SOUTH AFRICA
—
VOL. I.

SOUTH AFRICA.

BY
ANTHONY TROLLOPE.


IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.


FOURTH EDITION.


LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
1878.

(All rights reserved.)


LONDON:
PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO., LIMITED,
CITY ROAD.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

SOUTH AFRICA.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

IT was in April of last year, 1877, that I first formed a plan of paying an immediate visit to South Africa. The idea that I would one day do so had long loomed in the distance before me. Except the South African group I had seen all our great groups of Colonies,—among which in my own mind I always include the United States, for to my thinking, our Colonies are the lands in which our cousins, the descendants of our forefathers, are living and still speaking our language. I had become more or less acquainted I may say with all these offshoots from Great Britain, and had written books about them all,—except South Africa. To “do” South Africa had for some years past been on my mind, till at last there was growing on me the consciousness that I was becoming too old for any more such “doing.” Then, suddenly, the newspapers became full of the Transvaal Republic. There was a country not indeed belonging to Great Britain but which once had been almost British, a country, with which Britain was much too closely concerned to ignore it,—a country, which had been occupied by British subjects, and established as a Republic under British authority,—now in danger of being reconquered by the native tribes which had once peopled it. In this country, for the existence of which in its then condition we were in a measure responsible, the white man there would not fight, nor pay taxes, nor make himself conformable to any of these rules by which property and life are made secure. Then we were told that English interference and English interference only could save the country from internecine quarrels between black men and white men. While this was going on I made up my mind that now if ever must I visit South Africa. The question of the Confederation of the States was being mooted at the same time, a Confederation which was to include not only this Republic which was so very much out of elbows, but also another quiet little Republic of which I think that many of us did not know much at home,—but as to which we had lately heard that it was to receive £90,000 out of the revenue of the Mother Country, not in compensation for any acknowledged wrong, but as a general plaster for whatever little scratches the smaller community, namely the Republic of the Orange Free States, might have received in its encounters with the greater majesty of the British Empire. If a tour to South Africa would ever be interesting, it certainly would be so now. Therefore I made up my mind and began to make enquiries as to steamers, cost, mode of travelling, and letters of introduction. It was while I was doing this that the tidings came upon us like a clap of thunder of the great deed done by Sir Theophilus Shepstone. The Transvaal had already been annexed! The thing which we were dreaming of as just possible,—as an awful task which we might perhaps be forced to undertake in the course of some indefinite number of months to come, had already been effected. A sturdy Englishman had walked into the Republic with five and twenty policemen and a Union Jack and had taken possession of it. “Would the inhabitants of the Republic like to ask me to take it?” So much enquiry he seems to have made. No; the people by the voice of their parliament declined even to consider so monstrous a proposition. “Then I shall take it without being asked,” said Sir Theophilus. And he took it.

That was what had just been done in the Transvaal when my idea of going to South Africa had ripened itself into a resolution. Clearly there was an additional reason for going. Here had been done a very high-handed thing as to which it might be the duty of a Briton travelling with a pen in his hand to make a strong remonstrance. Or again it might be his duty to pat that sturdy Briton on the back,—with pen and ink,—and hold his name up to honour as having been sturdy in a righteous cause. If I had premeditated a journey to South Africa a year or two since, when South Africa was certainly not very much in men’s mouths, there was much more to reconcile me to the idea now that Confederation and the Transvaal were in every man’s mouth.

But when my enquiries which had at first been general came down to minute details, when I was warned by one South African friend that the time I had chosen for my journey was so altogether wrong that I should be sure to find myself in some improvisioned region between two rivers of which I should be as unable to repass the one as to pass the other, and by another that the means of transit through the country were so rough as to be unfit for any except the very strong,—or very slow; when I was assured that the time I had allowed myself was insufficient even to get up to Pretoria and back, I confess that I became alarmed. I shall never forget the portentous shaking of the head of one young man who evidently thought that my friends were neglecting me in that I was allowed to think of such a job of work. Between them all they nearly scared me. Had I not been ashamed to abandon my plan I think I should have gone into the city and begged Mr. Donald Currie to absolve me from responsibility in regard to that comfortable berth which he had promised to secure for me on board the Caldera.

I have usually found warnings to be of no avail, and often to be illfounded. The Bay of Biscay as I have felt it is not much rougher than other seas. No one ever attempted to gouge me in Kentucky or drew a revolver on me in California. I have lived in Paris as cheaply as elsewhere; and have invariably found Jews to be more liberal than other men. Such has been the case with the South African lions which it was presumed that I should find in my path. I have never been stopped by a river and have never been starved; and am now, that the work is done, heartily glad that I made the attempt. Whether my doing so can be of any use in giving information to others will be answered by the fate of my little book which is thus sent upon the waves within twelve months of the time when I first thought of making the journey; but I am sure that I have added something worth having to my own stock of knowledge respecting the Colonies generally.

As I have written the following chapters I think that I have named the various works, antecedent to my own, from which I have made quotations or taken information as to any detail of South African history. I will, however, acknowledge here what I owe to Messrs. Wilmot and Chase’s “History of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope,”—to the “Compendium of South African History and Geography,” by George M. Theal, as to which the reader may be interested to know that the entire work in two volumes was printed, and very well printed, by native printers at Lovedale,—to Mr. John Noble’s work, entitled “South Africa, Past and Present,”—to Messrs. Silver and Co.’s “Handbook to South Africa,” which of all such works that have ever come into my hands is the most complete; and to the reprints of two courses of lectures, one given by Judge Watermeyer on the Cape Colony, and the other by Judge Cloëte “On the Emigration of the Dutch Farmers.” I must also name the “Compendium of Kafir Laws and Customs” collected and published by Col. Maclean, who was at one time Lieut.-Governor of British Kafraria. Were I to continue the list so as to include all the works that I have read or consulted I should have to name almanacks, pamphlets, lectures, letters and blue books to a very great number indeed.

I have a great deal of gratitude to own to gentlemen holding official positions in the different Colonies and districts I have visited, without whose aid my task would have been hopeless. Chief among these have been Captain Mills the Colonial Secretary at Capetown, without whom I cannot presume it possible that the Cape Colony should continue to exist. There is however happily no reason why for many years to come it should be driven to the necessity of even contemplating such an attempt. At Pieter Maritzburg in Natal I found my old friend Napier Broome, and from him and from the Governor’s staff generally I received all the assistance that they could give me. At Pretoria Colonel Brooke and Mr. Osborn, who were ruling the Dutchmen in the absence of Sir Theophilus Shepstone, were equally kind to me. At Bloemfontein Mr. Höhne, who is the Government Secretary, was as cordial and communicative as though the Orange Free States were an English Colony and he an English Minister. I must also say that Mr. Brand, the President of the Free States, though he is Dutch to the back bone, and has in his time had some little tussles with what he has thought to be British high-handedness,—in every one of which by-the-bye he has succeeded in achieving something good for his country,—was with me as open and unreserved as though I had been a Dutch Boer, or he a member of the same political club with myself in England. But how shall I mention the full-handed friendship of Major Lanyon, whom I found administering the entangled affairs of Griqualand West,—by which perhaps hitherto unknown names my readers will find, if they go on far enough with the task before them, that the well-known South African Diamond Fields are signified? When last I had seen him, and it seems but a short time ago, he was a pretty little boy with a pretty little frock in Belfast. And there he was among the diamonds carrying on his government in a capital which certainly is not lovely to look at,—which of itself is perhaps the most unlovely city that I know,—but which his kindness succeeded in making agreeable, though not even his kindness could make it other than hideous.

These names I mention because of the information which I have received from their owners. What I owe to the hospitality of the friends I have made in South Africa is a matter private between me and them. I may however perhaps acknowledge the great courtesy which I have received from Sir Bartle Frere and Sir Henry Bulwer, the Governors of the Cape Colony and Natal. As to the former it was a matter of much regret to me that I should not have seen him on my return to Capetown after my travels, when he was still detained at the frontier by the disturbances with Kreli and the Galekas. It was my misfortune not to become personally acquainted with Sir Theophilus Shepstone, who unhappily for me was absent inspecting his new dominion when I was at Pretoria.

I must express my hearty thanks to Sir Henry Barkly, the late Governor of the Cape Colony, who had returned home just before I started from London, and who was kind enough to prepare for me with great minuteness a sketch of my journey, as, in his opinion, it ought to be made, giving me not only a list of the places which I should visit but an estimate of the time which should be allotted to each, so as to turn to the best advantage the months which I had at my disposal. I have not quite done all which his energy would have exacted from me. I did not get to the Gold-fields of the Transvaal or into Basutoland. But I have followed his guidance throughout, and can certainly testify to the exactness of his knowledge of the country.

My readers will find that in speaking of the three races I found in South Africa, the native tribes namely, the Dutch and the English, I have attributed by far the greater importance to the former because of their numbers. But I fear that I have done so in such a way as not to have conciliated the friends of the aborigines at home, while I shall certainly have insured the hostility,—or at any rate opposition,—of the normal white men in the Colonies. The white man in the South African Colonies feels that the colony ought to be his and kept up for him, because he, perhaps, with his life in his hand, went forth as a pioneer to spread the civilization of Europe and to cultivate the wilds of the world’s surface. If he has not done so himself, his father did it before him, and he thinks that the gratitude of the Mother Country should maintain for him the complete ascendency which his superiority to the black man has given him. I feel confident that he will maintain his own ascendency, and think that the Mother Country should take care that that ascendency be not too complete. The colonist will therefore hardly agree with me. The friend of the aborigines, on the other hand, seems to me to ignore the fact,—a fact as it presents itself to my eyes,—that the white man has to be master and the black man servant, and that the best friendship will be shown to the black man by seeing that the terms on which the master and servant shall be brought together are just. In the first place we have to take care that the native shall not be subjected to slavery on any pretence or in any of its forms; and in doing this we shall have to own that compulsory labour, the wages for which are to be settled by the employer without the consent of the employed, is a form of slavery. After that,—after acknowledging so much, and providing against any infraction of the great law so laid down,—the more we do to promote the working of the coloured man, the more successful we are in bringing him into his harness, the better for himself, and for the colony at large. A little garden, a wretched hut, and a great many hymns do not seem to me to bring the man any nearer to civilization. Work alone will civilize him, and his incentive to work should be, and is, the desire to procure those good things which he sees to be in the enjoyment of white men around him. He is quite alive to this desire, and is led into new habits by good eating, good clothes, even by finery and luxuries, much quicker than by hymns and gardens supposed to be just sufficient to maintain an innocent existence. The friend of the aboriginal would, I fear, fain keep his aboriginal separated from the white man; whereas I would wish to see their connexion as close as possible. In this way I fear that I may have fallen between two stools.

In regard to Kreli and his rebellious Galekas,—in regard also to the unsettled state of the Zulus and their borders, I have to ask my readers to remember that my book has been written while these disturbances were in existence. In respect to them I can not do more than express an opinion of my own,—more or less crude as it must necessarily be.

CHAPTER II.

EARLY DUTCH HISTORY.

The Portuguese indeed came before the Dutch, but they only came, and did not stay. The Cape, as far as we know, was first doubled by Bartholomew Diaz in 1486. He, and some of the mariners with him, called it the Cape of Torments, or Capo Tormentoso, from the miseries they endured. The more comfortable name which it now bears was given to it by King John of Portugal, as being the new way discovered by his subjects to the glorious Indies. Diaz, it seems, never in truth saw the Cape but was carried past it to Algoa Bay where he merely landed on an island and put up a cross. But he certainly was one of the great naval heroes of the world and deserves to be ranked with Columbus. Vasco da Gama, another sailor hero, said to have been of royal Portuguese descent, followed him in 1497. He landed to the west of the Cape. There the meeting between Savage and Christian was as it has almost always been. At first there was love and friendship, a bartering of goods in which the Christian of course had the advantage, and a general interchange of amenities. Then arose mistakes, so natural among strangers who could not speak to each other, suspicion, violence, and very quickly an internecine quarrel in which the poor Savage was sure to go to the wall. Vasco da Gama did not stay long at the Cape, but proceeding on went up the East Coast as far as our second South African colony, which bears the name which he then gave to it. He called the land Tierra de Natal, because he reached it on the day of our Lord’s Nativity. The name has stuck to it ever since and no doubt will now be preserved. From thence Da Gama went on to India, and we who are interested in the Cape will lose sight of him. But he also was one of the world’s mighty mariners,—a man born to endure much, having to deal not only with Savages who mistook him and his purposes, but with frequent mutinies among his own men,—a hero who had ever to do his work with his life in his hand, and to undergo hardships of which our sailors in these happier days know nothing.

The Portuguese seem to have made no settlement at the Cape intended even to be permanent; but they did use the place during the sixteenth and first half of the next century as a port at which they could call for supplies and assistance on their way out to the East Indies.

The East had then become the great goal of commerce to others besides the Portuguese. In 1600 our own East India Company was formed, and in 1602 that of the Dutch. Previous to those dates, in 1591, an English sailor, Captain Lancaster, visited the Cape, and in 1620 Englishmen landed and took possession of it in the name of James I. But nothing came of these visitings and declarations, although an attempt was made by Great Britain to establish a house of call for her trade out to the East. For this purpose a small gang of convicts was deposited on Robben Island, which is just off Capetown, but as a matter of course the convicts quarrelled with themselves and the Natives, and came to a speedy end. In 1595 the Dutch came, but did not then remain. It was not till 1652 that the first Europeans who were destined to be the pioneer occupants of the new land were put on shore at the Cape of Good Hope, and thus made the first Dutch settlement. Previous to that the Cape had in fact been a place of call for vessels of all nations going and coming to and from the East. But from this date, 1652, it was to be used for the Dutch exclusively. The Hollanders of that day were stanch Protestants and sound Christians, but they hardly understood their duty to their neighbours. They had two ideas in forming their establishment at the Cape;—firstly that of aiding their own commerce with the East, and secondly that of debarring the commerce of all other nations from the aid which they sought for themselves. It is on record that when a French merchant-vessel was once treated with hospitality by the authorities at the Cape, the authorities at home brought their colonial dependents very severely to task for such forgetfulness of their duty. The Governor at the time was dismissed for not allowing the Frenchman to “float on his own fins.” It was then decided that water should be given to Europeans in want of it, but as little other refreshment as possible.

The home Authority at this time was not the Dutch Government, but the Council of Seventeen at Amsterdam, who were the Directors of the Dutch East India Company. For, as with us, the commercial enterprise with the East was a monopoly given over to a great Company, and this Company for the furtherance of its own business established a depôt at the Cape of Good Hope. When therefore we read of the Dutch Governors we are reading of the servants not of the nation but of a commercial firm. And yet these Governors, with the aid of their burgher council, had full power over life and limb.

Jan van Riebeek was the first Governor, a man who seems to have had a profound sense of the difficulties and responsibilities of his melancholy position, and to have done his duty well amidst great suffering, till at last, after many petitions for his own recall, he was released. He was there for ten sad years, and seems to have ruled,—no doubt necessarily,—with a stern hand. The records of the little community at this time are both touching and amusing, the tragedy being interspersed with much comedy. In the first year Volunteer Van Vogelaar was sentenced to receive a hundred blows from the butt of his own musket for “wishing the purser at the devil for serving out penguins instead of pork.” Whether the despatch devilwards of the purser or of Van Vogelaar was most expedited by this occurrence we are not told. Then the chaplain’s wife had a child, and we learn that all the other married ladies hurried on to follow so good an example. But the ladies generally did not escape the malice of evil tongues. Early in the days of the establishment one Woüters was sentenced to have his tongue bored, to be banished for three years, and to beg pardon on his bare knees for speaking ill of the Commander’s wife and of other females. It is added that he would not have been let off so lightly but that his wife was just then about to prove herself a good citizen by adding to the population of the little community. In 1653, the second year of Van Riebeek’s government, we are told that the lions seemed as though they were going to take the fort by storm, and that a wolf seized a sheep within sight of the herds. We afterwards hear that a dreadful ourang-outang was found, as big as a calf.

From 1658, when the place was but six years old, there comes a very sad record indeed. The first cargo of slaves was landed at the Cape from the Guinea Coast. In this year, out of an entire population of 360, more than a half were slaves. The total number of these was 187. To control them and to defend the place there were but 113 European men capable of bearing arms. This slave element at once became antagonistic to any system of real colonization, and from that day to this has done more than any other evil to retard the progress of the people. It was extinguished, much to the disgust of the old Dutch inhabitants, under Mr. Buxton’s Emancipation Act in 1834;—but its effects are still felt.

In 1666 two men were flogged and sentenced to work in irons for three years for stealing cabbages. Terrible severity seems to have been the only idea of government. Those who were able to produce more than they consumed were allowed to sell to no purchaser except the Company. Even the free men, the so-called burghers, were little better than slaves, and were bound to perform their military duties with almost more than Dutch accuracy. Time was kept by the turning of an official hour glass, for which purpose two soldiers called Rondegangers were kept on duty, one to relieve the other through the day and night. And everything was done vigorously by clockwork,—or hour-glass work rather; the Senate sitting punctually at nine for their executive and political duties. A soldier, if he was found sleeping at his post, was tied to a triangle and beaten by relays of flagellators. Everything was done in accordance with the ideas of a military despotism, in which, however, the Commander-in-chief was assisted by a Council or Senate.

And there was need for despotism. Food often ran short, so that penguins had to be supplied in lieu of pork,—to the infinite disgust we should imagine of others besides poor Van Vogelaar. It often became a serious question whether the garrison,—for then it was little more than a garrison,—would produce food sufficient for their need. But this was not the only or the worse trouble to which the Governor was subjected. The new land of which he had taken possession was by no means unoccupied or unpossessed. There was a race of savages in possession, to whom the Dutch soon gave the name of Hottentots,[1] and who were friendly enough as long as they thought that they were getting more than they gave; but, as has always been the case in the growing relations between Christians and Savages, the Savages quickly began to understand they were made to have the worst in every bargain. Soon after the settlement was established the burghers were forbidden to trade with these people at all, and then hostilities commenced. The Hottentots found that much, in the way of land, had been taken from them and that nothing was to be got. They too, Savages though they were, became logical, and asked whether they would be allowed to enter Holland and do there as the Dutch were doing with them. “You come,” they said, “quite into the interior, selecting our best land, and never asking whether we like it;”—thus showing that they had made themselves accustomed to the calling of strangers at their point of land, and that they had not objected to such mere calling, because something had always been left behind; but that this going into the interior and taking from them their best land was quite a different thing. They understood the nature of pasture land very well, and argued that if the Dutchmen had many cattle there would be but little grass left for themselves. And so there arose a war.

The Hottentots themselves have not received, as Savages, a bad character. They are said to have possessed fidelity, attachment, and intelligence; to have been generally good to their children; to have believed in the immortality of the soul, and to have worshipped a god. The Hottentot possessed property and appreciated its value. He was not naturally cruel, and was prone rather to submit than to fight. The Bosjesman, or Bushman, was of a lower order, smaller in stature, more degraded in appearance, filthier in his habits, occasionally a cannibal eating his own children when driven by hunger, cruel, and useless. Even he was something better than the Australian aboriginal, but was very inferior to his near relative the Hottentot.

But the Hottentot, with all his virtues, was driven into rebellion. There was some fighting in which the natives of course were beaten, and rewards were offered, so much for a live Hottentot, and so much for a dead one. This went on till, in 1672, it was found expedient to purchase land from the natives. A contract was made in that year to prevent future cavilling, as was then alleged, between the Governor and one of the native princes, by which the district of the Cape of Good Hope was ceded to the Dutch for a certain nominal price. The deed is signed with the marks of two Hottentot chiefs and with the names of two Dutchmen. The purchase was made simply as an easy way out of the difficulty. But after a very early period—1684—there was no further buying of land. “There was no longer an affectation of a desire on the part of the Dutch authorities,” as we are told by Judge Watermeyer, “that native claims to land should be respected.” The land was then annexed by Europeans as convenience required.

In all this the Dutch of those days did very much as the English have done since. Of all the questions which a conscientious man has ever had to decide, this is one of the most difficult. The land clearly belongs to the inhabitants of it,—by as good a title as England belongs to the English or Holland to the Dutch. But the advantage of spreading population is so manifest, and the necessity of doing so has so clearly been indicated to us by nature, that no man, let him be ever so conscientious, will say that throngs of human beings from the over-populated civilized countries should refrain from spreading themselves over unoccupied countries or countries partially occupied by savage races. Such a doctrine would be monstrous, and could be held only by a fanatic in morality. And yet there always comes a crisis in which the stronger, the more civilized, and the Christian race is called upon to inflict a terrible injustice on the unoffending owner of the land. Attempts have been made to purchase every acre needed by the new comers,—very conspicuously in New Zealand. But such attempts never can do justice to the Savage. The savage man from his nature can understand nothing of the real value of the article to be sold. The price must be settled by the purchaser, and he on the other side has no means of ascertaining who in truth has the right to sell, and cannot know to whom the purchase money should be paid. But he does know that he must have the land. He feels that in spreading himself over the earth he is carrying out God’s purpose, and has no idea of giving way before this difficulty. He tries to harden his heart against the Savage, and gradually does so in spite of his own conscience. The man is a nuisance and must be made to go. Generally he has gone rapidly enough. The contact with civilization does not suit his nature. We are told that he takes the white man’s vices and ignores the white man’s virtues. In truth vices are always more attractive than virtues. To drink is easy and pleasant. To love your neighbour as yourself is very difficult, and sometimes unpleasant. So the Savage has taken to drink, and has worn his very clothes unwholesomely, and has generally perished during the process of civilization. The North American Indian, the Australian Aboriginal, the Maori of New Zealand are either going or gone,—and so in these lands there has come, or is coming, an end of trouble from that source.

The Hottentot too of whom we have been speaking is said to be nearly gone, and, being a yellow man, to have lacked strength to endure European seductions. But as to the Hottentot and his fate there are varied opinions. I have been told by some that I have never seen a pure Hottentot. Using my own eyes and my own idea of what a Hottentot is, I should have said that the bulk of the population of the Western Province of the Cape Colony is Hottentot. The truth probably is that they have become so mingled with other races as to have lost much of their identity; but that the race has not perished, as have the Indians of North America and the Maoris. The difficulty as to the Savage has at any rate not been solved in South Africa as in other countries in which our Colonies have settled themselves. The Kafir with his numerous varieties of race is still here, and is by no means inclined to go. And for this reason South Africa at present differs altogether from the other lands from which white Colonists have driven the native inhabitants. Of these races I shall have to speak further as I go on with my task.

In 1687 and 1689 there arrived at the Cape a body of emigrants whose presence has no doubt had much effect in creating the race which now occupies the land, and without whom probably the settlers could not have made such progress as they did effect. These were Protestant Frenchmen, who in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes were in want of a home in which they could exercise their religion in freedom. These arrived to the number of about 300, and the names of most of them have been duly recorded. Very many of the same names are now to be found through the Colony—to such an extent as to make the stranger ask why the infant settlement should have been held to be exclusively Dutch. These Frenchmen, who were placed out round the Cape as agriculturists, were useful, industrious, religious people. But though they grew and multiplied they also had their troubles, and hardly enjoyed all the freedom which they had expected. The Dutch, indeed, appear to have had no idea of freedom either as to private life, political life, or religious life. Gradually they succeeded in imposing their own language upon the new comers. In 1709 the use of French was forbidden in all public matters, and in 1724 the services of the French Church were for the last time performed in the French language. Before the end of the last century the language was gone. Thus the French comers with their descendants were forced by an iron hand into Dutch moulds, and now nothing is left to them of their old country but their names. When one meets a Du Plessis or a De Villiers it is impossible to escape the memory of the French immigration.

The last half of the seventeenth and the whole of the eighteenth century saw the gradual progress of the Dutch depôt,—a colony it could hardly be called,—going on in the same slow determined way, and always with the same purpose. It was no colony because those who managed it at home in Holland, and they who at the Cape served with admirable fidelity their Dutch masters, never entertained an idea as to the colonization of the country. A half-way house to India was erected by the Dutch East India Company for the purpose of commerce, and it was necessary that a community should be maintained at the Cape for this purpose. The less of trouble, the less of expense, the less of anything beyond mechanical service with which the work could be carried on, the better. It was not for the good of the Dutchmen who were sent out or of the Frenchmen who joined them, that the Council of 17 at Amsterdam troubled themselves with the matter; but because by doing so they could assist their own trade and add to their own gains. Judge Watermeyer in one of three lectures which he gave on the state of the Colony under the Dutch quotes the following opinion on colonization from a Dutch Attorney General of the time. “The object of paramount importance in legislation for Colonies should be the welfare of the parent State of which the Colony is but a subordinate part and to which it owes its existence!” I need hardly point out that the present British theory of colonization is exactly the reverse of this. Some of those prosperous but by no means benevolent looking old gentlemen with gold chains, as we see them painted by Rembrandt and other Dutch Masters, were no doubt the owners of the Cape and its inhabitants. Slave labour was the readiest labour, and therefore slave labour was procured. The native races were not to be oppressed beyond endurance, because they would rise and fight. The community itself was not to grow rich, because if rich it would no longer be subservient to its masters. In the midst of all this there were fine qualities. The Governors were brave, stanch, and faithful. The people were brave and industrious,—and were not self-indulgent except with occasional festivities in which drunkenness was permissible. The wonder is that for so long a time they should have been so submissive, so serviceable, and yet have had so little of the sweets of life to enjoy.

There were some to whom the austerities of Dutch rule proved too hard for endurance, and these men moved away without permission into further districts in which they might live a free though hard life. In other words they “trekked,” as the practice has been called to this day. This system has been the mode of escape from the thraldom of government which has been open to all inhabitants of South Africa. Men when they have been dissatisfied have gone away, always intending to get beyond the arm of the existing law; but as they have gone, the law has of necessity followed at their heels. An outlawed crew on the borders of any colony or settlement must be ruinous to it. And therefore far as white men have trekked, government has trekked after them, as we shall find when we come by and bye to speak of Natal, the Orange Free State, and the Transvaal.

In 1795 came the English. In that year the French Republican troops had taken possession of Holland, and the Prince of Orange, after the manner of dethroned potentates, took refuge in England. He gave an authority, which was dated from Kew, to the Governor of the Cape to deliver up all and everything in his hands to the English forces. On the arrival of the English fleet there was found to be, at the same time, a colonist rebellion. Certain distant burghers,—for the territory had of course grown,—refused to obey the officers of the Company or to contribute to the taxes. In this double emergency the poor Dutch Governor, who does not seem to have regarded the Prince’s order as an authority, was sorely puzzled. He fought a little, but only a little, and then the English were in possession. The castle was given up to General Craig, and in 1797 Lord Macartney came out as the first British Governor.

Great Britain at this time took possession of the Cape to prevent the French from doing so. No doubt it was a most desirable possession, as being a half-way house for us to India as it had been for the Dutch. But we should not, at any rate then, have touched the place had it not been that Holland, or rather the Dutch, were manifestly unable to retain it. We spent a great deal of money at the settlement, built military works, and maintained a large garrison. But it was but for a short time, and during that short time our rule over the Dutchmen was uneasy and unprofitable. Something of rebellion seems to have been going on during the whole time,—not so much against English authority as against Dutch law, and this rebellion was complicated by continual quarrels between the distant Boers, or Dutch farmers, and the Hottentots. It was an uncomfortable possession, and when at the peace of Amiens in 1802 it was arranged that the Cape of Good Hope should be restored to Holland, English Ministers of State did not probably grieve much at the loss. At this time the population of the Colony is supposed to have been 61,947, which was divided as follows:—

But the peace of Amiens was delusive, and there was soon war between England and France. Then again Great Britain felt the necessity of taking the Cape, and proceeded to do so on this occasion without any semblance of Dutch authority. At that time whatever belonged to Holland was almost certain to fall into the hands of France. In 1805, while the battle of Austerlitz was making Napoleon a hero on land, and Trafalgar was proving the heroism of England on the seas, Sir David Baird was sent with half a dozen regiments to expel, not the Dutch, but the Dutch Governor and the Dutch soldiers from the Cape. This he did easily, having encountered some slender resistance; and thus in 1806, on the 19th January, after a century and a half of Dutch rule, the Cape of Good Hope became a British Colony.

It should perhaps be stated that on the restoration of the Cape to Holland the dominion was not given back to the Dutch East India Company, but was maintained by the Government at the Hague. The immediate consequence of this was a great improvement in the laws, and a considerable relaxation of tyranny. Of this we of course had the full benefit, as we entered in upon our work with the idea of maintaining in most things the Dutch system.

CHAPTER III.

ENGLISH HISTORY.

I have to say that I feel almost ashamed of the headings given to these initiatory chapters of my book as I certainly am not qualified to write a history of South Africa. Nor, were I able to do so, could it be done in a few pages. And, again, it has already been done and that so recently that there is not as yet need for further work of the kind. But it is not possible to make intelligible the present condition of any land without some reference to its antecedents. And as it is my object to give my reader an idea of the country as I saw it I am obliged to tell something of what I myself found it necessary to learn before I could understand that which I heard and saw. When I left England I had some notion more or less correct as to Hottentots, Bushmen, Kafirs, and Zulus. Since that my mind has gradually become permeated with Basutos, Griquas, Bechuanas, Amapondos, Suazies, Gaikas, Galekas, and various other native races,—who are supposed to have disturbed our serenity in South Africa, but whose serenity we must also have disturbed very much,—till it has become impossible to look at the picture without realizing something of the identity of those people. I do not expect to bring any readers to do that. I perhaps have been filling my mind with the subject for as many months as the ordinary reader will take hours in turning over these pages. But still I must ask him to go back a little with me, or, as I go on, I shall find myself writing as though I presumed that things were known to him, as to which if he have learned much, it may be unnecessary that he should look at my book at all.

The English began their work with considerable success. The Dutch laws were retained, but were executed with mitigated severity; a large military force was maintained in the Colony, numbering from four to five thousand men, which of course created a ready market for the produce of the country; and there was a Governor with almost royal appanages and a salary of £12,000 a year,—as much probably, when the change in the value of money is considered, as the Governor-General of India has now. Men might sell and buy as they pleased, and the intolerable strictness of Dutch colonial rule was abated. Whatever Dutch patriotism might say, the English with their money were no doubt very welcome at first, and especially at or in the neighbourhood of Capetown. We are told that Lord Caledon, who was the first regular Governor after the return of the English, was very popular. But troubles soon came, and we at once hear the dreaded name of Kafir.[2]

In 1811 the Dutch Boers had stretched themselves as far east as the country round Graff Reynet,—for which I must refer my reader to the map. Between the Dutch and the Kafirs a neutral district had been established in the vain hope of maintaining limits. Over this district the Kafirs came plundering,—no doubt thinking that they were exercising themselves in the legitimate and patriotic defence of their own land. The Dutch inhabitants of course called for Government aid, and such aid was forthcoming. An officer sent to report on the matter recommended that all the Kafirs should be expelled from the Colony, and that the district called the Zuurveld,—a district which by treaty had been left to the Kafirs,—should be divided among white farmers. “This,” says the chronicler, “was hardly in accordance with the agreement with Ngquika, but necessity has no law.” The man whose name has thus been imperfectly reduced to letters was the Kafir chieftain of that ilk, and is the same as the word Gaika now used for a tribe of British subjects. Necessity we all know has no law. But what is necessity? A man must die. A man, generally, must work or go to the wall. But need a man establish himself as a farmer on another man’s land? The reader will understand that I do not deny the necessity;—but that I feel myself to be arrested when I hear it asserted as sufficient excuse.

The Dutch never raised a question as to the necessity. The English have in latter days continually raised the question, but have so acted that they have been able to argue as sufferers while they have been the aggressors. On this occasion the necessity was allowed. A force was sent, and a gallant Dutch magistrate, one Stockenstroom, who trusted himself among the Kafirs, was, with his followers, murdered by them. Then came the first Kafir war. We are told that no quarter was given by the white men, no prisoners taken;—that all were slaughtered, till the people were driven backwards and eastwards across the Great Fish river. This, the first Kafir war, took place in 1811.

The next and quickly succeeding trouble was of another kind. There have been the two great troubles;—the contests between the white men and the savages, and then the contests between the settled colonists and those who have ever been seceding or “trekking” backwards from the settlements. These latter have been generally, though by no means exclusively, Dutchmen; and it is of them we speak when we talk of the South African up-country Boers. These men, among other habits of their time, had of course been used to slavery;—and though the slavery of the Colony had never been of its nature cruel, it had of course been open to cruelty. Laws were made for the protection of slaves, and these laws were unpalatable to the Boer who wished to live in what he called freedom,—“to do what he liked with his own,” according to the Duke of Newcastle,—“to do what he dam pleased,” as the American of the South used to say. A certain Dutchman named Bezuidenhout refused to obey the law, and hence there arose a fight between a party of Dutch who swore that they would die to a man rather than submit, and the armed British authorities. The originator of the rebellion was shot down. The Dutch invited the Kafirs to join them; but the Kafir chief declared that as sparks were flying about, he would like to wait and see which way the wind blew. But the battle went on, and of course the rebels were beaten. There then followed an act of justice combined with vengeance. The leaders were tried and six men were condemned to be hanged. That may have been right;—but their friends and relatives were condemned to see them executed. That must have been wrong, and in the result was most unfortunate. Five of the six were hanged,—while thirty others had to stand by and see. The place of execution was called Slagter’s Nek, a name long remembered by the retreating Dutch Boers. But they were hanged,—not simply once, but twice over. The apparatus, overweighted with the number, broke down when the poor wretches dropped from the platform. They were half killed by the ropes, but gradually struggled back to life. Then there arose prayers that they might now at least be spared;—and force was attempted, but in vain. The British officer had to see that they were hanged, and hanged they were a second time, after the interval of many hours spent in constructing a second gallows. They were all Dutchmen, and the Dutch implacable Boer has said ever since that he cannot forget Slagter’s Nek. It was the followers and friends of these men who trekked away northwards and eastwards till after many a bloody battle with the natives they at last came to Natal.

From this time the Colony went on with a repetition of those two troubles,—war with the Kafirs and disturbances with other native races, and an ever-increasing disposition on the part of the European Colonists to go backwards so that they might live after their own fashion and not be forced to treat either slaves or natives according to humanitarian laws. While this was going on the customary attempts were made to civilize and improve both the colonists and the natives. Schools, libraries, and public gardens were founded, and missionaries settled themselves among the Kafirs and other coloured people. The public institutions were not very good, nor were the missionaries very wise;—but some good was done. The Governors who were sent out were of course various in calibre. Lord Charles Somerset, who reigned for nearly twelve consecutive years, is said to have been very arbitrary; but the Colony prospered in spite of Kafir wars. From time to time further additions were made to our territories, always of course at the expense of the native races. In 1819 the Kafirs were driven back behind the Keiskamma River; where is the region now called British Kafraria,—which was then allowed to be Kafirs’ land. Since that they have been compressed behind the Kei River, where lies what is now called Kafraria Proper. Whether it will continue “proper” to the Kafirs is hardly now matter of doubt. I may say that a considerable portion of it has been already annexed.

In 1820 it was determined to people the districts from which the natives had last been driven by English emigrants. The fertility of the land and the salubrity of the climate had been so loudly praised that there was no difficulty in procuring volunteers for the purpose. The applications from intending emigrants were numerous, and from these four thousand were selected, and sent out at the expense of Government to Algoa Bay;—where is Port Elizabeth, about four hundred miles east of Capetown. Hence have sprung the inhabitants of the Eastern Province, which is as English as the Western Province is Dutch. And hence has come that desire for separation,—for division into an Eastern and a Western Colony, which for a long time distracted the Colonial Authorities both at home and abroad. The English there have prospered better than their old Dutch neighbours,—at any rate as far as commerce is concerned. The business done in Algoa Bay is of a more lively and prosperous kind than that transacted at Capetown. Hence have arisen jealousies, and it may easily be understood that when the question of Colonial Parliaments arose, the English at Algoa Bay thought it beneath them to be carried off, for the purpose of making laws, to Capetown.

It was from the coming of these people that the English language began to prevail in the Colony. Until 1825 all public business was done in Dutch. Proceedings in the law courts were carried on in that language even later than that,—and it was not till 1828 that the despatches of Government were sent out in English. The language of social and commercial life can never be altered by edicts, but gradually, from this time the English began to be found the most convenient. Now it is general everywhere in the Colony, though of course Dutch is still spoken by the descendants of the Dutch among themselves: and church services in the Lutheran churches are performed in Dutch. It will probably take another century to expel the language. In 1825 the despotism of the Governors was lessened by the appointment of a Council of seven, which may be regarded as the first infant step towards Parliamentary institutions; and in 1828 the old Dutch courts of Landdrosts and Neemraden were abolished, and resident magistrates and justices were appointed.

But in the same year a much greater measure was accomplished. A very small minority of liberal-minded men in the Colony, headed by Dr. Philip, the missionary, bestirred themselves on behalf of the Hottentots, who were in a condition very little superior to that of absolute slavery. The question was stirred in England, and was taken up by Mr. Buxton, who gave notice of a motion in the House of Commons on the subject. But the Secretary of State for the Colonies was beforehand with Mr. Buxton, and declared in the House that the Government would grant all that was demanded. The Hottentots were put on precisely the same footing as the Europeans,—very much to the disgust of the Colonists in general and of the rulers of the Colony. So much was this understood at home, and so determined was the Home Government that the colonial feeling on the matter should not prevail, that a clause was added to the enactment declaring that it should not be competent for any future Colonial Government to rescind its provisions.

To argue as to the wisdom and humanity of such a measure now would be futile. The question has so far settled itself that no one dreams of supposing that a man’s social rights should be influenced by colour or race. But these Dutchmen and Englishmen knew very well that a Hottentot could not be made to be equal in intelligence or moral sense to a European, and they should I think be pardoned for the ill will with which they accepted the change. And this becomes the more clear to us when we remember that slavery was at the time still an institution of the country, and that the slaves, who were an imported people from the Straits and the Guinea Coast, were at any rate equal in intelligence to the Hottentots.

Six years afterwards, in 1834, slavery itself was abolished in all lands subject to the British flag,—and this created even a greater animosity among the Dutch than the enactments in favour of the Hottentots. Perhaps no one thing has so strongly tended to alienate the Boer from us as this measure and the way in which it was carried out. In the first place the institution of slavery recommended itself entirely to the Dutch mind. Taking him altogether we shall own that he was not a cruel slave owner; but he was one to whom slavery of itself was in no way repugnant. That he as the master should have a command of labour seemed to him to be only natural. To throw away this command for the sake of putting the slave into a condition which,—as the Dutchman thought,—would be worse for the slave himself was to him an absurdity. He regarded the matter as we regard the doctrine of equality. The very humanitarianism of it was to him a disgusting pretence. The same feeling exists still. It strikes one at every corner in the Colony. A ready mode to comfort, wealth, and general prosperity was, as the Dutchman thinks,—and also some who are not Dutch,—absolutely thrown away. Then came the question of compensation. Some of us are old enough to remember the difficulty in distributing the twenty millions which were voted for the slave owners. The slaves of the Cape Colony were numbered at 35,745, and were valued at £3,000,000. The amount of money which was allowed for them was £1,200,000. But even this was paid in such a manner that much of it fell into the hands of fraudulent agents before it reached the Boer. There was delay and the orders for the money were negotiated at a great discount. The sum expected dwindled down to so paltry a sum that some of the farmers refused to accept what was due to them. Then there was further trekking away from a land which in the minds of the emigrants was so abominably mismanaged. But the slaves fell into the body of the coloured population without any distinction, and were added of course to the free labour of the country. The ordinary labourer in all countries earns so little more than board lodging and clothes for himself and his children, and it is so indispensable a necessity on the slave owner to provide board lodgings and clothes for his slaves, that the loss of slaves, when all owners lose them together, ought not to impoverish any one. There may be local circumstances, as there were in Jamaica, which upset the working of this rule. In the Cape Colony there were no such circumstances; and it seems that those who remained and accepted the law were not impoverished. There can be no doubt, however, that the inhabitants of the Colony generally were disgusted. The measure was brought into effect in 1838, an apprenticeship of four years having been allowed.

But we must go back for a moment to the Kafir war of 1835,—the third Kafir war, for there was a second, of which as being less material I have spared the reader any special mention. Of all our Kafir wars this was probably the most bitter. There had been continual contests, in all of which the Kafirs had undoubtedly thought themselves to be ill used, but in all of which the evils inflicted upon them had been perpetrated in punishment and reprisal for thefts of cattle. The Kafir thefts were in comparison small but were often repeated. Then the Europeans sent out what were called “Commandos,”—which consisted of an armed levy of mounted men intent upon seizing cattle by way of restitution. The reader of the histories of the period is compelled to think that the unfortunate cattle were always being driven backwards and forwards over the borders. During the period, however, more than once cattle were restored by the colonists to the Kafirs which were supposed to have been taken from them in excess of just demands. In December 1834 this state of things was brought to a crisis by an attempt which was made by a party of Europeans to recover some stolen horses. Some cattle were seized, and others were voluntarily surrendered, but the result was that in December a large body of Kafirs invaded the European lands, and massacred the farmers to their hearts’ content. They overran the border country to the number of ten or twelve thousand, and then returned, carrying with them an immense booty. It all reads as a story out of Livy, in which the Volsci will devastate the Roman pastures and then return with their prey to one of their own cities. The reader is sure that the Romans are going to get the best of it at last;—but in the meantime the Roman people are nearly ruined.

Sir Benjamin D’Urban was then Governor, and he took strong and ultimately successful steps to punish the Kafirs. I have not space here to tell how Hintsa, the Kafir chief, was shot down as he was attempting to escape from the British whom he had undertaken to guide through his country, or how the Kafirs were at last driven to sue for peace and to surrender the sovereignty of their country. The war was not only bloody, but ruinous to thousands. The cattle were of course destroyed, so that no one was enriched. Ill blood, of which the effects still remain, was engendered. Three hundred thousand pounds were spent by the British. But at last the Kafirs were supposed to have been conquered, and Sir Benjamin D’Urban supposed to be triumphant.

The triumph, however, to Sir Benjamin D’Urban was not long-lived. At this time Lord Glenelg was Secretary of State for the Colonies in England, and Lord Glenelg was a man subject to what I may perhaps not improperly call the influences of Exeter Hall. When the full report of the Kafir war reached him a certain party at home had been loud in expressions of pity and perhaps of admiration for the South African races. Hottentots and Kafirs had been taken home,—or at any rate a Hottentot and a Kafir,—and had been much admired. No doubt Lord Glenelg gave his best attention to the reports sent to him;—no doubt he consulted those around him;—certainly without doubt he acted in accordance with his conscience and with a full appreciation of the greatness of the responsibility resting upon him;—but I think he acted with very bad judgment. He utterly repudiated what Sir Benjamin D’Urban had done, and asserted that the Kafirs had had “ample justification” for the late war. He declared in his despatch that “they had a perfect right to hazard the experiment of extorting by force that redress which they could not expect otherwise to obtain,” and he caused to be returned to the Kafirs the land from which they had been driven,—which land has since that again become a part of the British Colony. There was a correspondence in which Sir B. D’Urban supported his own views,—but this ended in the withdrawal of the Governor in 1838, Lord Glenelg declaring that he was willing to take upon himself the full responsibility of what he had done, and of all that might come from it.

I think I am justified in saying that since that time public opinion has decided against Lord Glenelg, and has attributed to his mistake the further Kafir wars of 1846 and 1850. It is often very difficult in the beginning of such quarrels to say who is in the right, the Savage or the civilized invader of the country. The Savage does not understand the laws as to promises, treaties, and mutual compacts which we endeavour to impose upon him, and we on the other hand are determined to live upon his land whether our doing so be just or unjust. In such a condition of things we,—meaning the civilized intruders,—are obliged to defend our position. We cannot consent to have our throats cut when we have taken the land, because our title to possession is faulty. If ever a Governor was bound to interfere for the military defence of his people, Sir Benjamin D’Urban was so bound. If ever a Savage was taken red-handed in treachery, Hintsa was so taken, and was so shot down. The full carrying out of Lord Glenelg’s views would have required us to give back all the country to the Hottentots, to compensate the Dutch for our interference, and to go back to Europe. Surely no man was ever so sorely punished for the adequate performance of a most painful public duty as Sir Benjamin D’Urban.

In 1838 slavery was abolished;—and as one of the consequences of that abolition, the Dutch farmers again receded. Their lands were occupied by the English and Scotch who followed them, and in the hands of these men the growth of wool began to prevail. Merino sheep were introduced, and wool became the most important production of the colony.

During the whole of this period the practice was continued by the old-fashioned farmers of receding from their farms in quest of new lands in which they might live without interference. The Colony in spite of Kafirs had prospered under English rule, whilst the Dutch farmers had no doubt enjoyed the progress as well as their English neighbours. Their condition was infinitely more free than it had ever been under Dutch rule, and very much more comfortable. But still they were dissatisfied. British ideas as to Hottentots and Kafirs and British ideas as to slavery were in their eyes absurd, unmanly and disagreeable. And therefore they went away across the Orange River; but we shall be able to deal better with their further journeyings when we come to speak of the colony of Natal, of the Orange Free State, and of the Transvaal Republic.

In 1846 came another Kafir war, called the war of the axe,[3] which lasted to the end of 1847. This too grew out of a small incident. A Kafir prisoner was rescued and taken into Kafir land, and the Kafirs would not give him up when he was demanded by the Authorities. It seems that whenever any slight act of rebellion on their parts was successful, the whole tribe and the neighbouring tribes would be so elated as to think that now had come the time for absolutely subduing the white strangers. They were at last beaten and starved into submission, but at a terrible cost; and it seems to have been acknowledged at home that Lord Glenelg had been wrong. Sir Harry Smith was sent out, and he again extended the Colony to the Kei River, leaving the district between that and the Keiskamma as a British home for Kafirs, under the name of British Kafraria.

In 1849, when Earl Grey was at the Colonial Office, an attempt was made to induce the Cape Colony to receive convicts, and a ship laden with such a freight was sent to Table Bay. But they were never landed. With an indomitable resolution which had about it much that was heroic the inhabitants resolved that the convicts should not be allowed to set foot on the soil of South Africa. The Governor, acting under orders from home, no doubt was all powerful, and there was a military force at hand quite sufficient to enforce the Governor’s orders. Nothing could have prevented the landing of the men had the Governor persevered. But the inhabitants of the place agreed among themselves that if the convicts were landed they should not be fed. No stores of any kind were to be sold to any one concerned should the convicts once be put on shore. The remedy then seemed to be rebellious and has since been called ridiculous;—but it was successful, and the convicts were taken away. For four wretched months the ship with its miserable freight lay in the bay, but not a man was landed. No such freight had ever been brought to the Cape before since the coming of a party of criminals from the Dutch East India possessions, who were sold as slaves,—and no such attempt has been made since. Those who know anything of the history of our Australian Colonies are aware that there is nothing to which the British Colonist has so strong an objection as the presence of a convict from the mother country. Whatever the mother country may send let it not send her declared rascaldom. The use of a Colony as a prison is no doubt in accordance with the Dutch theory that the paramount object of the outlying settlement is the welfare of the parent state,—but it is not at all compatible with the existing British idea that the paramount object is the well-being of the Colonists themselves. It seems hard upon England that with all her territories she can find no spot of ground for the reception of her thieves and outcasts,—that she, with all her population, sending out her honest folks over the whole world, should be obliged to keep her too numerous rascals at home. But it seems that where the population is which creates the crime, there the criminals must remain. The Colonies certainly will not receive them.