
north of the Orange River, both to Great Namaqualand and Damaraland to
ascertain the wish of the natives.
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