On Sunday the 17th the council of policy assembled, when the despatch of the directors was read. It announced that the governor Willem Adriaan van der Stel, the secunde Samuel Elsevier, the clergyman Petrus Kalden, and the landdrost Jan Starrenburg were removed from office and ordered to proceed to Europe with the least possible delay. That everything might be conducted fairly and justly with regard to them, however, they were allowed to retain their rank and pay until they should have an opportunity of clearing themselves from the charges against them, if that was possible. The governor’s brother, Frans van der Stel, was to betake himself to some place outside of the Company’s possessions. The burghers were acquitted of the absurd charge of conspiracy, sedition, mutiny, and rebellion, they were reinstated in all their former rights and privileges, the three sent to Europe were restored to their homes at the Company’s expense, and orders were given that if any were in prison in the colony they should immediately be released. The governor was ordered to pay out of his own pocket at the rate of 6s. 8d. each for the woolled sheep he had acquired, and the wine and slaughter licenses were to be issued at once in the same manner as had been the custom before he altered them to suit his own purposes.

It was announced that Louis van Assenburgh, who had previously been an officer in the army of the German emperor, had been appointed governor, and Johan Cornelis d’Ableing, recently commander at Palembang, secunde. In case neither of these should arrive in the colony at an early date, the administration was to be assumed by the independent fiscal Johan Blesius and the other members of the council of policy acting as a commission.[87]

The Mauritius packet had not yet sailed, and the fiscal, who was directed by the assembly of seventeen to carry out their instructions, at once set at liberty the five burghers Adam Tas, Jacob Louw, Jacobus van Brakel, Hercules du Pré, and Guillaume du Toit. Tidings that they were to be released and that the tyranny of the governor was at an end had reached the townspeople, and the principal inhabitants assembled on the open ground before the castle to welcome their countrymen as they landed on the jetty or came from the dungeons in which they had been confined, and great was the joy and sincere were the thanks poured out to the God of heaven, mingled with gratitude to the directors, that justice had triumphed and oppression and misrule were things of the past. Of what occurred at Stellenbosch and Drakenstein when the glad tidings reached those places no information is given in our archives, but it may be taken as certain that the joy there was at least as great and deepfelt as it was in Capetown. To the men of those districts it was due that tyranny and corruption had been overthrown, and from that time forward Stellenbosch and Drakenstein have been the centres of Dutch South African thought and action to a much greater extent than any other parts of the country.

There is a legend that the man who suffered most from violence henceforth called his farm Libertas, to signify that freedom had been won, or, as he wittily explained to inquirers as to the meaning of the term, to denote that Tas was free. The place is still so called.

The council resolved that the administration should be transferred to the fiscal and others on the 15th of May, if the newly-appointed secunde, who was on his way out, should not arrive before that date. It was Sunday, and the reverend Mr. Kalden preached twice in the church.

During the week an arrangement was made by which the reverend Messrs. Le Boucq and Bek should conduct the services on alternate Sundays in Capetown, and Mr. Kalden ceased to officiate. Starrenburg, whose last report was that the mutineers were constantly reviling him and that only a Masaniello was wanting to produce an open outbreak, was sent by the fiscal on board a ship in the return fleet. An officer named Samuel Martin de Meurs was appointed to act provisionally as landdrost.

Johan Cornelis d’Ableing, the newly-appointed secunde, arrived on the 6th of May 1707. He was a nephew of the recalled governor Van der Stel, and, under pretence that the books required to be balanced, postponed taking over the administration until the 3rd of June. The recalled officials could not then leave for Europe before the arrival of the homeward bound fleet of the following year.

From the vast quantity of contemporaneous printed and manuscript matter relating to the conduct of Willem Adriaan van der Stel, the views of the directors and of the colonists concerning the government of the country and the rights of its people can be gathered with great precision. In the Netherlands at that period representative institutions, such as are now believed to be indispensable to liberty, were unknown. Yet the people were free in reality as well as in name. There is not a word expressing a wish on the part of the burghers for an alteration in the form of government, what they desired being merely that the administration should be placed in honest hands, and that their rights should be respected.

The directors desired to have here a large body of freemen in comfortable circumstances, loyal to the fatherland, ready and willing to assist in the defence of the colony if attacked, enjoying the same rights as their peers in Europe, and without much diversity of rank or position. They stated clearly and distinctly that the closer the equality between the burghers could be preserved the more satisfactory it would be to them. Positive orders were issued that large tracts of land, upon which several families could obtain a living, were not to be granted to any individual.

In giving directions concerning Vergelegen, they stated that as its grant by the commissioner Valckenier to the governor was improper and had never been reported to them and much less had their approval been requested or given, they resumed possession of the ground. The large dwelling-house upon it, being adapted for ostentation and not for the use of a farmer, must be broken down. The late governor could sell the materials for his own benefit. The other buildings could be fairly valued, and the amount be paid to Mr. Van der Stel, or he could break them down and dispose of the materials if he preferred to do so.

An estate such as Vergelegen would by many people to-day be considered useful as a model. Van der Stel had laid it out with the choicest vines, plants, and trees, and was making extensive experiments there. The ground was the most skilfully tilled in the whole country. But the directors held that such a farm as this, owned by one individual and cultivated chiefly by slave labour, could not be of the same advantage to the infant colony as a number of smaller ones, each in possession of a sturdy European proprietor. It was therefore not to be sold as a single estate, but was to be divided into several farms, each of which was to be disposed of by public auction separately from the others.

Frans van der Stel was required to sell his property and remove to some country not included in the Company’s charter. The former governor Simon van der Stel was left in possession of his farm Constantia, but directions were given that upon his death the other land which he held should revert to the Company.

Emphatic instructions were issued that for the future, in accordance with the orders of the 26th of April 1668, no servant of the Company, from the highest to the lowest, was to own or lease land in the colony, or to trade directly or indirectly in corn, wine, or cattle. Those who had landed property could sell it, but if they should not do so within a reasonable period, it would be confiscated. The burghers were not to be molested in their right to dispose of their cattle or the produce of their ground in any way that suited them. They were to be governed in accordance with law and justice.

On their part, the colonists claimed exactly the same rights as if they were still living in the fatherland. They held that any restrictions to which the early burghers had agreed were of a temporary nature, and affected only those who had consented to them. In their opinion they had forfeited nothing by removal to a dependency, and the violence displayed by the governor towards Adam Tas and his associates was as outrageous as if it had taken place in the city of Amsterdam. They asserted their undoubted right to personal liberty, to exemption from arrest unless under reasonable suspicion of crime, to admission to bail, to speedy trial before a proper court of justice, to freedom to sell to anyone, burgher or foreigner, whatever their land produced, after the tithes had been paid and the Company’s needs had been supplied, except under special circumstances when restriction was needed for the good of the community. And these claims, made in as explicit terms as they could be to-day by an Englishman living in a crown colony, were not challenged by the directors or the Indian authorities, but were accepted by every one as unquestioned. They were the ideals of the proper working and spirit of government held by the great bulk of the people of the Netherlands at the beginning of the eighteenth century, before democratic principles or socialistic views had gained ground among the labouring classes or were even dimly foreshadowed in the minds of men who toiled with their hands for their bread. Such a system answered admirably in the fatherland, and the Cape burghers desired to maintain it unimpaired in South Africa.

Mr. Van der Stel retired to Vergelegen, and began arranging matters so that he could leave the country with as little pecuniary loss as possible. His friends and connections in Amsterdam were numerous and influential, and he cherished the hope that through their agency the directors might be induced to leave him in possession of the estate. He does not seem to have realised how serious his offences had been and how impossible it was that he should be forgiven. But as he had now only his own servants and slaves to work with, it was necessary to contract his farming operations, and under any circumstances it would be wise to dispose of his great flocks and herds with the least possible delay. For this, so unlike the case of the men whom he had hurried out of the colony, he had ample time. There is very little information in the archives of occurrences at Vergelegen during those months, though several commissions visited the place, so nothing beyond what is here mentioned can be related.

On the 25th of January 1708 Governor Louis van Assenburgh arrived. He had been eight months on the passage from Holland, and had been obliged to put into a port on the coast of Brazil. In the same ship with the governor was Henning Huising, one of the deported burghers, who had entered into a contract with the directors for the supply of half the meat required by the Company at the Cape during the next three years, the object of dividing the contract being to secure competition in purchasing cattle from the burghers. Pieter van der Byl and Ferdinandus Appel had reached the colony seven months before.

When the arrival of the governor was known at Vergelegen, Mr. Van der Stel sent a petition to the council of policy requesting that he might be allowed to retain the estate a few months longer, as he had hopes that by the next fleet from Europe intelligence would be received that the directors had mitigated their decision. As compliance with this request would have been directly opposed to the orders of the 30th of October 1706, a matter which he seemed to regard as of little importance, but which the new governor decidedly objected to, the council refused to entertain it, and the utmost that he could obtain was permission to press the grapes then ripening and dispose of half the wine on his own account, the other half to be for the Company. The quantity pressed was fifty-six leggers of five hundred and seventy-six litres each.

On the 23rd of February 1708 Henning Huising summoned Mr. Van der Stel before the court of justice for £3,056 in addition to the value of nine thousand sheep. This gave the late governor an opportunity to request the council of policy to allow him to remain in South Africa another year, in order to get evidence to defend himself in this case; but upon Huising stating that he preferred bringing the action in Holland to being the means of keeping Van der Stel longer in the colony, the council declined to accede to his request.

On the 23rd of April 1708 the return fleet of this year sailed from Table Bay for Europe, having on board the late governor, secunde, and clergyman of Capetown with their families. Upon their arrival at Amsterdam Van der Stel and Elsevier were dismissed from the Company’s service. They had left agents in the colony to wind up their affairs and to transmit the proceeds to them. Mr. Kalden was more fortunate, for, though his possession of a farm was not approved of, he did not come in the same category as members of the council and of the court of justice, and he was able to make a good defence as far as his motives were concerned. He was retained in the service, and several years afterwards was sent as a chaplain to India.

Vergelegen was divided into four farms, which were sold by auction in October 1709. The cultivated land was found on measurement to be six hundred and thirteen morgen in extent. The large dwelling-house was broken down, and the material was sold for Van der Stel’s benefit. The other buildings were taken over by the Company for £625, though the materials of which they were constructed were appraised at a much higher sum. The four farms brought £1,695 at public sale, the purchasers being Barend Gildenhuis, Jacobus van der Heiden, Jacob Malan, and the widow of Gerrit Cloete.

Frans van der Stel returned to Europe in the same fleet with his brother, and took up his residence in Amsterdam. His wife, Johanna Wessels, was a daughter of one of the leading burghers of the colony. She remained behind with her parents to dispose of the property to the best advantage, and did not leave to rejoin her husband until April 1717.

After his dismissal from the Company’s service, Willem Adriaan van der Stel was in the most unenviable position that can be imagined, though he was now possessed of considerable wealth. In the city of Amsterdam, where he had once been a magistrate and where he had numerous respectable relatives and connections, he was a disgraced man. In order to try to make his conduct appear less reprehensible in the eyes of the public, he prepared and published the volume called the Korte Deductie, in which the most serious of his offences were entirely ignored, and the certificate in his favour and the forced declarations from several burghers that have been described were set forth as proofs of his innocence with regard to others. As may well be believed, such a volume completely failed in its object. The burghers in South Africa were under no necessity to reply to it, for its weakness was evident to every one, but two of them did so, and in their Contra Deductie published such a number of depositions made under oath as utterly to destroy it.

There is one circumstance in connection with this matter that has been commented upon by several historians, notably by the late Judge Watermeyer in his Lectures, that is the lightness of the punishment inflicted on Van der Stel. Mr. Watermeyer attributed it to the assembly of seventeen not feeling aversion towards his tyranny. But that view is not borne out by the documents of the time when minutely examined, for the directors certainly did express the strongest disapprobation of his conduct in trampling on law and justice. Nor was the leniency of their treatment of him altogether due to their wish to avoid irritating his influential relatives, though that may have had something to do with it. The main cause was simply that Mr. Wouter Valckenier, who was one of the directors at the time, could not absolve himself from all blame in the matter, for he had granted part of Vergelegen to Van der Stel, without reflecting upon what the consequences might be. The governor had abused his confidence, still he was not free of blame. And so nothing but the ground was resumed, and the delinquent was not even compelled to make good to the Company the amount which he had defrauded it of.

The punishment of Willem Adriaan van der Stel, though mild, had the effect of securing to the Cape colonists good government, as it was then held to be, for more than half a century after his recall. The spirit of the burghers was not broken, as it would have been if he had remained in power, and a liberty loving people had time, in God’s good providence, to secure a firm foothold in South Africa.

There was an effect upon the South African colonists that these troubles produced which makes them memorable in our history. They blended the different nationalities together so firmly that thereafter they were absolutely inseparable. There is nothing that tends more to make men and women sympathise with each other than suffering in a common cause, and in this instance Hollander and Huguenot alike had resisted and felt the vengeance of the tyrant. When Du Toit and Du Pré, liberated from the vessel that was to have taken them into exile at Mauritius, met Tas and Louw, staggering from the dungeons in which they had been so long confined, can anyone doubt that they greeted each other as brothers? Our archives tell us nothing of that scene on the parade ground before the castle, but they do tell us very plainly that from that day onward there was no jealousy, no ill-feeling of any kind, between Dutchmen and Frenchmen in the colony. Thereafter all were Afrikanders.

How could it be otherwise? It is not too much for even a historian seeking only for truth to assume that the sisterhood of the women also had been cemented by their common misery, that Mevrouw Van der Byl, for instance, would feel an affection stronger far than mere sympathy for Madame Du Toit, who, like herself, had seen her husband torn from her and sent into banishment, probably for ever unless God and the directors should curb the merciless oppressor’s will. The names on the memorial show an equal number of French and Dutch, and among them are those of the heads of many of the best families in South Africa at the present day. They can look back with pride to the action of their ancestors in resisting corruption so gross and tyranny so outrageous as that of Willem Adriaan van der Stel, and in thinking of the suffering those brave men and women endured, they can thank God that it was not in vain, since it was productive of so much good.

The Van der Stel family attained its highest point of celebrity in the time of the sons of Simon, the grandsons of Adriaan who went to India in 1623. According to Van der Aa, Willem Adriaan, after his dismissal, purchased the estates of Old and New Vossemeer, and died on the 1st of July 1723, leaving five children. Adriaan became governor of Amboina and councillor extraordinary of India, and left three children. Hendrik was warehouse keeper at Malacca in 1705, but nothing more is known of him. It is a saying in the United States that the stage from shirt sleeve to shirt sleeve is usually covered in only three generations, and the observation would seem to be correct in this case. Van der Aa could find no one of the name of Van der Stel worthy of notice after the third generation had passed away, except A. van der Stel, who drew plates for a work on natural history published in 1754, and a woman of the name who was an actress and stage dancer in the middle of the eighteenth century.[88]

IV.

Chronicles of Two Leaders of the Great Emigration, Louis Triegard and Pieter Uys.

SKETCH IV.

I.

Chronicles of Two Leaders of the Great Emigration, Louis Triegard and Pieter Uys.

And so great is the quantity of material to be examined for the preparation of a history of South Africa, so scattered is it, and so disordered is the manuscript portion, that fifty years, even if devoted entirely to the work, would not be too long to master it all. Many languages have to be learned, and libraries and archive departments visited and worked in half over Europe as well as in South Africa. I am speaking now only of the period since the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope by the Portuguese, if one wants to go further back a knowledge of Arabic and prolonged visits to many eastern towns would be indispensable. This I was prevented from even attempting. In Indian literature also much important information may possibly—even probably—be found, for beyond a doubt there was intercourse between Hindostan and Eastern Africa in ancient times. No man could grapple with all this single-handed, and if any one were to try to do it, at the end of fifty years he would find a very great deal still to be done.

Owing to this cause—the vast amount of research that was needed and the many interruptions I met with—my history, though correct, is defective, that is there is nothing untruthful or misleading in it, but there are sections that could be enlarged to advantage. Among such sections are the deeds of Louis Triegard and Pieter Uys. I commenced my study of the great emigration by getting accounts of it from numerous men and women who had taken part in it. I soon found—as every one else has done who has attempted to collect such materials—that the various relations did not agree, and that something more reliable was needed to base a description upon. I then read whatever was to be found in printed books and the newspapers of the period, and as soon as I had an opportunity of doing so I examined all the manuscripts that I could find in the Cape archives bearing on the subject.

It is a quarter of a century since I published a volume containing the history of the emigration, the first book on the subject prepared in South Africa. The facts as related by me have never been disputed, but there are some who profess to believe that they are described in a spirit too favourable to the emigrants, and others that they are just the reverse. I shall not alter a single word owing to such opinions, but when I find new and reliable materials that enable me to enlarge my former accounts, I shall certainly make use of them. Such materials have recently come to hand with regard to Louis Triegard and Pieter Uys in a collection of important documents made by Governor Sir Benjamin D’Urban, taken by him to England, and preserved in the archives of his family until 1911, when they were most generously presented by his grandson through me to the Union government.

Two centuries lacking less than two decades had passed away since European farmers first made homes for themselves on the banks of the Liesbeek river, near the foot of Table Mountain, and in 1835 white men were cultivating ground and pasturing their flocks and herds as far away as the banks of the Kat and the Fish in one direction and the great plain bordering on the Orange in another. The area they had spread over was thus wide and long, though its occupation had been slower than that of any other settlement of Europeans possessing a tithe of its attractions. In most parts of the districts beyond the coast belt it was very sparsely peopled, the farms, which might with greater propriety have been termed cattle-runs, being seldom less than five or six thousand English acres in extent, and often carrying only a single family upon them.

The small district of Albany was an exception to this general statement. It was occupied chiefly by British settlers, who had originally plots of ground only one hundred acres in size allotted to them, but these had proved insufficient for the maintenance of a family, and most of them had been abandoned. Those that remained occupied had then been enlarged, though not to the extent of the great cattle-runs which the older Dutch-speaking colonists considered necessary for their subsistence.

There was a marked difference in disposition between the Dutch-speaking and the English-speaking colonists. The former, being cattle-breeders by descent through several generations, were strongly attached to country life, and disliked residence in a village or town, where they seldom remained longer than a few hours. Restraint of any kind was exceedingly irksome to them, even the slight restraint of conforming to urban conditions. Their ideal of a happy life was a life on a farm where a man could look north, south, east, and west, and see nothing that was not his own, where a few fruit trees and vines provided him with peaches and oranges, apples and grapes, and a little garden, irrigated from a running stream or a fountain, yielded him all the vegetables he needed, and where his horned cattle, horses, and sheep throve and increased. Cry down such a life as one will, call it unprogressive, devoid of culture, wanting in refinement, destructive of energy, it cannot be denied that it was a happy life and one that brought man into closer communion with nature and with God than if he passed his existence in a town or a village. Except in the most secluded districts there is no longer room for such a life in South Africa, though some there are even in the more fertile parts who strive to cling to it still, but in the fourth decade of the nineteenth century it was the ideal which nearly every Dutch-speaking colonist in the eastern districts of the Cape settlement kept constantly before his eyes.

The English settler as a rule viewed life differently. He disliked a lonely country home, where there was no opportunity of exercising his spirit of enterprise, where the means of giving his children an education in books were lacking, and where companionship with his species was uncertain and scanty. He preferred to reside in a town, where he would have greater scope for his abilities, and where he could have more of such comforts and enjoyments as he desired. There were indeed Englishmen to be found among the leading farmers, but the great majority of them were traders or mechanics. Besides this in most cases they had not the means to purchase stock to commence cattle-breeding with, even if they had the disposition to do so, and they had no heart to face the privations that many a Dutch-speaking youth underwent as a matter of course to obtain a few sheep and cows to make a beginning with. An Englishman could not, for instance, live almost entirely on game for years, as they often did, to spare their domestic cattle and allow them to increase. And so in Albany a town speedily rose, which contained a large proportion of the British settlers, and which was by far the most important centre of population in the eastern districts of the Cape Colony. Grahamstown it was called, and it was as purely English as if it stood in Kent or in Sussex.

For several years there had been great discontent throughout the settlement. In England the party that wished to undo the errors of the past, to atone for the crime of slave-trading in which earlier generations had been deeply involved, and to make strenuous efforts for the elevation of the coloured races, sunk in barbarism and heathenism throughout the world, had been steadily growing in numbers and in influence until at length it had become the dominant power in the state. Its leaders were earnest well-meaning men, but they did not realise that improvement to be most effective should be gradual rather than sudden. They acted as did the men of the French revolution, and in both cases an enormous amount of misery was the immediate consequence, though as time went on the good that they did gradually came to surpass the evil which was at first the result of too much haste. They did not study the condition of things in South Africa, and the parliament at Westminster applied laws to this country that were quite unsuitable to it.

They placed the Hottentots on a perfect political equality with the European colonists and refused to sanction a vagrant act, thereby creating a host of idlers and wanderers, that only time and missionary effort could reduce to order. They emancipated the slaves of a sudden, paying one-third of their appraised value as compensation, and by doing so brought utter ruin upon many of the best families in the country and deep distress upon nearly all. The gradual emancipation which the colonists favoured they rejected, simply because it would take a generation to work out, though all possible protection against ill-usage of the slaves could have been secured under it, and the negroes as a whole would have been better prepared for freedom.

There were other causes of dissatisfaction among the Dutch-speaking colonists. The suppression of their language in courts of law and official documents was one. Another was the change of land tenure from leases renewable yearly to perpetual quitrent, necessitating heavy charges for surveying and much larger annual payments. This measure, by giving security of tenure and permitting transfer on sale, was undoubtedly beneficial, but the frontier farmers and graziers, accustomed to the old system, regarded the new one as a plan for extorting money from them, especially as in most instances the charges for surveying were paid years before the issue of titles. The great extent of the magisterial districts prevented the government officials from explaining the real object of such changes to the farmers, and this could not be remedied for want of funds.

Still another cause of dissatisfaction was owing to the swarms of barbarians that of recent years had entered the colony from the north and the east, who were a menace to the cattle farmers, from whom they demanded food which, if not given at once, was taken by force. These barbarians were the remnants of various Betshuana tribes that had been nearly exterminated in the wars that originated with Tshaka and Umsilikazi,[89] to whom was added a large section of the Tembu tribe driven westward by Matiwane, himself a fugitive from the Zulu spears. The government did what it could, without actual violence, to induce these invaders to remove beyond the borders, but without success, and public opinion in England would not admit of sterner measures being resorted to, such as the cattle farmers desired.

But more than all that has been mentioned, the greatest cause of irritation was due to the tone of the missionary and so-called philanthropic press. By it the farmers were vilified as if they were cruel tyrants who treated the coloured people as mere animals, and all their misfortunes, which were diminished to next to nothing, were alleged to be due to themselves. Extracts from books and pamphlets of this tone found their way to the farms and were discussed whenever individuals met, until a general feeling of indignation was aroused. By no one was it disputed that in South Africa, as in all other countries of the world, there were violent men to be found, and that instances of extreme cruelty to coloured dependents could be pointed out; but that a whole community should be branded with infamy on account of the misdeeds of a few individuals seemed to be as unjust as if the inhabitants of London should be termed murderers because occasionally a terrible crime was committed there.

And now in the closing days of 1834 a calamity more dreadful than any that preceded it had overtaken the English settlers of Albany and the Dutch-speaking farmers of Somerset, and had reduced them all alike to a condition of the direst distress.[90] Without notice, without anything that a European can regard as sufficient provocation, great bands of Xosas suddenly crossed the border and spread over these frontier districts, murdering all the male inhabitants who had not time to escape to places where they could defend themselves and their families, burning their farmhouses and outbuildings, and driving off the horses, horned cattle, sheep, and goats. The whole frontier, with the exception of Grahamstown and a few of the most important villages which were left like oases, was reduced to an absolute desert. Seven thousand individuals, the majority of whom had previously been in comfortable circumstances, were reduced to such destitution that the government was obliged to supply them with food, or they must have starved.

By dint of great exertion the burgher forces, with two regiments of British infantry and a strong contingent of Hottentots, drove the Xosas out of the colony and reduced them to partial subjection in the territory between the Keiskama and Kei rivers. A British and colonial army penetrated the country beyond the Kei, captured some thousands of cattle, and released the Fingoes from subjection to the Xosas. These Fingoes were the remnants of tribes that had lived in Natal, where they were all but exterminated in the wars of Tshaka. They were brought westward, and were located chiefly in what is now the district of Peddie, that they might become a kind of buffer between the colonists and the Xosas. Then the territory between the Keiskama and Kei rivers was proclaimed a British possession, under the name of the Province of Queen Adelaide.

Sir Benjamin D’Urban, the governor, enjoyed the esteem and affection of a great majority of the colonists, English and Dutch-speaking alike, in a larger degree than any one before him had done, and Colonel H. G. Smith, who was stationed at King-Williamstown as the governor’s representative in the new province, was deservedly popular with all but a few persons of malignant disposition. A more energetic man never lived, nor one who had the happiness of the people committed to his charge more at heart. The Xosa chiefs were permitted to govern their dependents in their old way, though they were now officially termed British magistrates, fieldcornets, &c., but they were supposed to act under the supervision of English commissioners, and the most serious crimes were legally punishable only after trial before European courts. Missionary effort was encouraged, and respectable traders were permitted to settle at selected stations, but traffic in munitions of war or in intoxicating liquor was strictly prohibited.

There were no colonists so simple as to believe that this measure would immediately put an end to depredations by the Xosas, or that it would in some almost miraculous way turn barbarians suddenly into civilised men. But it was generally supposed that under the circumstances then existing this system was better than any other that could be adopted, and that it really offered some hope that in course of time a great improvement in the condition of the Xosas might take place. A small section of the missionary party thought differently, however, as in their view the system placed too much restraint upon the black people. With this trifling exception Sir Benjamin D’Urban’s plans in general were heartily approved of by nearly every frontier colonist, though many of them feared that the settlement of the Fingoes on the border might prove to be a mistake.

Looking back now after the experience of three-quarters of a century, we can say positively that Sir Benjamin D’Urban’s policy was wise and benevolent. It might have been better if the Fingoes had not been located where they were, but this was at the time the best thing that could be done with them. We can see too that Colonel Smith was over confident in his influence with the people,—he even believed that he could depose the chiefs at his will,—for he did not know, as we do, the cause of the fidelity of the commoners to them. But upon the whole things were working well, infinitely better indeed than ever before as far as the European colonists were concerned, while the blacks were in a position where improvement was much more easy than it had previously been.

The party in power in England, however, was decidedly of opinion that a great wrong of some kind or other must have been done to the Xosas, or they would not have made war upon the colony. The white people, consequently, must have been at fault. Lord Glenelg, then secretary of state for the colonies, in whose hands the destiny of South Africa was at the time, held this opinion, and issued instructions that British rule was to be withdrawn from the Province of Queen Adelaide, all the land east of the Fish and Kat rivers be abandoned to the Xosas, and treaties of friendship be entered into with the chiefs as independent and sovereign powers. An officer who was not favourably regarded at that time by the farmers, though in later years he performed eminent services for the country, was appointed to carry out these measures, and it was announced that he would leave England at once. When this information reached South Africa, the last ray of hope died out in the hearts of the Dutch-speaking farmers in the eastern districts of the Cape Colony, and there was a general resolution to abandon the land of their birth and seek a new home somewhere beyond the border. The British government had repeatedly announced its fixed determination not to enlarge its domain in this part of the world, so they believed that upon their removal they would be free and independent.

The enormous destruction of human life in the wars of Tshaka and Moselekatse had left wide tracts of land in South Africa almost—in some instances quite—uninhabited, and although the extent of these wastes was unknown, the farmers were cognisant of the fact that there were unoccupied areas where, they thought, they might settle without doing wrong to any one. One of these nearly vacant tracts was the country called Natal, which at that time was taken to signify the land between the Tugela and Umzimvubu rivers, the Kathlamba mountains and the sea. It was the most beautiful and most fertile part of South Africa, rising in steps from the ocean to the great wall that bounds the interior plain, and thus embracing a variety of climates. It was abundantly watered by the rains driven up from the Indian ocean, and was well drained by rivers and rivulets that carried the surplus moisture to the sea. Every one who saw the land spoke of it with enthusiasm, as being one of the fairest regions on earth, and one of the best adapted to make comfortable homes in.

Some forty Englishmen had settled on the shore of the inlet called Port Natal, where they made a living chiefly by hunting elephants and buffaloes and trading with the Zulu chief for ivory. Some of them were living more like barbarians than civilised men, and were the only acknowledged heads or chiefs of little bands of fugitives from Zululand, who placed themselves under the white men’s guidance and protection. A petty chief named Umnini, who with a few followers lived in a thicket adjoining the Bluff, and who had concealed himself during the Zulu invasions, was also a dependent of the white people.[91] On the 23rd of June 1835 fourteen of these men under the guidance of Captain Allen F. Gardiner, recently of the royal navy, who was then on a visit to the country with a view of preparing for the establishment of missions among the Zulus, signed a petition to Sir Benjamin D’Urban, requesting him to forward it to the authorities in England, asking that the territory might be annexed and a proper government be established in it. They estimated the number of Bantu inhabitants at not less than three thousand.[92] As some of these men were hunters who knew every inch of the country, this number might be accepted as at least approximately correct, though from the observations of others perhaps five or even six thousand would be more accurate.

This low estimate is supported by such an amount of trustworthy testimony that only those who refuse to accept any evidence that is in conflict with their prejudices can reject it. Nathaniel Isaacs’ Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa, with a Sketch of Natal, two volumes, London, 1836,[93] and Gardiner’s Narrative of a Journey to the Zoolu Country in South Africa, London, 1836,[94] support it in general terms. Mr. Henry Fynn, who lived in Natal from 1824 to 1834, writing in 1838, says: “The number now under the management of the Europeans at Port Natal amounts to nearly six thousand souls, who would all be massacred if the Europeans were to be withdrawn from the Port.”[95] All the documents of the next five years in which mention is made of the number of black people in Natal agree with it. Only a few years ago Mr. G. M. Rudolph, when giving evidence before the last Native Affairs Commission, stated that he did not think there were more than three thousand natives (i.e. Bantu) in Natal when he as a boy nine years of age went there with the first voortrekkers. A party of farmers, one of whom was Pieter Lavras Uys, travelled through Kaffraria in 1834 with fourteen waggons to Port Natal, and after thoroughly inspecting the uplands as well as the coast belt and the harbour, returned to the Cape Colony highly satisfied with the country as a desirable locality to migrate to.

Of the vast regions north of the Orange river that had been swept nearly clean by war the farmers knew very little except from the statements of Betshuana refugees, whose intelligence was vague and often contradictory. No one of them seemed to know anything beyond the fate of the particular tribe or clan to which he belonged, and there was always so much that was fabulous mixed with their accounts that in general no credence was given to them. Then they could only be spoken to through interpreters, who were rarely obtainable and whose knowledge of any other language than their own was usually very defective.