SOUTH AFRICA
—
VOL. II.

SOUTH AFRICA.

BY
ANTHONY TROLLOPE.


IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.


FOURTH EDITION.


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

(All rights reserved.)


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

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

THE TRANSVAAL.

SOUTH AFRICA.

CHAPTER I.

THE TRANSVAAL.—NEWCASTLE TO PRETORIA.

Of all our dominions the Transvaal is probably the most remote. Its Capital is 400 miles from the sea, and that distance is not annihilated or even relieved by any railway. When I left home my main object perhaps was to visit this remote district, of which I had never heard much and in which I had been interested not at all, till six months before I started on my journey. Then the country had been a foreign Republic, not very stable as was supposed, and assimilated in my mind with some of the South American Republics which so often change their name and their condition and in which the stanchest lovers of the Republican form of Government hardly put much faith. Now I was in the country and was not only assured myself as to its future security,—but was assured also of the assurance of all who were concerned. Whether Great Britain had done right or wrong to annex the Transvaal, every sod of its soil had instantly been made of double value to its proprietor by the deed which had been done.

Here I was in the Transvaal through which at a period long since that of my own birth lions used to roam at will, and the tribes of the Swazies and Matabeles used to work their will against each other, unconscious of the coming of the white man. Now there are no lions in the land,—and, as far as I could see as I made my journey, very few Natives in the parts which had really been inhabited by the Dutch.

I cannot say that the hotels along the road were very good. By the ordinary travelling Englishman the accommodation would have been considered very bad;—but we did find places in which we could shelter ourselves, and beds of some kind were provided for us. A separate bedroom had become a luxury dear to the imagination and perpetuated by memory. We were a week on the road from Newcastle and pulled off our clothes but once,—when we were under the hospitable roof of Mrs. Swickhard, who keeps a store about half way at a place called Standers Drift. At one or two places there were little Inns, always called hotels, and at others we were taken in by farmers or storekeepers. Sometimes the spot on which we were invited to lie down was so uninviting as to require the summoning up of a special courage. Twice I think we were called upon to occupy the same bed,—on which occasions my age preserved me from the hard ground on which my younger companion had to stretch himself. He had stories to tell of nocturnal visitors to which I have ever been inhospital and useless,—the only wild beast that has ever attacked me being the musquito. Of musquitoes in the Transvaal I had no experience, and was told that even in summer they are not violent. We were travelling in September, which is equal in its circumstances to our March at home. So much for our beds. On our route we banqueted at times like princes,—but these were the times in which we camped out in the veld,—the open field side,—and consumed our own provisions. Never was such tea made as we had. And yet the tea in all the houses was bad,—generally so bad as to be undrinkable. We had bought our tea, as other Colonists buy theirs, at Pieter Maritzburg, and I do not think that the grocer had done anything peculiar for us. But we were determined that the water should boil, that the proper number of tea-spoon-fulls should be afforded, and that the tea should have every chance. We certainly succeeded. And surely never was there such bacon fried, or such cold tongues extracted from tin pots. It happened more than once that we were forced by circumstances to breakfast at houses on the road,—but when we did so we always breakfasted again a few miles off by the side of some spruit,—Anglice brook,—where our horses could get water and eat their forage.

The matter of forage is the main question for all travellers through these parts of South Africa. Let a man sleep where he may and eat what he will, he can go on. Let him sleep not at all and eat but little, he can have himself dragged to his destination. The will within him to reach a given place carries him safely through great hardships. But it is not so with your horse,—and is less so in the Transvaal than in any other country in which I have travelled. We soon learned that our chief care must be to provide proper food for our team, if we wished to reach Pretoria,—let alone those further towns, Kimberley and Bloemfontein. Now there are three modes in which a horse may be fed on such a journey. He may nibble the grass,—or cut his own bread and butter,—as horses do successfully in Australia; but if left to that resource he will soon cease to drag the vehicle after him in South Africa. Or he may be fed upon mealies. I hope my reader has already learned that maize or Indian corn is so called in South Africa. Mealies are easily carried, and are almost always to be purchased along the road. But horses fed upon them while at fast work become subject to sickness and die upon the journey. If used at all they should be steeped in water and dried, but even then they are pernicious except in small quantities. Forage is the only thing. Now forage consists of corn cut green, wheat or oats or barley,—dried with the grain in it and preserved in bundles, like hay. It is cumbrous to carry and it will frequently happen that it cannot be bought on the road side. But you must have forage, or you will not get to your journey’s end. We did manage to supply ourselves, sometimes carrying a large roll of it inside the cart as well as a sack filled with it outside. Every farmer grows a little of it through the country; and the storekeepers along the road, who buy it at 3d. a bundle sell it for a shilling or eighteen pence in accordance with their conscience. But yet we were always in alarm lest we should find ourselves without it. A horse requires about six bundles a day to be adequately fed for continual work. “Have you got forage?” was the first question always asked when the cart was stopped and one of us descended to enquire as to the accommodation that might be forthcoming.

We travelled something over thirty miles a day, always being careful not to allow the horses to remain at their work above two hours and a half at a time. Then we would “out-span,”—take the horses out from the carriage, knee-hobble them and turn them loose with their forage spread upon the ground. Then all our energies would be devoted to the tea kettle and the frying pan.

As we travelled most heartrending accounts reached us of the fate of my companions from Pieter Maritzburg to Newcastle, who had pursued their journey by the mail cart to Pretoria. This conveyance is not supposed absolutely to travel night and day;—nor does it go regularly by day and stop regularly by night in a Christian fashion, but makes its progress with such diminished periods of relaxation as the condition of the animals drawing it may create. If the roads and animals be good, four or six hours in the twenty-four may be allowed to the weary passengers;—but if not,—if as at this time they both be very bad, the periods of relaxation are only those necessary for taking up the mail bags and catching the animals which are somewhere out on the veld, hobbled, and biding their time. For the mail cart the road was very bad indeed, while by our happy luck, for us it was very good. They travelled through two days and nights of uninterrupted rain by which the roads and rivers were at once made almost equally impassable; while for us, so quick are the changes effected, everything had become dry and at the same time free from dust. From place to place we heard of them,—how the three unfortunates had walked into one place fifteen miles in advance of the cart, wet through, carrying their shoes and stockings in their hands, and had then slept upon the ground till the vehicle had come up, the mules had been caught, and they had been carried on a mile or two when they had again been forced to walk. They were at this period two days late and had been travelling on these conditions for four days and four nights with the journey yet unfinished before them. Had I been one of them I think they would have been forced to leave me behind them on the way side. On the road we met their conveyance coming back. It had carried them to a certain point and had thence returned. It was a miserable box on wheels with two mules whose wretched bones seemed to come through their skin. They could not raise a trot though they had no load but the black driver, and I presume some mail bags.

Nor was any one to blame for all this,—except the late Government. For two years and a half the Contractor had done the work without receiving his pay. That he should have gone on and done it at all is the marvel;—but he had persevered spending all that he could make elsewhere upon the effort. When the annexation came he was paid his arrears in lump,—very much no doubt to his comfort; but then there were new tenders and a new contract and it was hardly to be expected that he should lay out his happily recovered money in providing horses and conveyances for a month or two.

I was assured, and I believe truly, that this special journey,—which I did not take,—was the most unfortunate that had ever occurred on this unfortunate road. The animals had of course gone down the hill from bad to worse, and then had come the heavy rain. It seemed to be almost a direct Providence which had rescued me from its misery.

As I passed along the road I took every opportunity that came in my way of entering the houses of the Dutch. I had heard much of the manners of the Boers, and of their low condition of life. I had been told that they were altogether unprogressive,—that the Boer farmer of this day was as his father had been, that so had been the grandfather and the great grandfather, and that so was the son about to be; that they were uneducated, dirty in their habits, ignorant of comforts, and parsimonious in the extreme. These are the main accusations brought against the Boers as a race, and they are supported by various allegations in detail;—as that they do not send their children to school; that large families live in two roomed houses, fathers mothers sons and daughters sleeping in one chamber; that they never wash, and wear their clothes day and night without changing them; that they will live upon the carcases of wild beasts and blesboks which they can shoot upon the lands so as to reduce their expenditure on food to a minimum;—that they are averse to neighbours, and that they will pay for no labour, thus leaving their large farms untilled and to a great extent unpastured. And added to all this it is said that the Boer is particularly averse to all change, resolving not only to do as his father has done before him, but also that his son shall do the like for the future.

The reader will probably perceive that these charges indicate an absence of that civilization which is produced in the world by the congregated intelligences of many persons. Had Shakespeare been born on a remote South African farm he would have been Shakespeare still; but he would not have worn a starched frill to his shirt. The Dutch Boer is what he is, not because he is Dutch or because he is a Boer, but because circumstances have isolated him. The Spaniards had probably reached as luxurious a mode of living as any European people when they achieved their American possessions, but I have no hesitation in saying that the Spaniards who now inhabit the ranches and remote farms of Costa Rica or Columbia are in a poorer condition of life than the Dutch Boers of the Transvaal. I have seen Germans located in certain unfortunate spots about the world who have been reduced lower in the order of humanity than any Dutchmen that I have beheld. And I have been within the houses of English Free Settlers in remote parts of Australia which have had quite as little to show in the way of comfort as any Boer’s homestead.

Such comparisons are only useful as showing that distance from crowded centres will produce the same falling off in civilization among one people as among another. The two points of interest in the matter are,—first the actual condition of these people who have now become British subjects, and secondly how far there is a prospect of improvement. I am now speaking of my journey from Natal up to Pretoria. When commencing that journey, though I had seen many Dutchmen in South Africa I had seen none of the Boer race; and I was told that those living near to the road would hardly be fair specimens of their kind. There was very little on the road to assist in civilizing them and that little had not existed long. From what I afterwards saw I am inclined to think that the impressions first made upon me were not incorrect.

The farmers’ houses generally consisted of two main rooms, with probably some small excrescence which would serve some of the family as a sleeping apartment. In the living room there would be a fire-place, and outside the house, probably at thirty or forty yards’ distance, there would be a huge oven built. The houses would never be floored, the uneven ground being sufficiently solid and also sufficiently clean for the Dutchman’s purposes. There would seldom be a wall-paper or any internal painting of the woodwork. Two solid deal tables, with solid deal settees or benches,—not unfrequently with a locker under them,—would be the chief furniture. There might be a chair or two, but not more than one or two. There would always be a clock, and a not insufficient supply of cups, saucers, and basins. Knives, forks, and spoons would be there. The bed room of course would be a sanctum; but my curiosity,—or diligence in the performance of the duty on which I was intent,—enables me to say that there is always a large bedstead, with a large feather bed, a counterpane, and apparently a pair of sheets. The traveller in Central America will see but little of such decencies among the Spanish farmers there.

Things in the Boer’s house no doubt are generally dirty. An earthen floor will make everything dirty,—whether in Ireland or in the Transvaal. The Boer’s dress is dirty,—and also, which is more important, that of the Boeress. The little Boerlings are all dirty;—so that, even when they are pretty, one does not wish to kiss them. The Boers are very prolific, marrying early and living a wholesome, and I think, a moral life. They are much given to marrying, the widow or the widower very speedily taking another spouse, so that there will sometimes be three or four families in the one house. The women have children very early in life,—but then they have children very late also; which seems to indicate that their manner of living is natural and healthy. I have heard them ridiculed for their speedy changes of marital affection, but it seems to me natural that a man or a woman living far apart from neighbours should require the comfort of a companion.

I am quite convinced that they are belied by the allegation which denies to them all progress in civilization. The continued increase in the number of British and German storekeepers in the country, who grow rich on their trade with the Boers, is sufficient of itself to tell one this. Twenty years since I am assured that it was a common thing for a Boer to be clad in skins. Now they wear woollen clothing, with calico. I fancy that the traveller would have to travel very far before he found a skin-clad Boer. No doubt they are parsimonious;—it might perhaps be more fair to call them prone to save. I, personally, regard saving as a mistake, thinking that the improvement of the world generally is best furthered by a free use of the good things which are earned,—and that they who do not themselves earn them should, as a rule, not have them. It is a large question, which my readers would not thank me to discuss here. But there are two sides to it,—and the parsimony of the Boer who will eat up the carcase of a wild beast till it be rotten so that he need not kill a sheep, and may thus be enabled to stock a farm for his son, will have its admirers in Great Britain,—if not among fathers at any rate among sons. These people are not great consumers, as are our farmers. They wear their clothes longer, and stretch their means further; but that the Boer of to-day consumes very much more than his father there can be no doubt;—and as little that his sons and daughters will consume more.

As to their educational condition I found it very difficult to ascertain facts. The distance of these homesteads one from another makes school teaching in many instances impossible. In some cases I found that great efforts were made, the mother or perhaps the mother’s sister teaching the children to read. Here and there I heard of boys and girls who were sent long distances,—at an expense not only for teaching but for boarding. It has, however, to be acknowledged that the education of the country is at present very deficient. The country is now ours and when the first rudiments of stability have been fixed, so that laws may be administered and taxes collected, then I trust that the rulers of the Transvaal may find themselves able to do something towards bringing education nearer to the Boers.

I have heard the Boers spoken of as a dishonest people. I was once among certain tradesmen of the Transvaal who asserted that it was impossible to keep them from pilfering in the shops, one or two of them alleging that no Boer would make a considerable purchase without relieving the grief which was natural to him at parting with his money by pocketing some little article gratis,—a knife, or a tobacco pipe, or perhaps a few buttons. It was an accusation grievous to hear;—but there arose in the company one man, also a dealer and an Englishman, who vindicated their character, alleging that in all parts of the world petty shop-lifting was so common an offence that the shopkeeper was forced to take it into account in his calculations, and asserting that the thieving Boers, few though they might be in number, would leave more impression on the shopkeeping mind than the very many Boers who would come in and out without perpetrating any dishonesty. I have heard the Boers also charged with immorality,—which always means loose conduct among the women. I am inclined to think,—though I believe but few will share my opinion,—that social morality will always stand higher in towns, where people are close to each other and watch narrowly the conduct one of another, than in far-stretching pastoral districts, where there is no one to see what is done and to question a neighbour’s conduct. I do not suppose that feminine delicacy can stand very high among the Boers of the Transvaal. But on the other hand, as far as I could learn, illegitimacy is not common; and surely there never was a people more given to the honourable practice of matrimony.

I fear that the Boer families have but few recognised amusements. In the little towns or villages the people are given to dancing, and when they dance they are very merry; but the Boers do not live in the villages. The villages are but few in number over a country which is as large as Great Britain and Ireland put together, and the Boer’s daughter who lives six or eight miles from her nearest neighbour can have but little dancing. The young people flirt together when they meet in the Transvaal as they do in all the parts of the world which I have visited. Their manner of flirting would probably be thought to be coarse by English mothers and daughters; but then,—if my readers will remember,—so was the manner of flirting ascribed to those most charming young ladies Rosalind and Celia. We can hardly be entitled to expect more refinement to-day among the Boers of South Africa than among the English of the time of Queen Elizabeth. They are very great at making love, or “freying” as they call it, and have their recognised forms for the operation. A most amusing and clever young lady whom I met on my way up to Pretoria was kind enough to describe to me at length the proper way to engage or to attempt to engage the affections of a Boer’s daughter. The young Boer who thinks that he wants a wife and has made up his mind to look for one begins by riding round the country to find the article that will suit him. On this occasion he does not trouble himself with the hard work of courtship, but merely sees what there is within the circle to which he extends his inspection. He will have dressed himself with more than ordinary care so that any impression which he may make may be favourable, and it is probable that the young ladies in the district know what he is about. But when he has made his choice, then he puts on his very best, and cleans his saddle or borrows a new one, and sticks a feather in his cap, and goes forth determined to carry his purpose. He takes with him a bottle of sugar plums,—an article in great favour among the Boers and to be purchased at every store,—with which to soften the heart of the mother, and a candle. Everything depends upon the candle. It should be of wax, or of some wax-like composition; but tallow will suffice if the proposed bride be not of very high standing. Arrived at the door he enters, and his purpose is known at once. The clean trowsers and the feather declare it; and the sugar plums which are immediately brought forth,—and always consumed,—leave not a shadow of doubt. Then the candle is at once offered to the young lady. If she refuse it, which my informant seemed to think was unusual, then the swain goes on without remonstrating and offers it to the next lady upon his list. If she take it, then the candle is lighted, and the mother retires, sticking a pin into the candle as an intimation that the young couple may remain together, explaining their feelings to each other, till the flame shall have come down to the pin. A little salt, I was assured, is often employed to make the flame weak and so prolong the happy hour. But the mother, who has perhaps had occasion to use salt in her own time, may probably provide for this when arranging the distance for the pin. A day or two afterwards the couple are married,—so that there is nothing of the “nonsense” and occasional heartbreak of long engagements. It is thus that “freying” is carried on among the Boers of the Transvaal.

At home in England, what little is known about the Boers of South Africa,—or I might perhaps more correctly say what little has been told about them,—has tended to give a low notion of them as a race. And there is also an impression that the Boer and the English Colonist are very hostile to each other. I fear that the English Colonist does despise the Boer, but I have not found reason to think that any such hostility exists. Let an Englishman be where he may about the surface of the globe, he always thinks himself superior to other men around him. He eats more, drinks more, wears more clothes, and both earns and spends more money. He,—and the American who in this respect is the same as an Englishman,—always consume the wheat while others put up with the rye. He feeds on fresh meat, while dried or salt flesh is sufficient for his neighbours. He expects to be “boss,” while others work under him. This is essentially so in South Africa where he is constantly brought into contact with the Dutchman,—and this feeling of ascendancy naturally produces something akin to contempt. There is no English farmer in South Africa, who would not feel himself to be vilified by being put on a par with a Dutch farmer. When an Englishman marries a Boer’s daughter, the connexion is spoken of almost as a mésalliance. “He made a mistake and married a Dutchwoman,” I have heard more than once. But, nevertheless, the feeling does not amount to hostility. The Boer in a tacit way acknowledges his own inferiority, and is conscious that the Briton is strong enough and honest enough to do him some service by his proximity.

The man whom the Dutch Boer does hate is the Hollander, and he is the man who does in truth despise the Boer. In the Transvaal a Hollander is the immigrant who has come out new from Holland, whereas the Dutchman is the descendant of those who came out two centuries since. The Dutchman is always an Africander, or one who has been born in Africa from white parents, and he has no sympathy whatever, no feeling of common country, with the new comer from the old country of his forefathers. The Hollander who thus emigrates is probably a man of no family, whereas the old Colonist can go back with his pedigree at least for two centuries and who thinks very much of his ancestors. The Hollander is educated and is said to be pedantic and priggish before those who speak his own language. And in the matter of language these new Dutchmen or Hollanders complain much of the bad Dutch they hear in the Colony and give great offence by such complaints.

The Boers are at present much abused for cowardice, and stories without end are current in the country as to the manner in which they have allowed themselves to be scared by the smallest opposition. You will be told how a posse of twenty men sent to arrest some rebel turned and fled wildly when the rebel drew forth from his breast and presented to them a bottle of soda-water;—how they have got one Kafir to fight another on their behalf and how they have turned and run when it has been expected that they should support the Kafir and do some fighting on their own behalf. I fear that of late there has been truth in these stories and that the pluck shewn by them when they made good their hold upon the country, has been greatly dimmed by the quiet uneventful tenor of their present lives. But no one complains so bitterly of the cowardice of the Boers as the Hollander fresh from Holland. I once ventured to take the part of the Boers in a discussion on the subject, and referred back to the courage of Retief, of Potgieter, and of Maritz. There was a gentleman from Holland in the company, and I own that I thought that politeness required me to make some defence of his Dutch brethren in his hearing. But I found myself to be altogether in the wrong. “They are the vilest set of worthless cowards that the world has ever produced,” said the Dutchman angrily. I think I may say that there is no sympathy whatsoever between the old Dutch Colonist, and the newly-arrived immigrant from Holland.

We crossed the Vaal river at a place called Standerton or Stander’s Drift,—drift being Dutch for a ford the word has by common usage become English in South Africa,—as also has the word spruit for a stream. Here there resides one General Standers from whom the place is called, an old man who commanded a party of the Dutch at the battle of Boom Platz, which was fought between the Boers and the British at a place so called in the Orange Free State in 1848. If the stories told by the English be true the Boers did not distinguish themselves by courage on the occasion. The General is a fine old man, as upright as a maypole and apparently as strong as an oak, about 80 years of age. He is now a most loyal subject of the British throne, though there have been days in his career in which the British name has not been very dear to him. He was finely courteous to us, and asked us to drink coffee, as do all Boers when they intend to be civil to their visitors. It should be understood by travellers that their courtesy is very superior to their coffee. No allusion is here made to the General’s establishment as we had not time to partake of his hospitality. At Standerton we found coal burnt, which had been dug about 30 miles from the place. It was good coal, burning clearly and without much ash.

Rising up from the Vaal river to the height of about 500 feet the land ceases to be hilly and becomes a vast rolling plain for many miles, without a single tree, and almost without a single enclosure. We saw numerous herds of deer, the large blesbok and the smaller springbok, which were near enough to be reached by a rifle. They would stand at about 400 yards from us and gaze at us. My friend had a smooth-bore gun with large shot; but could not get near enough to them to make such a weapon available. The country was very uninteresting,—but capable of bearing wheat on almost every acre. Wheat however there was none, and only here and there at very long distances a batch of arable ground tilled for the purpose of growing forage. I have said that there were but few enclosures. Enclosures for arable or even pastoral purposes there were none. Perhaps three or four times in a day a Boer’s farm would be seen from the road side, distinguished by a small group of trees, generally weeping willows. This would look like a very small oasis in a huge desert. Round the house or on one side of it there would be from six to a dozen acres of land ploughed, with probably a small orchard and sometimes an attempt at a kitchen garden. There would too be some ditching and draining and perhaps some slight arrangement for irrigation. The Boer’s farm-house I have already described. When questioned the farmer invariably declared that it would not pay him to extend his agriculture, as he had no labour on which to depend and no market to which he could carry his wheat. Questions on such subjects were always answered with the greatest courtesy, and I may almost say with eagerness. I do not remember that I ever entered a Boer’s house in which he did not seem glad to see me.

A farm in the Transvaal is supposed to contain six thousand acres. This is so much a matter of course that when a man holds less he describes himself as possessing half a farm, or a quarter of a farm. The land is all private property,—or nearly so, very little of it remaining in the hands of the Government on behalf of the people generally,—and having been divided into these large sections, cannot now be split up into smaller sections except by sale or inheritance. The consequence has been and still is very prejudicial to the interests of the country. The farms are much too large for profitable occupation, and the farmers by the very extent of their own dominions are kept without the advantages of neighbourhood. The people are isolated in regard to schools, churches, and all the amenities of social life. They cannot assist each other in the employment of labour, or create markets for the produce of one another by their mutual wants. The boorishness of the Boer is attributable in a great degree to the number of acres of which he is the lord.

As we went along the road we met a detachment of the 13th regiment marching back from Pretoria to Newcastle. There seemed to be going on a great moving of troops hither and thither, which no doubt had been made necessary by the annexation. And these marchings were never made without accidents of flood and field. On this occasion sixteen waggon-oxen had died on the road. The soldiers had to carry their tents and belongings with them, and the bullocks therefore were essential to these movements. When I saw the big waggons, and the dead oxen, and remembered that every man there in a red coat had been extracted from our population at home with the greatest difficulty, and brought to that spot at an enormous cost, and that this had been done for no British purpose, I own that I asked myself some questions as to the propriety of our position in the Transvaal which I found it difficult to answer;—as for instance whether it is necessary that the troubles of the world at large should be composed and set to rights by the soldiers of a nation so very little able to provide an army as Great Britain. But the severity of these thoughts was much mitigated when the two officers in command walked across to us while we were outspanning in the veld, and offered us bitter beer. The Transvaal would never have known even the taste of bitter beer had it not been for the British army. Talk of a fountain in the desert! What fountain can be compared to that kettle full of Bass which the orderly who followed our two new friends carried in his hand. “Do not look at it,” said the donor as the beverage was poured out. “The joltings of the journey have marred its brightness. But you will find that the flavour is all there.”

The only place on the road worthy to be called a town is Heidelberg and this does not contain above two or three hundred inhabitants. It is the capital of a district of the same name of which the entire population is about 2,000. The district is larger than an ordinary English county, comprising a compact area about 80 miles long by 60 broad, and yet it is returned as having no other village within its boundaries except the so called town of Heidelberg. But the place has an air of prosperity about it and contains two or three mercantile firms which are really doing a large business. In these places the shops, or stores, are very much more extensive than would be any such depôts in English villages of the same size;—so much so that comfortable fortunes may be made in a comparatively short time. As the Boers are the chief customers, it is evident that they are learning to spend their money, and are gradually departing from the old Boer law that the farm should supply everything needed for life.

At Heidelberg we found a good Inn,—a good Inn that is for the Transvaal:—but the landlord at once told us that he had got no forage. Our first work therefore was to go about into the town and beg. This we did successfully, a merchant of the place consenting to let us have enough for our immediate requirements, out of his private store. But for this we must have used the reserve supply we carried with us, and have gone on upon our road to look for more.

The Inn I have said was good. There was a large room in which a public table was kept and at which a very good dinner was provided at half-past six, and a very good breakfast at eight the next morning. There was a pretty little sitting room within which any lady might make herself comfortable. The bed and bedroom were clean and sweet. But there was only one bed tendered for the use of two of us, and a slight feeling seemed to exist that we were fastidious in requiring more. As more was not forthcoming my unfortunate companion had to lie upon the ground.

At Heidelberg we were nearly on the highest table ground of the Transvaal. From thence there is a descent to Pretoria,—not great indeed for Pretoria is 4,450 feet above the sea,—but sufficient to produce an entire change of climate. On the High Veld, as it is called, the characteristics of the country are all those belonging to the temperate zone,—such, indeed, as are the characteristics of our own country at home. Wheat will grow if planted in the late autumn and will ripen in the summer. But as the hill is turned, down to Pretoria, tropical influences begin to prevail. Apples are said to thrive well, but so also do oranges. And wheat will not live through the droughts of the winter without irrigation. Irrigation for wheat must be costly, and consequently but little wheat is grown. Wheat sown in the spring is, I am told, subject to rust. Mealies, or Indian corn, will thrive here, and almost all kinds of fruit. The gardens produce all kinds of vegetables, when irrigation is used.

We descended into Pretoria through a “poort” or opening between the hills and the little town with its many trees smiled upon us in the sun. It lies in a valley on a high plateau, just as Grahamstown does, and is surrounded by low hills. As we were driven into the town I congratulated myself on having come to the end of my journey. To reach Pretoria had been my purpose, and now I was at Pretoria. My further troubles would be confined to my journey home which I intended to commence after a week’s delay at the capital of our new Colony. Hitherto my work had been not very uncomfortable and certainly not unprosperous.

CHAPTER II.

THE TRANSVAAL.—ITS HISTORY.

This southern boundary of the Transvaal has always been marked clearly enough, but on every other side there are and have been doubts and claims which are great difficulties to the administrator of the new Colony. To the west are the Zulus who are, at this moment, claiming lands which we also claim. Then above them, to the north-west are the Portuguese who are not perhaps likely to extend their demands for inland territory, but who are probably quite as much in doubt as we are as to any defined boundary between them and the natives.[1] To the north I think I may say that no one yet knows how far the Transvaal goes. The maps give the Limpopo river as a boundary, but I think Sir Theophilus Shepstone will own that Great Britain cannot, should she wish to do so, make good her claim to lordship over the native races up to the Limpopo without a considerable amount of —— arrangement with the tribes. And yet the matter is one that must be settled with accuracy because of the hut tax. From the natives living under the protection of the British Crown in the other colonies of South Africa a direct tax is levied,—10s. or 14s.,—on each hut occupied, and it is indispensable to the Government of the new Colony that the same system shall be introduced there. We cannot govern the country without a revenue, and from our black subjects this is the only means of collecting a revenue,—till we begin to make something out of their taste for strong drinks. It was inaccuracy as to their northern and north-eastern boundaries which brought the South African or Transvaal Republic to that ruin which induced us to seize it;—or, in other words, the lands which the Dutch claimed the natives claimed also, and these claims were so ambiguous, so progressive, so indefinite, that to have yielded to them would have been to give up the whole country. Sicocoeni who was the Chief most specially hostile to the Republic in its last days claimed even the site on which stood Pretoria the capital, where the Volksraad or Parliament of the Republic sat. In dealing with the Natives as to boundaries nothing can be got by yielding. Nor does it seem possible to trust to abstract justice. Between Sicocoeni and Mr. Burgers, the last President of the Republic, it would have been impossible for abstract justice to have drawn a true line so confused had the matter become. It can only be done by a strong hand, and can only be done well by a strong hand guided by a desire equally strong to do what is right. As an Englishman I feel sure that we shall have the one, and, again as Englishman, I trust that we shall have the other. The habitations of hundreds of thousands of Natives are concerned. I find that the coloured population of our new Colony is variously stated at numbers ranging from 250,000 to 800,000. It is all guess work;—but there is no doubt that the multitude of human beings concerned is very great. Were we to annex everything included in the Dutch maps of the Transvaal, the true number would probably be much greater than the larger of those above given. You, my readers, probably think that the more we include the better for them, even though they should be made to pay a tax of 10s. a hut. So do I. But they don’t. They want to be independent,—as are the Zulus down on the sea coast. It is therefore impossible not to perceive a difficulty. A line to the North and North-East must be drawn;—but no possible line will satisfy the natives. To the West and North-West the matter is probably as doubtful, though not as difficult. The numbers are fewer and the people less warlike. But to the South-West there is another problem to be solved. There is a territory North by West of the Vaal river, including the little town of Bloomhof, which we, by British award declared to be independent. Governor Keate of Natal was appointed as arbitrator to draw a line between the Republic and the natives, and he declared this territory to be a portion of Bechuanaland. But the Transvaal, rejecting Governor Keate’s award, took the territory and governed it. Are we now to reject it and give it back to the Bechuanas, or are we to keep it as part of the annexed Colony? This also will add something to the difficulty of defining our new possession.

The history of the European occupation of the Transvaal is the same as the history of all South Africa during this century. The Dutch have been ever running away from the English, and the English have sometimes pursued them and sometimes determined that they should go whither they would and be no longer accounted as British subjects. They have certainly been a most stiff-necked people with whom to deal,—and we by their inability to amalgamate with ourselves have been driven into vacillations which have not always been very creditable to our good sense. We have been too masterful and yet not masterful enough. In Natal as we have seen, we would not allow them to form a Republic or to throw off their British allegiance. Across the Orange river we have fought them and reduced them,—at Boom Plaats, as I shall describe when giving the little history of the Orange Free State,—and then have bid them go their own way and shift for themselves.

The Dutch of South Africa have hated our ways, though I do not think that they have hated us. What they have practically said to us is as follows. “No doubt you are very fine fellows, and very strong. We do not intend to pit ourselves against you. We first took and cultivated and civilized this Cape Colony. But as you want it in God’s name take it and use it, and do with it as you list. But let us go and do as we list elsewhere. You don’t like slavery. We do. Let us go and have our slaves in a new land. We must encounter endless troubles and probably death in the attempt. But anything will be better to us than your laws and your philanthropy.” We could not hinder them from going. There was at one time a desire to hinder them, and the Colonial Attorney General in 1836 was consulted as to the law on the subject. There was an old Dutch law, he said, forbidding the Colonists to cross the border; but that could hardly be brought in force to prevent persons from seeking their fortunes in other lands. We have already seen in regard to Natal, how Lieut.-Governor Stockenstrom, when appealed to, declared that he knew of no law which prevented His Majesty’s subjects from leaving His Majesty’s dominions and settling elsewhere. That these people must be allowed to go away with their waggons wheresoever they might choose was evident enough; but the British rulers could not quite make up their minds whether it was or was not their duty to go after the wanderers.

When the Dutch first made their way into the country now called the Transvaal they were simply on their road to Natal. News had reached them of the good land of Natal and they endeavoured to get to it by going northwards across the Orange river. While pursuing their way through what is now the Free State they encountered a terrible savage named Mazulekatze, who was at the head of a tribe called the Matabele, with whom they had to fight to the death. This warrior was a Zulu and had fought under Chaka the king of the Zulus;—but had quarrelled with his lord and master and fled out of Zulu Land westwards. Here he seems to have created the tribe called Matabele, some of whom were Zulus and some natives and some warriors who had joined him, as being a great fighting Chief, from other tribes. He was as terrible a savage as Chaka himself, and altogether “ate up” the less warlike Bechuanas who up to his time possessed the land thereabouts. This seems to have been the way with these tribes. They were like water running furiously in a torrent which in its course is dashed over a rock. The stream is scattered into infinite spray the particles of which can hardly be distinguished from the air. But it falls again and is collected into this stream or the other, changing not its nature but only its name. The Zulus, the Bechuanas, the Matabeles, and the Kafirs seem to have been formed and reformed after this fashion without any long dated tribal consistency among them. When the Dutch came to the Vaal river, groping their way to Natal, they found Mazulekatze and his Matabeles who was still at war with some of these Bechuana tribes south of the Vaal river. This was in 1837, the year before the final abolition of slavery which by the law of 1834 was arranged to take place in 1838. The Dutch were nearly exterminated, but they succeeded in driving Mazulekatze out of the land. Then there was a quarrel among themselves whether they should remain in that land or go eastward to the more promising soil of Natal. They went eastward, and how they fared in Natal has already been told.

For ten or eleven years after this the “trekking” of the Dutchmen into the Transvaal was only the onward movement of the most hardy of the class, the advanced pioneers of freedom, who would prefer to live on equal terms with the Savage,—if that were necessary,—than to have any dealings with English law. These were men at that time subject to no rule. Some were established north and west of the Vaal where Potchefstrom and Klerksdorp now are; others south and east of the Vaal. As to the latter there came an order for the appointment over them of British magistrates from Sir Henry Smith who was then the Governor of the Cape Colony. This was an offence which could not be borne. Andreas Pretorius, that most uncompromising, most stiff-necked and self-reliant of all the Dutchmen, had left Natal in disgust with this Governor and had settled himself in these parts. He instigated a rebellion against British authority,—not with the view of at that moment claiming land north of the Vaal, but of asserting the independence of those who lived to the south of it. Then came the battle of Boom Plaats and the Orange Sovereignty,—as will be told in the section of my Work devoted to the history of the Orange Free State. It was when flying from this battle, in 1848, that Pretorius crossed the Vaal. “For you there is safety,” he said to his companions as he started. “For me there is none.” Then he fled away across the river and a reward of £2,000 was set upon his head. This I think may be regarded as the beginning of the occupation of the Transvaal territory by a European or Dutch population.

A sort of Republic was at once established of which Pretorius was at first the acknowledged rather than the elected Chief. The most perfect freedom for the white man,—which was supposed to include perfect equality,—was to be maintained by a union of their forces against the Natives of the country. Mazulekatze had been ejected, and the Bechuanas were again coming in upon their old land. Then there were new troubles which seemed always to end in the subjection of a certain number of the Natives to the domestic institutions of the Dutch. The children of those who rebelled, and who were taken as prisoners, were bound as apprentices in the families of the Dutch farmers,—and as such were used as slaves. There can be no doubt that such was the case. All the evidence that there is on the subject goes to prove it, and the practice was one entirely in accordance with Dutch sympathies and Dutch manners. It is often pointed out to an enquirer that the position of the little urchins who were thus brought into contact with civilization was thereby much improved. Such an argument cannot be accepted as worth anything until the person using it is brought to admit that the child so apprenticed is a slave, and the master a slave-owner. Then the argument is brought back to the great question whether slavery as an institution is beneficial or the reverse. But even a Dutchman will generally avoid that position.

Such was the condition of the territory when the English determined that they would signify to their runaway subjects that they were regarded as free to manage themselves as they pleased across the Vaal. Of what use could it be to follow these Dutchmen beyond that distant river, when, if so persecuted, they would certainly “trek” beyond the Limpopo? Further back than the Limpopo were the Zambesi and the Equator. And yet as matters then stood a certain unpronounced claim was implied by what had been done between the Orange and the Vaal. A treaty was therefore made with the people in 1852, and for the making of the treaty Messrs. Hogge and Owen were despatched as Her Majesty’s Commissioners to meet Pretorius and a deputation of emigrant farmers, to settle the terms on which the Republic should be established. There were two clauses of special interest. One prohibited slavery in the new Republic,—a clause so easy to put into a treaty, but one of which it is so impossible for an outside power to exact the fulfilment! Another declared that the British would make no alliances with the natives north of the Vaal river,—a clause which we have also found to be very inconvenient. It would have been better perhaps merely to have told these Boers that if we found slavery to exist we should make it a casus belli, and to have bound ourselves to nothing. This would have been “high-handed,”—but then how much more high-handed have we been since?

Andreas Pretorius was the first President of the now established and recognised nationality which, with a weak ambition which has assisted much in bringing it to its ruin, soon called itself the South African Republic,—as though it were destined to swallow up not only the Free State but the British Colonies also. In this, however, Andreas Pretorius himself had no part. The passion of his soul seems to have been separation from the British;—not dominion over them. He died within two years, in July 1853, and his son was elected in his place. The father was certainly a remarkable man,—the one who of all his class was the most determined to liberate himself from the thraldom of English opinions. Mr. Theal in his history[2] of South Africa well describes how this man had become what he was by a continued reading of the Old Testament. The sanguinary orders given to the chosen people of the Lord were to him orders which he was bound to obey as were they. Mr. Theal quotes a special passage from the twentieth chapter of Deuteronomy, to which I will refer my reader—“When thou comest nigh unto a city fight against it.” The Israelites are enjoined either to slay or to enslave. And Pretorius felt that such were the commands given to him in reference to those natives among whom his lot had cast him. They were to him the people of the cities which were “very far off,” and whom he had divine order to enslave, while the more unfortunate ones who would still fain occupy the lands on which it suited him and his people to dwell, were “the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites” whom the Lord had commanded him utterly to destroy. With such authority before him, and while black labour was so necessary to the cultivation of the land, how could he doubt about slavery? In studying the peculiarity of the Dutch character in South Africa and the aversion of the people to our ways we have always to remember that they had been brought up for ages in the strictest belief in the letter of scripture. The very pictures in their bibles were to them true pictures, because they were there. It was so two hundred years ago with a large sect in Europe,—from which sect they had sprung. They had grown in the new land without admixture with the progressing ideas of Europe. They had neither been enlightened nor contaminated by new systems of belief, or unbelief. So it has come to pass that an institution which is so abhorrent to us as to make us feel that the man who is stained by it must be a godless sinner, is still to them a condition of things directly authorized and ordered by the Almighty. By our persistency, by our treaties, by our power, by enforcing upon their inferior condition as the very trade-mark of our superiority the command that slavery shall exist no longer, we have driven them to deny it, and have almost convinced them that slavery is no longer possible. But that heartfelt hatred of slavery which is now common to all of us in England has not yet reached the Dutchman of South Africa,—and is hardly as strong in the bosoms of all British South African Colonists as it might be.

After the death of the elder Pretorius the Republic had by no means a quiet or a bloodless time. The capital was then at Potchefstrom, near the Vaal, while the enormous territory claimed by it to the north was almost without government. There are stories of terrible massacres amidst the records of the Republic,—of fearful revenge inflicted on the white men by the Savage whose lands had been taken from him, and of tenfold, hundredfold revenge following quick upon the heads of the wretched people. “Thou shalt utterly destroy them!” And therefore a whole tribe was smothered and starved to death within the caves in which they had taken refuge. We read that, “For years afterwards the supremacy of the white man was unquestioned in that part of the Transvaal, and we can easily believe it.”[3] But for some years the Republic hardly had any other history but that of its contests with the Natives and its efforts to extend its borders by taking land wherever its scanty European population could extend itself. The cities “very far off” were all their legitimate prey. As the people thus followed out their destiny at great distances the seat of Government was moved from Potchefstrom to Pretoria, which city was named after the founder of the Republic.

Upon the death of Andreas Pretorius in 1853 his son became President; but in 1859 he was elected President of the Free State in the room of Mr. Bostrof, who had then retired. When at Bloemfontein he advocated measures for joining the two Republics under the name of the South African Republic. Already had risen the idea that the Dutch might oust the English from the continent, not by force of arms but by Republican sentiment,—an idea however which has never travelled beyond the brains of a few political leaders in the Transvaal. I do not think that a trace of it is to be found in the elder Pretorius. Mr. Burgers, the last President, of whom I shall have to speak presently, was so inflated by it, that it may be said to have governed all his actions. The idea is grand, for a South African Dutchman patriotic, and for a Republican Dutchman not unnatural. But such ideas must depend on their success for their vindication. When unsuccessful they seem to have been foolish thoughts, bags of gas and wind, and are held to be proof of the incompetency of the men who held them for any useful public action. Neither will Mr. Pretorius junior nor Mr. Burgers ever be regarded as benefactors of their country or as great statesmen; but the bosoms of each have no doubt swelled with the aspiration of being called the Dutch Washington of South Africa. I think I may say that Mr. Brand, who is now President of the Orange Free State, is imbued with no such vaulting ambition, whatever may be his ideas on the course of things in the womb of time. He is mildly contented to be President of the Free State, and as long as the Free State has a history to be written he will be spoken of as the man who in the midst of its difficulties made its existence possible and permanent.

The Volksraad of the Free State did not sympathise with the views of their President from the Transvaal, and in 1863 he resigned the place. He was soon re-elected President of the Northern Republic and remained in that office till he quarrelled with his own Volksraad or was quarrelled with by them. He struggled hard and successfully to extend the bounds of the Empire, and claimed among other lands that tract of land of which I have already spoken, which is far to the south-west of the Transvaal, but still to the north or north-west of the Vaal, where a tribe of the Griquas, a branch of the vast tribe of the Bechuanas, were living. The question of a boundary in that direction was submitted to Governor Keate as umpire, and his decision, which was hostile to the claims of the Republic, was accepted by the President. But the Volksraad repudiated their President, declaring that he had acted without their authority, and refused to surrender the land in question. Oddly enough after this, it is,—or it is not,—at this moment a portion of British territory. I do not know with what face we can hold it;—but still I feel sure that we shall not abandon it. Pretorius was so disgusted with his Volksraad that he resigned his office. This happened in 1872. Mr. Burgers, the late President, was then elected for a term of five years, and was sworn into office on 1st July of that year.

Mr. Burgers, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in Capetown, is still a man in the prime of life and is entitled to be spoken of with that courtesy which always should be extended to living politicians who have retired from office. Unless the proof to the contrary be so apparent as to be glaring,—as to be impossible of refutation,—the motives of such men should not be impugned. When a man has held high office in his State,—especially when he has been elected to that office by the voices of his fellow-citizens,—he is entitled to the merit of patriotism unless the crime of selfish ambition or unclean hands have been brought home against him by the voices which elected him. No such charges have been substantiated against Mr. Burgers, and I shall therefore speak of him with all the respect which patriotism deserves. He was chosen because he was supposed to be fit, and I have no reason to doubt that he strove to do his best for his adopted country. But the capacity of a Statesman for the office he has filled is always open to remark, whether he be still in power or shall have retired. In the former case it is essential to oust an incompetent man from his place, and in the latter to defend the course by which such a one has been ousted. As a public man,—one who devotes himself to the service of the people,—is entitled to the most generous construction of his motives, which should be regarded as pure and honest till their impurity and dishonesty shall have been put beyond question,—so is he justly exposed to all that criticism can say as to the wisdom of his words and deeds. The work on which he is employed is too important for that good-natured reticence with which the laches of the insignificant may be allowed to be shrouded.

When Mr. Burgers was elected President of the Transvaal Republic he was, or shortly before had been, a clergyman of the Dutch Reformed Church in the Cape Colony, who had differed on matters of creed with the Church to which he belonged, and had consequently cast off his orders. He was known as an eloquent enthusiastic man, and was warmly welcomed in the Transvaal,—where, if ever, a silent, patient, unobtrusive officer was wanted for the work which had to be done in consolidating the Republic. The country at the time was very poor. The Treasury was empty,—a paper currency had been set afloat in 1865, and was of course greatly depreciated. Taxes were with difficulty collected, and the quarrels with the natives were incessant. Mr. Burgers succeeded in raising a loan, and borrowed £60,000, which the bank who lent the money will now receive from the pockets of tax-payers in England. A considerable portion of this sum has, I believe, already been repaid out of money voted by the House of Commons. He established a national flag,—which was we may suppose a cheap triumph. He had a gold coinage struck, with a portraiture of himself,—two or three hundred gold pieces worth 20s. each—which I will not hurt his feelings by calling sovereigns. This could not have cost much as the coinage was so limited. They were too all made out of Transvaal gold. He set on foot a most high flown scheme of education,—of which the details will be given elsewhere and which might not have been amiss had it not been utterly impracticable. He attempted to have the public lands surveyed, while he did not in the least know what the public lands were and had no idea of their limits. There was to be a new code of laws, before as yet he had judges or courts. And then he resolved that a railway should at once be made from Pretoria through the gold fields of the Transvaal down to Delagoa Bay where the Portuguese have their settlement. For the sake of raising a loan for this purpose he went in person to Holland,—just when one would have thought his presence in his own country to be indispensable, and did succeed in saddling the Republic with a debt of £100,000 for railway properties,—which debt must now, also, be paid by the British tax-payers. To all this he added,—so runs the rumour among those who were his friends in the Republic—many proud but too loudly spoken aspirations as to the future general destiny of the South African Republic. His mind seems to have been filled with the idea of competing with Washington for public admiration.

In all this there was much for which only the statesman and not the man must be blamed. The aspirations in themselves were noble and showed that Mr. Burgers had so far studied his subject as to know what things were good for a nation. But he had none of that method which should have taught him what things to put first in bestowing the blessings of government upon a people. We remember how Goldsmith ridicules the idea of sending venison to a man who is still without the necessaries of life.