But the main grievance arose out of those native and colour questions which have ever since continued to trouble South Africa. Slavery had existed in the Colony since 1658, and had produced its usual consequences, the degradation of labour, and the notion that the black man has no rights against the white. In 1737 the first Moravian mission to the Hottentots was frowned upon, and a pastor who had baptized natives found himself obliged to return to Europe. The current of feeling in Europe, and especially in England, which condemned the "domestic institution" and sought to vindicate the human rights of the negro, had not been felt in this remote corner of the world, and from about 1810 onward the English missionaries gave intense offence to the colonists by espousing the cause of the natives and the slaves, and reporting every case of cruel or harsh treatment which came to their knowledge. It is said that they often exaggerated, or made charges on insufficient evidence, and this is likely enough. But it must also be remembered that they were the only protectors the blacks had; and where slavery exists, and a weak race is dominated by a strong one, there are sure to be many abuses of power. When, in 1828, Hottentots and other free coloured people were placed by governmental ordinance on an equal footing with whites as regards private civil rights, the colonists were profoundly disgusted, and their exasperation was increased by the enactment of laws restraining their authority over their slaves, as well as by the charges of ill-treating the natives which continued to be brought against them by the missionaries. Finally, in 1834, the British Parliament passed a statute emancipating the slaves throughout all the British colonies, and awarding a sum of twenty million pounds sterling as compensation to the slave-owners. The part of this sum allotted to Cape Colony (a little more than three millions sterling) was considerably below the value of the slaves (about 39,000) held there, and as the compensation was made payable in London, most slave owners sold their claims at inadequate prices. Many farmers lost the bulk of their property, and labour became in many districts so scarce that agriculture could hardly be carried on. The irritation produced by the loss thus suffered, intensifying the already existing discontent, set up a ferment among the Dutch farmers. Their spirit had always been independent, and the circumstances of their isolated life had enabled them to indulge it. Even under the government of their Dutch kinsfolk they had been restless, and now they received, as they thought, one injustice after another at the hands of alien rulers. To be watched and denounced by the missionaries, to have black people put on a level with them, to lose the fruits of their victory over the Kafirs—all these things had been bad enough. Now, however, when their property itself was taken away and slavery abolished on grounds they could neither understand nor approve, they determined to endure no longer, and sought for some means of deliverance. Rebellion against so strong a power as that of Britain was evidently foredoomed to failure. But to the north and east a great wild country lay open before them, where they could lead that solitary and half-nomadic life which they loved, preserve their old customs, and deal with the natives as they pleased, unvexed by the meddlesome English. Accordingly, many resolved to quit the Colony altogether and go out into the wilderness. They were the more disposed to this course, because they knew that the wars and conquests of Tshaka, the ferocious Zulu king, had exterminated the Kafir population through parts of the interior, which therefore stood open to European settlement. Thus it was that the Great Trek, as the Dutch call it,—the great emigration, or secession, as we should say,—of the Dutch Boers began in 1836, twenty-five years before another question of colour and slavery brought about a still greater secession on the other side of the Atlantic.

If the reader will here refer to the map, and measure from Cape Town a distance of about four hundred and fifty miles to the east (to the mouth of the Great Fish River), and about the same distance to the north-north-east (to where the towns of Middelburg and Colesberg now stand), he will obtain a pretty fair idea of the limits of European settlement in 1836. The outer parts of this area toward the north and east were very thinly peopled, and beyond them there was a vast wilderness, into which only a few hunters had penetrated, though some farmers had, during the last decade or two, been accustomed to drive their flocks and herds into the fringe of it after the rains, in search of fresh pastures. The regions still farther to the north and east were almost entirely unexplored. They were full of wild beasts, and occupied here and there by native tribes, some, like the various branches of the Zulu race, eminently fierce and warlike. Large tracts, however, were believed to be empty and desolate, owing to the devastations wrought during his twenty years of reign by Tshaka, who had been murdered eight years before. Of the existence of mineral wealth no one dreamed. But it was believed that there was good grazing land to be found on the upland that lay north of the great Quathlamba Range (where now the map shows the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic). More to the south lay the territory we now call Natal. It was described by those very few persons who had explored it as fertile and well-watered, a country fit both for tillage and for pasture; but wide plains and high mountains had to be crossed to reach it by land from the north-west, and close to it on the north-east was the main body of the Zulu nation, under King Dingaan, the brother and sucessor of Tshaka.

Into this wilderness did the farmers set forth, and though some less laudable motives may have been mingled with the love of independence and the resentment at injustice which mainly prompted their emigration, it is impossible not to admire their strenuous and valiant spirit. They were a religious people, knowing no book but the Bible, and they deemed themselves, like many another religious people at a like crisis of their fortunes, to be under the special protection of Heaven, as was Israel when it went out of Egypt into a wilderness not so vast nor so full of perils as was that which the Boers were entering. Escaping from a sway which they compared to that of the Egyptian king, they probably expected to be stopped or turned back. But Pharaoh, though he had turned a deaf ear to their complaints, was imbued with the British spirit of legality. He consulted his attorney-general, and did not pursue them. The colonial government saw with concern the departure of so many useful subjects. But it was advised that it had no legal right to stop them, so it stood by silently while party after party of emigrants—each householder with his wife and his little ones, his flocks and his herds and all his goods—took its slow way from the eastern or northern parts of the Colony, up the slopes of the coast range, and across the passes that lead into the high plateau behind. Within two years from 6,000 to 10,000 persons set forth. They travelled in large covered wagons drawn by ten or twelve yoke of oxen, and they were obliged to travel in parties of no great size, lest their cattle should exhaust the pasture along the track they followed. There was, however a general concert of plan among them, and most of the smaller groups united at spots previously fixed upon for a rendezvous. All the men were armed, for the needs of defence against the Bushmen, and the passion for killing game, had made the farmers expert in the use of the rifle. As marksmen they were unusually steady and skilful, and in the struggles that followed nothing but their marksmanship saved them. Few to-day survive of those who took part in this Great Trek, but among those few is Paul Kruger, now President of the South African Republic, who followed his father's cattle as they were driven forward across the prairie, being then a boy of ten.

I have not space to tell, save in the briefest outline, the striking and romantic story of the wanderings of the emigrant Boers and their conflicts with the native tribes. The first party, like the first host of Crusaders that started for the East in the end of the eleventh century, perished miserably. It consisted of ninety-eight persons travelling with thirty wagons. They penetrated far to the north-east, into what is now the territory of the Transvaal Republic. Some were cut off by the natives; some, reduced to a mere handful by fever and by the loss of their cattle,—for they had ventured into the unhealthy lower country to the south-east of the mountains, where the tsetse-fly abounds,—made their way to the coast at Delagoa Bay. Another party, formed by the union of a number of smaller bodies at Thaba 'Ntshu, a rocky peak in the Orange Free State, visible on the eastern horizon from the present town of Bloemfontein, advanced thence to the north, and presently came in contact with a redoubtable branch of the Zulu race, famous in later history under the name of Matabili. This tribe was then ruled by the chief Umzilikazi, or Mosilikatze, a warrior of great energy and talent. He had been one of Tshaka's favourite generals, but, having incurred that king's displeasure, had fled, about A.D. 1817, with his regiment to the north-west, and established his headquarters near a place called Mosega (between Pretoria and Mafeking), in what is now the Transvaal Republic. Thence he raided and massacred the Bechuanas and other tribes of this region, though himself unable to withstand the main Zulu nation, which, under Dingaan, was living farther to the south. The Matabili provoked war by falling upon and destroying a detachment of the emigrants. Intruders the latter doubtless were, but, as the Matabili themselves had slaughtered without mercy the weaker Kafir tribes, the Boers might think they need not feel any compunction in dealing out the like measure to their antagonists. And, in point of fact, the emigrants seem all through to have treated the natives much as Israel treated the natives of Canaan, and to have conceived themselves to have Old Testament authority for occupying the territories of the heathen, and reducing them by the sternest methods to serfdom or submission. Here they had an unprovoked massacre to avenge, and they showed equal promptitude and courage. Pouncing upon Mosilikatze, they defeated his vastly superior force with so great a slaughter that he fled north-westward far away beyond the Limpopo River, and fell like a thunderbolt upon the tribes who dwelt between that stream and the Zambesi, killing many and making slaves of the rest. Here, with the king's kraal of Buluwayo for its capital, was established the kingdom of the Matabili, which remained as a terror to its neighbours till, in its turn, destroyed by Dr. Jameson and the British South Africa Company in 1893. It was a curious chain of events that brought fire and slaughter so suddenly, in 1837, upon the peoples of the Zambesi Valley. As the conflicts of nomad warriors along the great wall of China in the fourth century of our era set a-going a movement which, propagated from tribe to tribe, ended by precipitating the Goths upon the Mediterranean countries, and brought Alaric to the Salarian Gate of Rome, so the collapse of the French monarchy, inducing the Revolution and the consequent war with England, carried the English to the Cape, brought the Boers into collision with the Matabili, and at last hurled the savage host of Mosilikatze on the helpless Makalakas.

The defeat and expulsion of the Matabili left the vast territories between the Orange River and the Limpopo in the hands of the Boer immigrants. Within these territories, after much moving hither and thither, those small and rude communities began to grow up which have ripened, as we shall presently see, into the two Dutch republics of our own time. But, meanwhile, a larger and better organized body of Boers, led by a capable and much-respected man named Pieter Retief, marched first eastward and then southward across the Quathlamba watershed, and descended from the plateau into the richer and warmer country between those mountains and the Indian Ocean. This region had been in 1820 almost depopulated by the invasions of Tshaka, and now contained scarce any native inhabitants. A few Englishmen had since 1824 been settled on the inlet then called Port Natal, where now the prosperous town of Durban lies beneath the villas and orchards of Berea, and (having obtained a cession of the maritime slip from King Tshaka) were maintaining there a sort of provisional republic. In 1835 they had asked to be recognised as a colony under the name of Victoria, in honour of the young princess who two years afterwards mounted the throne, and to have a legislature granted them. The British government, however, was still hesitating whether it should occupy the port, so the emigrants did not trouble themselves about its rights or wishes. Thinking it well to propitiate the Zulu king, Dingaan, whose power over-shadowed the country, the Boer leaders proceeded to his kraal to obtain from him a formal grant of land. The grant was made, but next day the treacherous tyrant, offering them some native beer as a sort of stirrup-cup before their departure, suddenly bade his men fall upon and "kill the wizards." The excellent Retief perished with his whole party, and a body of emigrants not far distant was similarly surprised and massacred by a Zulu army of overwhelming strength. These cruelties roused the rest of the emigrants to reprisals, and in a fierce battle, fought on December 16, 1838, the anniversary of which is still celebrated by the people of the Transvaal, a handful of Boers overthrew Dingaan's host. Like the soldiers of Cortes in Mexico, they owed this, as other victories, not merely to their steady valour, but to their horses. Riding up to the line of savage warriors, they delivered a volley, and rode back before an assagai could reach them, repeating this manoeuvre over and over again till the hostile ranks broke and fled. Ultimately their forces, united with those of a brother of Dingaan, who had rebelled against him and had detached a large part of the Zulu warriors, drove Dingaan out of Zululand in 1840. Panda, the rebel brother, was installed king in his stead, as a sort of vassal to the Boer government, which was now entitled the republic of Natalia, and the Boers founded a city, Pietermaritzburg, and began to portion out the land. They deemed the British authorities to have abandoned any claim to the country by the withdrawal of a detachment of troops which had been landed at Port Natal in 1838. But their action, and in particular their ejection from the country of a mass of Kafirs whom they proposed to place in a district already occupied by another tribe, had meanwhile excited the displeasure of the government of Cape Colony. That government, though it had not followed them into the deserts of the interior, had never renounced, and indeed had now and then reasserted its right to consider them British subjects. They, however, repudiated all idea of subjection, holding British sovereignty to be purely territorial, so that when they had passed out of the region which the British crown claimed they had become a free and independent people, standing alone in the world. Their attempt to establish a new white state on the coast was a matter of serious concern, because it might affect trade with the interior, and plant in a region which Britain deemed her own the germ of what might become a new maritime power. And as the colonial government considered itself the general protector of the natives, and interested in maintaining the Kafirs between the Boer state and Cape Colony, the attacks of the Boers on the Kafirs who lived to the west of them toward the Colony, could not be permitted to pass unchecked. The British government, though still unwilling to assume fresh responsibilities, for in those days it was generally believed that the colonial possessions of Britain were already too extensive, nevertheless ultimately concluded, for the reasons given above, to assert its authority over Port Natal and the country behind as far as the crest of the mountains. A small force was accordingly sent to Port Natal in 1842. It was there besieged by the Boer levies, and would have been forced to surrender but for the daring ten days' ride through the whole breadth of Kaffraria of a young Englishman, Richard King, who brought the news to Graham's Town, six hundred miles distant. A force sent by sea relieved the starving garrison after a siege of twenty-six days. The Boer forces dispersed, but it was not till a year later that the territory of Natal was formally declared a British colony. Lord Stanley, then colonial secretary, was reluctant to take over the responsibilities of a new dominion with a disaffected white population and a mass of savage inhabitants, and only yielded to the urgent arguments of Sir George Napier, then governor of the Cape. In 1843, after long and angry debates (sometimes interrupted by the women, who passionately denounced the British government), the Volksraad, or popular assembly of the tiny republic, submitted to the British crown, having delivered a warm but ineffectual protest against the principle of equal civil rights for whites and blacks laid down by the British government. The colony of Natal was then constituted, first (1845) as a dependency of Cape Colony, afterward (1856) as a separate colony. A part of the Boers, estimated at five hundred families, remained in it; but the majority, including all the fiercer spirits, recrossed the mountains (some forthwith, some five years later), with their cattle, and joined the mass of their fellow-emigrants who had remained on the plateaus of the interior. Meanwhile an immense influx of Kafirs, mostly from Zululand, although many belonged to other tribes whom the Zulus had conquered, repopulated the country, and in it the blacks have since been about ten times as numerous as the whites. Thus ended the Dutch republic of Natalia, after six years of troubled life. While it was fighting with the Zulus on the east, and other Kafirs on the west, it was torn by incessant intestine quarrels, and unable either to levy taxes, or to compel for any other purpose the obedience of its own citizens. But its victories over Dingaan's armies were feats of arms as remarkable as any South Africa has seen. The English are not generally slow to recognize the fine qualities of their adversaries, but they have done less than justice to the resolution and the daring which the Boers displayed in these early campaigns against the natives.[20]

With the British annexation of Natal ended the first of the attempts which the emigrant Boers have made to obtain access to the sea. It was a turning-point in the history of South Africa, for it secured to Great Britain that command of the coast which has ever since been seen to be more and more vital to her predominance, and it established a new centre of English settlement in a region till then neglected, from whence large territories, including Zululand and, recently, Southern Tongaland, have been acquired. Although Britain purported to act, and, indeed, in a certain sense did act, in self-defence, one cannot repress a feeling that the Boer settlers, who had occupied a territory they found vacant and had broken the power of the savage Zulu king, were hardly used. They ought, at any rate, to have had earlier notice of British intentions. But against this may be set the fact that the internal dissensions which rent the infant republic would have sooner or later brought it to the ground, compelling British intervention, and that the native races have fared better under British control than they seemed likely to do under that of the Boers, whose behaviour towards them, though little more harsh than that of the English colonists, has been much less considerate than that of the Imperial Government.

Hardly less troubled was the lot of the emigrants who had scattered themselves over the wide uplands that lie between the Orange River and the Limpopo. They, too, were engaged in incessant wars with the native tribes, who were, however, less formidable than the Zulus, and much cattle lifting went on upon both sides. Only one native tribe and one native chief stand out from the confused tangle of petty raids and forays which makes up (after the expulsion of the Matabili) the earlier annals of the Boer communities. This chief was the famous Moshesh, to speak of whose career I may digress for a moment from the thread of this narrative. The Kafir races have produced within this century three really remarkable men—men who, like Toussaint l'Ouverture in Hayti, and Kamehameha I. in Hawaii, will go down in history as instances of the gifts that sometimes show themselves even among the most backward races. Tshaka, the Zulu, was a warrior of extraordinary energy and ambition, whose power of organization enabled him to raise the Zulu army within a few years to a perfection of drill and discipline and a swiftness of movement which made them irresistible, except by Europeans. Khama, the chief who still reigns among the Bechuanas, has been a social reformer and administrator of judgment, tact, and firmness, who has kept his people in domestic peace and protected them from the dangerous influences which white civilization brings with it, while at the same time helping them onward toward such improvements as their character admits. Moshesh, chief of the Basutos, was born in the end of the eighteenth century. He belonged to a small clan which had suffered severely in the wars caused by the conquest of Tshaka, whose attacks upon the tribes nearest him had driven them upon other tribes, and brought slaughter and confusion upon the whole of South-eastern Africa. Though only a younger son, his enterprise and courage soon made him a leader. The progress of his power was aided by the skill he showed in selecting for his residence and stronghold a flat topped hill called Thaba Bosiyo, fenced round by cliffs, with pasture for his cattle, and several springs of water. In this impregnable stronghold, from which he drew his title of "chief of the mountain," he resisted repeated sieges by his native enemies and by the emigrant Boers. The exploits of Moshesh against his native foes soon brought adherents round him, and he became the head of that powerful tribe, largely formed out of the fragments of other tribes scattered and shattered by war, which is now called the Basuto. Unlike most Kafir warriors, he was singularly free from cruelty, and ruled his own people with a mildness which made him liked as well as respected. In 1832 he had the foresight to invite missionaries to come and settle among his people, and the following year saw the establishment of the mission of the Evangelical Society of Paris, whose members, some of them French, some Swiss, a few Scotch, have been the most potent factors in the subsequent history of the Basuto nation. When the inevitable collision between the Basutos and the white men arrived, Moshesh, partly through counsels of the missionaries, partly from his own prudence, did his best to avoid any fatal breach with the British Government. Nevertheless, he was several times engaged in war with the Orange River Boers, and once had to withstand the attack of a strong British force led by the governor of Cape Colony. But his tactful diplomacy made him a match for any European opponent, and carried him through every political danger. Moshesh died, full of years and honour, about twenty-eight years ago, having built up, out of the dispersed remnants of broken tribes, a nation which has now, under the guiding hand of the missionaries, and latterly of the British Government also, made greater progress in civilization and Christianity than any other Kafir race. Of its present condition I shall speak in a later chapter.

We may now turn back to pursue the story of the fortunes of the emigrant Boers who had remained on the landward or northerly side of the Quathlamba Range, or had returned thither from Natal. In 1843 they numbered not more than 15,000 persons all told, possibly less; for, though after 1838 fresh emigrants from the Colony had joined them, many had perished in the native wars. Subsequently, down to the end of 1847, these numbers were increased by others, who returned from Natal, displeased at the land settlement made there; and while these Natalians settled, some to the south-west, round Winburg, others farther north, in the region between Pretoria and the Vaal River, the earlier Boer occupants of the latter region moved off still farther north, some to Lydenburg, some to the Zoutpansberg and the country sloping to the Limpopo River. Thus the emigrant Dutch were now scattered over an area seven hundred miles long and three hundred miles wide, an area bounded on the south-east by the Quathlamba mountain-chain, but on the north and west divided by no natural limit from the great plain which stretches west to the Atlantic and north to the Zambesi. They were practically independent, for the colonial government did not attempt to interfere with their internal affairs. But Britain still claimed that they were, in strict intendment of law, British subjects,[21] and she gave no recognition to the governments they set up. To have established any kind of administration over so wide a territory would have been in any case difficult for so small a body of people, probably about four thousand adult males; but the characteristics which had enabled them to carry out their exodus from Cape Colony and their campaigns of conquest against the natives with so much success made the task of organization still more difficult. They had in an eminent degree "the defects of their qualities." They were self-reliant and individualistic to excess; they loved not only independence, but isolation; they were resolved to make their government absolutely popular, and little disposed to brook the control even of the authorities they had themselves created. They had, in fact, a genius for disobedience; their ideal, if one can attribute any ideals to them, was that of Israel in the days when every man did that which was right in his own eyes. It was only for warlike expeditions, which they had come to enjoy not only for the sake of the excitement, but also because they were able to enrich themselves by the capture of cattle, that they could be brought together, and only to their leaders in war that they would yield obedience. Very few had taken to agriculture, for which, indeed, the dry soil was seldom fitted, and the half-nomadic life of stock-farmers, each pasturing his cattle over great tracts of country, confirmed their dissociative instincts. However, the necessities of defence against the natives, and a common spirit of hostility to the claims of sovereignty which the British government had never renounced, kept them loosely together. Thus several small republican communities grew up. Each would have preferred to manage its affairs by a general meeting of the citizens, and sometimes tried to do so. But as the citizens dispersed themselves over the country, this became impossible, so authority, such slight authority as they could be induced to grant, was in each vested in a small elective assembly called the Volksraad or Council of the People.

These tiny republics were held together by a sort of faintly federative tie, which rested rather in a common understanding than upon any legal instrument, and whose observance was always subject to the passion of the moment. The communities which dwelt to the north-east, beyond the Vaal River, while distracted by internal feuds chiefly arising from personal or family enmities, were left undisturbed by the colonial government. They lived hundreds of miles from the nearest British outpost, and their wars with the Kafirs scarcely affected those tribes with whom the British authorities came in contact. Those authorities, as I have already observed, were in those days, under orders received from home, anxious rather to contract than to extend the sphere of imperial influence, and cared little for what happened far out in the wilderness, except whenever the action of the Boers induced troubles among the natives.

It was otherwise with the emigrants who lived to the south-west, between the Vaal River and the frontier of Cape Colony, which was then at the village of Colesberg, between what is now De Aar Junction and the upper course of the Orange River. Here there were endless bickerings between the Boers, the rapidly growing native tribe of the Basutos, and the half-breeds called Griquas, hunting clans sprung from Dutch fathers and Hottentot women, who, intermixed with white people, and to some extent civilized by the missionaries, were scattered over the country from where the town of Kimberley now stands southward to the junction of the Orange and Caledon rivers. These quarrels, with the perpetual risk of a serious native war arising from them, distressed a succession of governors at Cape Town and a succession of colonial secretaries in Downing Street. Britain did not wish (if I may use a commercial term not unsuited to her state of mind) "to increase her holding" in South Africa. She regarded the Cape as the least prosperous and promising of her colonies, with an arid soil, a population largely alien, and an apparently endless series of costly Kafir wars. She desired to avoid all further annexations of territory, because each annexation brought fresh responsibilities, and fresh responsibilities involved increased expenditure. At last a plan was proposed by Dr. Philip, a prominent missionary who had acquired influence with the government. The missionaries were the only responsible persons who knew much about the wild interior, and they were often called on to discharge functions similar to those which the bishops performed for the barbarian kings in western Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries of our era. The societies which they represented commanded some influence in Parliament; and this fact also disposed the Colonial Office to consult them. Dr. Philip suggested the creation along the north-eastern border of a line of native states which should sever the Colony from the unsettled districts, and should isolate the more turbulent emigrant Boers from those who had remained quietly in the Colony. This plan was adopted. Treaties were made in 1843 with Moshesh, the Basuto chief, and with Adam Kok, a Griqua captain living on the Orange River, as a treaty had been made nine years before with another Griqua leader named Waterboer, who lived farther north (near the present site of Kimberley); and these three states, all recognized by Britain, were intended to cover the Colony on the side where troubles were most feared. But the arrangement soon broke down, for the whites would not recognize a Griqua captain, while the whole troubles between them and the natives continued. Accordingly, a forward step was taken in 1846 by placing a few British troops under a military resident at Bloemfontein, half-way between the Orange and Vaal rivers, to keep order there. And in 1848 the whole region from the Orange to the Vaal was formally annexed under the name of the Orange River Sovereignty. The country had been without any government, for the emigrants who dwelt in it had no organization of their own, and did not recognize the republics beyond the Vaal.

This formal assertion of British authority provoked an outbreak among those of the emigrants, all, or nearly all, of Boer stock, who clung to their independence. Roused and reinforced by their Boer brethren from beyond the Vaal, who were commanded by Andries Pretorius, the most energetic and capable of the emigrant leaders, and the same who had besieged the British troops at Port Natal, they attacked Bloemfontein, obliged the Resident's small force to capitulate, and advanced south to the Orange River. Sir Harry Smith, then Governor of the Cape, promptly moved forward a small force, defeated the Boers in a sharp skirmish at Boomplats (August 29, 1848), and re-established British authority over the Sovereignty, which was not, however, incorporated with Cape Colony. The Boers beyond the Vaal were left to themselves.

Peace, however, was not yet assured. Fresh quarrels broke out among the native tribes, ending in a war between the Basutos and the British Resident. Unsupported by a large section of the local farmers, who remained disaffected to the government, and preferred to make their own terms with the Basutos, and having only a trifling armed force at his command, the Resident fared ill; and his position became worse when Pretorius, still powerful beyond the Vaal, threatened to move in and side with the Basutos. Cape Colony was at that moment involved in a serious war with the Kafirs of the south coast, and could spare no troops for these northern troubles. So when Pretorius intimated that he and the northern Boers wished to make some permanent and pacific arrangement with Britain, which, though it did not claim their territory, still claimed their allegiance, commissioners were sent to negotiate with him and those of the northern or Transvaal group of emigrants who recognized his leadership, for there were other factions who stood apart by themselves. Thus in 1852 a convention was concluded at Sand River with "the commandant and delegates of the Boers living beyond the Vaal," by which the British government "guaranteed to the emigrant farmers beyond the Vaal River the right to manage their own affairs, and to govern themselves according to their own laws without any interference on the part of the British government," with provisions "disclaiming all alliances with any of the coloured nations north of the Vaal River," permitting the emigrants to purchase ammunition in the British colonies, and declaring that "no slavery is or shall be permitted or practised by the farmers in the country north of the Vaal River."

From this Sand River convention the South African Republic, afterward slowly formed out of the small communities which then divided the country, dates its independence; and by the same instrument it practically severed itself from the Boer emigrants who were left in the Orange River Sovereignty south of the Vaal, conduct which the republican party among these emigrants deemed a betrayal. That Sovereignty remained British, and probably would have so continued but for an unexpected incident. It was still vexed by the war with the Basutos, and when General Cathcart, who had now come out as Governor of the Cape, attacked Moshesh with a considerable force of British regulars, he was drawn into a sort of ambush in their difficult country, suffered a serious reverse, and would have been compelled to invade Basutoland afresh with a larger army had not Moshesh prudently asked for peace. Peace was concluded. But the British government was weary of these petty and apparently unending native wars, and soon after the news of the battle with Moshesh reached London, the Duke of Newcastle, and Lord Aberdeen's government, in which he was colonial secretary, resolved to abandon the Sovereignty altogether.

To those who look back on 1853 with the eyes of 1899 this seems a strange determination, for the British crown had ruled the country for eight years and recently given it a regular new constitution. Moreover, whereas the farmers beyond the Vaal were nearly all of pure Boer stock, those in the Orange River Sovereignty were mixed with English settlers, and from their proximity to the Colony were much less averse to the British connection. In fact, a large part of them—though it is not now easy to discover the exact proportion—warmly resisted the proposal of the British government to retire, and independence had to be forced on them against their will. In Cape Colony, too, and among the missionaries, there was a strong repugnance to the policy of withdrawal. The authorities of the Colony and the Colonial Office at home were, however, inexorable. They saw no use in keeping territories which were costly because they had to be defended against native raids, and from which little benefit was then expected. Hardly any notice had been taken in Britain of the Sand River convention, which the Conservative ministry of that day had approved, and when, at the instance of delegates sent home by those who, in the Orange River territory, desired to remain subject to the British crown, a motion was made in the House of Commons asking the Queen to reconsider the renunciation of her sovereignty over that territory, the motion found no support and had to be withdrawn. Parliament, indeed, went so far as to vote forty-eight thousand pounds by way of compensation, in order to get rid of this large territory and a great number of attached subjects. So little did Englishmen then care for that South African dominion which they have subsequently become so eager to develop and extend.

By the convention signed at Bloemfontein on February 23, 1854, the British government "guaranteed the future independence of the country and its government," and its inhabitants were "declared, to all intents and purposes, a free and independent people." No slavery or trade in slaves was to be permitted north of the Orange River. The Orange River government was to be free to purchase ammunition in the British colonies, and liberal privileges in connection with import duties were to be granted to it.

These two conventions of 1852 and 1854 are epochs of supreme importance in South African history, for they mark the first establishment of non-British independent states, whose relations with the British colonies were thereafter to constitute the central thread in the annals of the country. As that of 1852 recognised the Transvaal State, so from that of 1854, which is a more explicit and complete declaration of independence than had been accorded to the Transvaal people two years before, dates the beginning of the second Boer republic, the Orange Free State, which, subsequently increased by the conquest from the Basutos of a strip of fertile territory in the south, has ever since remained perfectly independent and at peace with the British colonies. Its only serious troubles have arisen from native wars, and these have long ago come to an end. In 1854 an assembly of delegates enacted for it the republican constitution under which it has ever since been quietly and peaceably governed. It had the good fortune to elect, as its president, in 1865, a lawyer from Cape Colony, of Dutch extraction, Mr. (afterwards Sir) John Brand, who guided its course with great tact and wisdom for twenty-four years, and whose favourite expression, "All shall come right," now inscribed on his tombstone at Bloemfontein, has become throughout South Africa a proverbial phrase of encouragement in moments of difficulty.[22]

Beyond the Vaal river things have gone very differently. The farmers of that region were more scattered, more rude and uneducated, and more prone to factious dissensions than those of the Free State proved to be after 1854; and while the latter were compressed within definite boundaries on three sides, the Transvaal Boers were scattered over a practically limitless area. During the next twenty-five years the Transvaal people had very little to do with the British government. But they were distracted by internal feuds, and involved in almost incessant strife with the natives. These two sources of trouble brought their government, in 1877, to a condition of virtual collapse. But that collapse and the annexation which followed it belong to a later phase of South African history, and we must now turn from them to trace the progress of events in other parts of the country between 1852 and 1877.

[Footnote 16: The best recent account of the doings of the Portuguese is to be found in Dr. Theal's book, The Portuguese in South Africa, published in 1896.]

[Footnote 17: I have heard from Lord Wolseley that in his expedition against Sikukuni, a Kafir chief in the north-east of the Transvaal, he was told by a German trader who acted as guide that the natives had shown to him (the trader) fragments of ancient European armour which were preserved in a cave among the mountains. The natives said that this armour had been worn by white men who had come up from the sea many, many years ago, and whom their own ancestors had killed.]

[Footnote 18: Maceo, the well-known leader of the Cuban insurgents who was killed in 1896, was a half-breed, in whose band there were plenty of pure whites. In no Southern State of North America would white men have followed a mulatto.]

[Footnote 19: The word Boer means farmer or peasant (German Bauer).]

[Footnote 20: A clear and spirited account of these events may be found in Mr. R. Russell's book, Natal, the Land and its Story, published in 1894.]

[Footnote 21: Sir P. Maitland's proclamation of August 21, 1845, expressly reserved the rights of the crown to consider those who had gone beyond Natal as being still its subjects, notwithstanding the establishment of a settled government in that Colony. (See Bird's Annals of Natal, vol. ii., p. 468.)]

[Footnote 22: Some further account of the Orange Free State will be found in Chapter XIX.]



CHAPTER XII

THE EUROPEANS IN SOUTH AFRICA, 1854-95

Between the years 1852 and 1856 the history of Anglo-Dutch South Africa breaks up into four distinct streams. The Transvaal and South African Republic pursues its own course from 1852 onward, the Orange Free State from 1854, and Natal from 1856, in which year that district was separated from the Cape and constituted as a distinct colony. Between 1876 and 1880 the South African Republic and Natal are again brought into close relations with the march of events in Cape Colony. But before we trace the three last mentioned streams in their several courses it is well to return to the Cape, by far the largest and most populous of the four communities, and sketch in outline the chief events that mark the development of that Colony down to the memorable epoch of 1877-81.

These events group themselves into three divisions—the material progress of Cape Colony, the changes in the form of its government, and those wars with the Kafir tribes which, while they retarded its growth in population, steadily increased its area.

The departure of some eight or ten thousand Boers, the most discontented part of the population, in the years following 1835, not only removed an element which, excellent in other respects, was politically at once unrestful and old-fashioned, but left plenty of vacant space to be occupied by new immigrants from Europe. New immigrants, however, came slowly, because at that time the tide of British emigration was setting mainly to America, while German emigration had hardly begun. The Kafir wars had, moreover, given South Africa a bad name, and the settlers of 1820 (see above, p. 111) had suffered several years of hardship before prosperity came to them. However, between 1845 and 1850 four or five thousand British immigrants were brought in, with the aid of the government, and a little later a number of Germans who had served England in the German Legion during the Crimean War. Again, in 1858, more than two thousand German peasants were settled on the south coast in lands which had been previously held by Kafirs. These people made good colonists, and have now become merged in the British population, which began to predominate in the eastern province as the Dutch still does in the western. As the country filled there was a steady, though slow, progress in farming and in export trade. The merino sheep had been introduced in 1812 and 1820, and its wool had now become a source of wealth; so, too, had ostrich farming, which began about 1865 and developed rapidly after the introduction of artificial incubation in 1869. The finances, which had been in disorder, were set right, roads began to be made, churches and schools were established, and though the Kafir raids caused much loss of life and of cattle on the eastern border, the cost of these native wars, being chiefly borne by the home government, did not burden the colonial revenue. In 1859 the first railway was constructed, and by 1883 more than one thousand miles of railway were open for traffic. There were, however, no industries except stock-keeping and tillage until 1869-70, when the discovery of diamonds (of which more anon) brought a sudden rush of immigrants from Europe, stimulated trade so powerfully that the revenue of the Colony doubled within five years, and began that surprising development of mineral resources which has been the most striking feature of recent years.

With the growth of population, which had risen under British rule from about 26,000 Europeans in 1805 to 182,000 in 1865 and 237,000 in 1875, there came also changes in the form of government. At first the Governor was an autocrat, except so far as he was controlled by the fear that the colonists might appeal to the Colonial Office in London against him: and the administration was therefore wise or foolish, liberal or severe, according to the qualities of the individual Governor. Some serious mistakes were committed, and one Governor, Lord Charles Somerset, has left the reputation of arbitrary rule; but the officials sent out seem, on the whole, to have pursued a more judicious policy and shown more respect to local opinion than the representatives of the Dutch East India Company had (with one or two brilliant exceptions) done in the previous century. The blunders which preceded the Great Trek of 1836 were attributable rather to the home government than to its agents on the spot, and in the years that followed colonial feeling complained more often of Downing-street than it did of Government House at Cape Town. The irritation which from time to time broke out sprang chiefly from questions connected with the natives. Like all Europeans dwelling among inferior races, the mass of the colonists, English as well as Dutch, looked upon the native population as existing for their benefit, and resented the efforts which the home government made to secure for the blacks equal civil rights and adequate protection. Their wrath was specially kindled by the vehemence with which a few among the missionaries denounced any wrongs deemed to have been suffered by the natives within the Colony, and argued the case of the Kafir tribes who were from time to time in revolt. I do not attempt to apportion the blame in these disputes; but any one who has watched the relations of superior and inferior races in America or India or the Pacific islands will think it probable that many harsh and unjust things were done by the colonists, as every one who knows how zeal tends to mislead the judgment of well-intentioned men will think it no less probable that there was some exaggeration on the part of the philanthropic friends of the blacks, and that some groundless charges were brought against the colonists. The missionaries, especially those of the London Society, had a certain influence with the Colonial Office, and were supposed to have much more than they had. Thus from 1820 to about 1860 there was a perpetual struggle between the colonists and the missionaries, in which struggle the Governor tended to side with the colonists, whose public opinion he felt round him, while the Colonial Office leaned to the philanthropists, who could bring political pressure to bear through the House of Commons. Unfortunate as these bickerings were, they had at least the result of tending to unite the Dutch and English elements in the population, for on native questions there was little difference of attitude between those elements.

In 1834 a Legislative Council was created, consisting, however, of officials and of members nominated by the Governor, and not, as the colonists had petitioned, chosen by election. Twenty years later, when the population had greatly increased and the demand for representative institutions could no longer be resisted, a regular two-chambered legislature was set up, consisting of a Legislative Council and a House of Assembly, both elected on a wide franchise, with no distinction of race or colour, though of course the coloured voters were comparatively few, because the tribal Kafirs living under their chiefs were excluded, while of other blacks there was only a small proportion who held property even to the limited extent required for the suffrage. This legislature met for the first time in 1854. Four years previously an event had occurred which showed how desirable it was that constitutional means should be provided for the expression of the people's wishes. The home government had sent out a vessel carrying a number of convicts to be landed and kept in the Colony, where no convicts had been seen since the days of the Dutch Company. A strong and unanimous feeling arose at once against this scheme, which was regarded as likely to prove even more harmful in South Africa than it had proved in Australia, because there was at the Cape a large native population, among whom the escaped or released convict, possessing the knowledge and capacity of a white man, but unrestrained by any responsibility or sense of a character to lose, would be able to work untold mischief. The inhabitants of Cape Town and its neighbourhood held meetings of protest, sent remonstrances to England, and mutually pledged themselves to supply no food to the convict ship. This pledge they carried out, and during the five months that the convict ship lay in Simon's Bay, it was from the naval squadron there that she had to receive provisions. The Colonial Office at last yielded; and the people, while rejoiced at the success they had achieved, and at the heartiness with which Dutch and English had co-operated for a common object, were more than ever disposed to desire some control over their own affairs.

Although after 1854 the sole power of legislation was vested in the colonial Parliament, subject to the right of the British crown to disallow an act,—a right which is of course very rarely used,—the executive power still remained with the Governor and his council, who were appointed by the home government, and not responsible to the Cape legislature. It has, however, become a settled principle of British colonial policy to grant to each and every colony not only legislative power, but responsible executive government so soon as the white population of the Colony has become relatively large enough and settled enough to enable that kind of constitution to be properly worked. In 1872 the whites of Cape Colony had come to exceed 200,000, and the need for a change had been emphasized shortly before by a conflict of opinion between the Governor and the legislature as to the best means of setting right the finances of the Colony. Parliament having been dissolved, the new houses declared for responsible government, and the home government wisely assented to their wish. Accordingly, the "cabinet system" of Britain was established, the Governor's executive council being turned into a ministry responsible to the legislature, and the Governor himself becoming a sort of local constitutional sovereign on the model of the British crown, that is to say a sovereign who reigns but does not govern, the executive acts done in his name being done by the advice and on the responsibility of the ministry, who hold office at the pleasure of the legislature. Thus from 1872 onward the Colony has enjoyed complete self-government, and has prospered under it despite the antagonism which has frequently shown itself between the eastern and western provinces, an antagonism due partly to economic causes, partly to the predominance of the English element in the former and of the Dutch in the latter region. The working of the cabinet system has been even smoother than in most of the other British colonies; but while setting this to the credit of the good sense and moderation of the people, it must also be noted that the most exciting crises which have arisen in South Africa have lain outside the scope of the colonial ministry and legislature, being matters which have touched the two Dutch republics or the relations of British territories to foreign Powers. These matters, being international, belong to the British crown, and to its local representative, the Governor, in his capacity of High Commissioner for South Africa; and in that capacity he is not required to consult the Cape ministry and legislature, but acts under the directions of the Colonial Office in London.

The grant of cabinet government tended to stimulate political life among the Dutch farmers, hitherto the more backward part of the population, and in 1882 their wishes secured a reversal of the ordinance made sixty years before for the exclusive use of English in official documents and legal proceedings. Dutch was now placed on a level with English as an official language in Parliament and the law courts. But this assertion of Dutch sentiment was due to causes which will be better understood when we come to the events of 1880 and 1881.

Most of the peaceful growth which has been described would have been more rapid but for the frequent vexation of native wars. Twice under the rule of the Dutch Company and seven times under the British crown have there been sanguinary conflicts with the fierce Kafir tribes of the Kosa group, who dwell in the east of the Colony. On the north there had been only Hottentots, a weak nomad race, who soon vanished under the attacks of smallpox and the pressure of the whites. On the north-east the deserts of the Karroo lay between the colonists and the Kafirs who inhabited the plains of the Upper Orange and Vaal rivers. But on the east the country was comparatively well watered, and supported a large Kafir population full of courage and fighting spirit. Collisions between them and the whites were inevitable. The country they occupied was mostly rugged, and covered with a dense low wood, or rather scrub, traversed by narrow and winding tracks, which were of course familiar to them, and difficult for white troops. They had always the advantage in point of numbers, and though they were usually beaten and compelled to sue for peace, the obvious anxiety of the colonial government to conclude a peace emboldened them to fresh outbreaks. To civilized men, who know the enormous superiority of discipline and of firearms, it seems strange that these natives, who in the earlier wars had no firearms, should have so often renewed what we can see was a hopeless struggle. But it must be remembered that the natives, who saw only small white forces brought against them, and knew that the whole number of whites in the Colony was small, have never realized, and do not realize even to-day, the enormous reserve of the white population in Europe. Their minds cannot take in large numbers, cannot look far forward, cannot grasp large issues, and are swayed by sudden gusts of feeling which overcome all calculation of results. Accordingly, the Kafirs returned over and over again to the contest, while the colonial government, not wishing to extend its frontiers, and hating the expense of this unprofitable strife, never grappled with the problem in a large way, but tried on each occasion to do just enough to restore order for the time being. It would probably have been better to have spent once for all a large sum in a thorough conquest of the Kosas, planting strong forts here and there through their country, and organizing a regular gendarmerie. But until the annexation of Natal in 1843 placed British power on the other side of these turbulent tribes, the process of conquest might well seem interminable, for it was plain that as soon as one clan had been brought to submission troubles would break out with the next that lay beyond it, and fresh wars have to be undertaken to reduce each of these in its turn. Some allowance must therefore be made for the tendency of the government to take short views and do no more than was needed for the moment, especially as nearly every new war brought upon the Governor for the time being the displeasure of the Colonial Office, and brought upon the Colonial Office the censure of economists and philanthropists at home.

The theatre of these wars was the country along the south coast between Algoa Bay and the Kei River, and an important step forward was made when, after the wars of 1846-47 and 1851-53, the province of British Kaffraria, extending to the Kei River, was created, placed under imperial officials, and garrisoned by British regiments. Four years afterwards, in 1857, the Kafirs of this province, at the bidding of their chiefs, prompted by a wizard who professed to have received messages from the world of spirits, destroyed their cattle and their stores of grain, in the belief that the dead ancestors of the tribe would reappear and join them in driving out the white men, while herds of cattle would issue from the ground and crops would suddenly spring up and cover the soil. Many of the clans were already on the verge of famine when the promised day arrived, and when it had passed starvation began, and within a few months, despite the efforts of the colonial authorities to supply food, some 30,000 Kafirs perished of hunger or disease. This frightful catastrophe, which carried many thousands westward into Cape Colony in search of work, and left large tracts vacant, led to the establishment in those tracts of white settlers, and ultimately, in 1865, to the union of British Kaffraria with the Colony. It also so much weakened the Kosas that for the unprecedentedly long period of twenty years there was no Kafir war. In 1877 and 1880 some risings occurred which were suppressed with no great difficulty; and in 1894 the boundaries of the Colony, which had been advancing by a series of small annexations, were finally rounded off on the eastern side by the addition of the territory of the Pondos, which made it conterminous in that direction with the Colony of Natal.

To complete the chronicle of native wars, we ought now to turn to Natal, on whose borders there arose, in 1879, a conflict with the greatest native power—that of the Zulus—which the British had yet encountered. Before that year, however, a momentous change in British colonial policy had occurred, and I must go a little way back to describe the events which gave rise to it.

The reader will recollect that in 1852 and 1854 Britain had abjured all purpose of extending the boundaries of her dominion towards the interior by recognizing the independence of the two Dutch republics, which date their legal rise from the two conventions concluded in those years. She had done so quite honestly, desiring to avoid the expense and responsibility which further advances must entail, and with the wish of leaving the two new republics to work out their own salvation in their own way. For some years nothing occurred to create fresh difficulties. But in 1858 a war broke out between the Orange Free State and the Basuto chief Moshesh, who claimed land which the Free State farmers had occupied. The Free State commandos attacked him, and had penetrated Basutoland as far as the stronghold of Thaba Bosiyo, when they were obliged to return to protect their own farms from the roving bands of horsemen which Moshesh had skilfully detached to operate in their rear. Being hard pressed they appealed to the Governor of Cape Colony to mediate between them and Moshesh. Moshesh agreed, and a new frontier was settled by the Governor. However, in 1865 fresh troubles broke out, and there was again war between Moshesh and the Free State. The Governor of Cape Colony was again invoked, but his decision was not respected by the Basutos, whom Moshesh could not always control,—for they are much less submissive to their chiefs than are the Zulus,—and hostilities having recommenced after a brief interval of peace, the Free State made a supreme effort, and in 1868 was on the point of destroying the Basuto power, though it had never been able to capture Thaba Bosiyo, when Moshesh appealed to the High Commissioner to extend British protection to his people. Unwilling to see Basutoland annexed by the Free State, and fearing injury to the Colony from the dispersion of Basuto fugitives through it, the High Commissioner consented, and declared the Basutos British subjects. The Free State was suffered to retain a large tract of fertile land along the north bank of the Caledon River, which it had conquered; but it was mortified by seeing British authority established to the south of it, all the way from Natal to the borders of Cape Colony, and by the final extinction of the hopes which it had cherished of extending its territories to the sea and acquiring a harbour at the mouth of the St. John's River.

These events, which befell in 1869, mark the recommencement of British advance toward the interior. Still more momentous was another occurrence which belongs to the same year. In 1869 and 1870 a sudden rush began from all parts of South Africa to a small district between the Modder and the Vaal rivers (where the town of Kimberley now stands), in which diamonds had been discovered. Within a few months thousands of diggers from Europe and America, as well as from the surrounding countries, were at work here, and the region, hitherto neglected, became a prize of inestimable value. A question at once arose as to its ownership. The Orange Free State claimed it, but it was also claimed by a Griqua (half-breed) captain, named Nicholas Waterboer, son of old Andries Waterboer, and by a native Batlapin chief, while parts were claimed by the Transvaal Republic. The claims of the last-named state were disposed of by the decision of the Governor of Natal, who had been recognized as arbitrator by the Griquas, the Batlapin, and the President of the Republic. He awarded the tract in dispute to Waterboer, including in his award the part claimed by the Free State, which had refused arbitration so far as regarded the district lying south of the Vaal, holding that district to have been indubitably part of the old Orange River sovereignty, which was in 1854 turned into the Orange Free State. As Waterboer had before the award offered his territory to the British government, the country was forthwith erected into a Crown Colony under the name of Griqualand West. This was in 1871. The Free State, whose case had not been stated, much less argued, before the umpire, protested, and was after a time able to appeal to a judgment delivered by a British court, which found that Waterboer had never enjoyed any right to the territory. However, the new Colony had by this time been set up and the British flag displayed. The British government, without either admitting or denying the Free State title, declared that a district in which it was difficult to keep order amid a turbulent and shifting population ought to be under the control of a strong power, and offered the Free State a sum of ninety thousand pounds in settlement of whatever claim it might possess. The acceptance by the Free State in 1876 of this sum closed the controversy, though a sense of injustice continued to rankle in the breasts of some of the citizens of the Republic. Amicable relations have subsisted ever since between it and Cape Colony, and the control of the British government over the Basutos has secured for it peace in the quarter which was formerly most disturbed.

These two cases show how various are the causes and how mixed the motives which press a great power forward even against the wishes of its statesmen. The Basutos were declared British subjects partly out of a sympathetic wish to rescue and protect them, partly because policy required the acquisition of a country naturally strong and holding an important strategical position. Griqualand West, taken in the belief that Waterboer had a good title to it, was retained after this belief had been dispelled, partly perhaps because a population had crowded into it which consisted mainly of British subjects, and was not easily controllable by a small state, but mainly because colonial feeling refused to part with a region of such exceptional mineral wealth. And the retention of Griqualand West caused, before long, the acquisition of Bechuanaland, which in its turn naturally led to that northward extension of British influence which has carried the Union Jack to the shores of Lake Tanganyika. The wish to restrict responsibility, which had been so strong twenty years before, had now died out of the British public at home, and had grown feebler even in the minds of the statesmen whose business it was to find the money needed for these increasing charges on the imperial treasury; while the philanthropic interest in the native races, stimulated by the discoveries of Livingstone, now took the form not of proposing to leave them to themselves, but of desiring to protect them against the adventurers, whether of Boer or of English blood, whom it was found impossible to prevent from pressing forward into the wilderness.

It is remarkable that the change, as yet only an incipient change, in the public opinion of the English people, who now began to feel the desire not merely to retain but to expand their colonial dominion, should have become apparent just at the time when there occurred that discovery of diamonds which showed that this hitherto least progressive of the larger Colonies possessed unsuspected stores of wealth. The discovery brought a new stream of enterprising and ambitious men into the country, and fixed the attention of the world upon it. It was a turning point in South African history.

That change in the views of the British Government on which I have been commenting found at this moment a fresh expression in another quarter. In 1869 the Portuguese Government concluded a commercial treaty with the South African Republic, under which it seemed probable that a considerable trade might spring up between the Portuguese coast of the Indian Ocean and the interior. This called attention to the port of Lourenco Marques, on the shore of Delagoa Bay, the best haven upon that coast. Great Britain claimed it under a cession which had been obtained from a native chief of the country by a British naval exploring expedition in 1822. Portugal, however, resisted the claim. In 1872 it was referred to the arbitration of Marshal MacMahon, then President of the French Republic, and in 1875 he awarded the territory in dispute to Portugal. Both cases were weak, and it is not easy to say which was the weaker, for, although the Portuguese had undoubtedly been first on the ground, their occupation, often disturbed by the native tribes, had been extremely precarious. The decision was a serious blow to British hopes, and has become increasingly serious with the further development of the country. Yet it was mitigated by a provision contained in the agreement for arbitration that the Power against whom the decision might go should have thereafter from the successful Power a right of preemption as against any other state desiring to purchase the territory.[23] This provision is momentous as giving Britain the right to prevent not only the South African Republic, but any European power, from acquiring a point of the utmost importance both commercial and strategical. Rumours have often been circulated that Britain would gladly acquire by purchase the harbour of Delagoa Bay, but the sensitive patriotism of the Portuguese people is at present so strongly opposed to any sale of territory that no Portuguese ministry is likely to propose it.[24]

At the very time when the attempt to acquire Delagoa Bay revealed the new purposes which had begun to animate Great Britain, another scheme was suggested to the Colonial Office by the success which had lately attended its efforts in Canada. In 1867 the passing of the British North America Act drew the theretofore isolated provinces of the Dominion into a confederation, relieving the home government of some grave responsibilities, and giving to the whole country the advantages of common administration and legislation in matters of common concern. Lord Carnarvon, then colonial secretary, threw himself into the idea of similarly uniting the different Colonies and States of South Africa. It had been advocated by Sir George Grey, when Governor in 1858, and had even received the support of the Orange Free State, whose Volksraad passed a resolution favouring it in that year. Many considerations of practical convenience suggested this scheme, chief among them the desirability of having both a uniform policy in native affairs (the absence of which had recently caused trouble) and a common commercial policy and tariff system. Accordingly, in 1875 Lord Carnarvon addressed a despatch to the Governor of Cape Colony, recommending such a scheme as fit to be adopted by that Colony, which three years before had received responsible government, and Mr. J.A. Froude was sent out to press it upon the people. The choice did not prove a fortunate one, but even a more skilful emissary would probably have failed, for the moment was inopportune. The Cape people were not ready for so large and far-reaching a proposal. The Orange Free State was exasperated at the loss of Griqualand West. The Transvaal people, though, as we shall see presently, their republic was in sore straits, were averse to anything that could affect their independence. However, Sir Bartle Frere, the next Governor of the Cape, who went out in 1877, entered heartily into Lord Carnarvon's plan, which continued to be pressed till 1880, when it was rejected by the Cape Parliament, largely at the instance of envoys from the Transvaal Boers, who urged the Cape Dutch not to accept it until the Transvaal (which, as shall be presently set forth, had been annexed in 1877) should have regained its independence. This failure of the proposals of the home government seriously damaged the prospects of future federation schemes, and is only one of several instances in South African history that show how much harm impatience may do, even when the object is itself laudable.

The next step in the forward march of British rule took place far to the south-west, on the borders of Natal. That territory had, in 1856, become a separate Colony, distinct from the Cape, and with a legislative council three-fourths of whose members were elective. It had still a relatively small white population, for many of the Boer immigrants had quitted it between 1843 and 1848, and though a body of English settlers arrived soon after the latter year, there were in 1878 only some 25,000 white residents, while the natives numbered fully 300,000. The Zulu kingdom, which adjoined it on the east, had passed (in 1872) from the sluggish Panda to his more energetic son Cetewayo (pronounced "Ketshwayo"), whose ambitious spirit had revived the military organization and traditions of his uncle Tshaka. Cetewayo had been installed as king by a British official, and had lived ever since at peace with the Colony; but the powerful army which he possessed roused disquiet among the Natalians, and alarmed the then Governor of the Cape and High Commissioner for South Africa, Sir Bartle Frere. Differences had arisen between him and Cetewayo, and when the latter refused to submit to the demands which the High Commissioner addressed to him, including a requirement that he should disband his regiments and receive a British resident, war was declared against him. This act was justified at the time on the ground that the Zulu military power constituted a standing menace to Natal and to South Africa in general, and that the vast majority of the natives living in Natal itself might join the Zulu king were he to invade the colony. Whether this risk was sufficiently imminent to warrant such a step was then, and has been since, warmly debated in England. Most of those who have given impartial study to the subject, and have studied also the character and earlier career of the High Commissioner, are disposed to think that war might have been and ought to have been avoided, and that Sir Bartle Frere, in declaring it, committed a grave error; but it is right to add that there are persons in South Africa who still defend his action. The invasion of Zululand which followed began with a disaster—the surprise at Isandhlwana (January, 1879) of a British force, which was almost annihilated by a vastly superior native army. Ultimately, however, Cetewayo was defeated and made prisoner. Zululand was divided among thirteen petty chiefs under a British resident, and subsequently, in 1887, annexed to the British crown as a dependency, to be administered by the Governor of Natal. Except for some disturbances in 1888, its people have since remained peaceful, prosperous, and to all appearance contented. It has now (1897) been decided to annex Zululand to Natal.

We may now return to follow the fortunes of the emigrant Boers of the far north-eastern interior whose republic, recognized by the Imperial Government in 1852, was at length, after twenty-five years, to be brought into a closer connection than ever with the British Colonies by events which are still fresh in men's memories, and which are exerting a potent influence on the politics of our own time. The scale of these events was small, but the circumstances are full of instruction, and many years may yet elapse before their consequences have been fully worked out.

The Dutch farmers who had settled beyond the Vaal River were more rude and uneducated than those of the Free State, had no admixture of English blood, and remained unaffected by intercourse with the more civilized people of Cape Colony. Their love of independence was accompanied by a tendency to discord. Their warlike spirit had produced a readiness to take up arms on slight occasions, and had degenerated into a fondness for predatory expeditions. They were, moreover, always desirous of enlarging the area of their stock farms by the annexation of fresh territory to the north and west, and thus were constantly brought into collision with the native occupants of the country. Scattered thinly over a wide area of pasture land, they were practically exempt from the control of law courts or magistrates, while at the same time the smallness of their numbers, and the family ties which linked them into jealous and mutually distrustful groups, gave rise to personal rivalries among the leaders and bitter feuds among the adherents of each faction, resembling those which used to distract a city republic in ancient Greece or medieval Italy. The absence of any effective government had attracted many adventurers from various parts of South Africa, who wandered as traders or hunters through the wilder parts of the country and along its borders, men often violent and reckless, who ill-treated the natives, and constituted not only a public scandal, but, by the provocations which they gave to the Kafir chiefs, a danger to the peace of the adjoining British territories, as well as to that of the Transvaal itself.

From their first settlement beyond the Vaal in the years immediately following the Great Trek of 1836, the farmers, though considering themselves to form one people, had been grouped in several small communities. In 1852 there were four such, those of Potchefstroom, Utrecht, Lydenburg, and Zoutpansberg, each having its Volksraad (people's council) and president or executive head, while a sort of loosely federative tie linked them together for the purposes, not of internal administration, but of defence against common foes.

In 1857 the Potchefstroom people tried to conquer the Orange Free State, then in the third year of its life, but desisted on finding that the infant Republic was prepared to defend itself. A single Volksraad for all the communities beyond the Vaal had been chosen as far back as 1849; but respect for authority grew very slowly, and for a time it could not be said to represent more than a party. In 1852, however, it ratified the Sand River Convention, and in 1855 it appointed a commission to draft a complete body of law. Finally, in 1858, an instrument called the "Grondwet," or Fundamental Law, was drawn up by a body of delegates named (by a "Krygsraad," or War Council) for that purpose. This instrument was revised and adopted by the Volksraad, and presently received the adhesion of two of the semi-independent communities, those of Potchestroom and Zoutpansberg, and in 1860 also of those at Lydenburg and Utrecht, which had by that time united. It has been since several times modified, and the question whether it is to be deemed a truly rigid constitution, like that of the United States or that of the Swiss Confederation, has given rise to much controversy.[25] A civil war broke out in 1862, and the country can hardly be said to have reached one united government till 1864, when the then president, Mr. M. W. Pretorius (son of the old antagonist of the English), was recognized by all the communities and factions as their executive head.

Even in 1864 the white population of the South African Republic was very small, probably not more than 30,000 all told, giving an average of less than one person to three square miles. There were, however, hundreds of thousands of natives, a few of whom were living as servants, under a system of enforced labour which was sometimes hardly distinguishable from slavery, while the vast majority were ruled by their own chiefs, some as tributaries of the Republic, some practically independent of it. With the latter wars were frequently raging—wars in which shocking cruelties were perpetrated on both sides, the Kafirs massacring the white families whom they surprised, the Boer commandos taking a savage vengeance upon the tribes when they captured a kraal or mountain stronghold. It was the sight of these wars which drove Dr. Livingstone to begin his famous explorations to the north. The farmers were too few to reduce the natives to submission, though always able to defeat them in the field, and while they relished an expedition, they had an invincible dislike to any protracted operations which cost money. Taxes they would not pay. They lived in a sort of rude plenty among their sheep and cattle, but they had hardly any coined money, conducting their transactions by barter, and they were too rude to value the benefits which government secures to a civilized people. Accordingly the treasury remained almost empty, the paper money which was issued fell till in 1870 it was worth only one-fourth of its face value, no public improvements were made, no proper administration existed, and every man did what was right in his own eyes. In 1872 Mr. M. W. Pretorius was obliged to resign the presidency, owing to the unpopularity he had incurred by accepting the arbitration mentioned above (p. 144), which declared the piece of territory where diamonds had been found not to belong to the Republic, and which the Volksraad thereupon repudiated. His successor was Mr. Burgers, a Cape Dutchman who had formerly been a clergyman of the Dutch Reformed Church and afterwards an advocate at the Cape, a man of energy, integrity, and eloquence, but deficient in practical judgment, and who soon became distrusted on account of his theological opinions. It used to be jestingly said that the Boers disliked him because he denied that the devil possessed that tail which is shown in the pictures that adorn the old Dutch Bibles; but his deviations from orthodoxy went much further than this, and were deemed by the people to be the cause of the misfortunes they experienced under his guidance. He formed large plans for the development of the country and the extension of Boer power over South Africa, plans which his citizens were unable to appreciate and the resources at his disposal were quite unfit to accomplish. Disorganization, aggravated by intestine faction, grew worse and worse. The State was practically bankrupt; trade had ceased, money could not be raised. In 1876, in a war which had broken out with Sikukuni, a Kafir chief who lived in the mountains of the north-east, the Boers were repulsed, and ultimately returned in confusion to their homes. On the south, Cetewayo, then in the zenith of his power, was unfriendly, and seemed likely to pour in his Zulu hordes. The weakness and disorders of the Republic had become a danger not only to the British subjects who had begun to settle in it, especially at the Lydenburg gold mines, but also to the neighbouring British territories, and especially to Natal; so a British commissioner was sent to examine into the condition of the country, with secret instructions empowering him to proclaim, if he should deem it necessary, and if he was satisfied that the majority of the inhabitants would approve, its annexation to the British crown. After three months' inquiry the commissioner, Sir Theophilus Shepstone, exercised this power upon April 12, 1877, and his act was approved by the High Commissioner at the Cape and by the Colonial Secretary in England. President Burgers had endeavoured to rouse his people by pointing out that only through reforms could they preserve their independence. They agreed to the reforms, but would not help him to carry them out, and obstinately refused to pay taxes. He was helpless, for while the more rigidly Calvinistic section of the population supported Paul Kruger, his opponent in the approaching presidential election, others (especially the English who had settled in the spots where a little gold had been found) favoured annexation to Great Britain, and most of the Boers had been repelled by his unorthodox opinions. Accordingly, after entering a protest against the annexation, he returned to Cape Colony, and received a pension, his private means having been entirely spent in the service of his country.[26] The Vice-President (Mr. Kruger) and the executive council of the Republic also protested, and sent delegates to London to remonstrate. By the mass of the Boer people—for the few English, of course, approved—little displeasure was shown and no resistance made. Had a popular vote been taken it would doubtless have been adverse to annexation, for a memorial circulated shortly afterwards, praying for a reversal of Sir T. Shepstone's act, received the signatures of a large majority of the Boer citizens.[27] But while they regretted their independence, they had been so much depressed by their disasters, and were so much relieved to know that the strong arm of Britain would now repel any Kafir invasion, as to take the change more quietly than any one who remembered their earlier history would have expected.

On the English public, which knew little and cared less about South African affairs, the news that their empire had been extended by a territory nearly as large as the United Kingdom, though it came as a complete surprise, produced little impression. They were then excited over the outbreak of the war between Russia and the Turks, and absorbed in the keen party struggles which Lord Beaconsfield's apparent desire to help the Turks had caused in England, so that scant attention was given to a distant colonial question. A motion condemning the annexation which was brought forward in the House of Commons received no support. Nearly all of those few persons who cared about South Africa had been alienated from the Boers by their treatment of the natives. Scarcely any one foresaw the long series of troubles, not yet ended, to which the annexation was destined to give rise. Neither did it arouse any serious opposition in Cape Colony, though the Dutch element there regarded with misgivings the withdrawal of independence from their emigrant kinsfolk.

To those who now look back at the act, in the light of the events which followed, it seems a high-handed proceeding to extinguish a Republic which had been formally recognized twenty-five years before, and to do this without giving the people an opportunity of declaring their wishes. Yet the act was not done in a spirit of rapacity. Neither the British government nor the British people had the least idea of the wealth that lay hidden beneath the barren and desolate ridges of the Witwatersrand. No one in England talked (though the notion had crossed a few ambitious minds) of pushing British dominion up to the Zambesi. The Transvaal Republic was bankrupt and helpless, distracted by internal quarrels, unable to collect any taxes, apparently unable to defend itself against its Kafir enemies, and likely to be the cause of native troubles which might probably spread till they affected all Europeans in South Africa. There was some reason to believe that the citizens, though they had not been consulted, would soon acquiesce in the change, especially when they found, as they soon did find, that the value of property rose with the prospect of security and of the carrying out of internal improvements by a strong and wealthy power. Such was certainly the belief of Sir T. Shepstone and of Lord Carnarvon, and it seemed to be confirmed by the apparent tranquillity which the Boers exhibited.

So, indeed, they might have acquiesced notwithstanding their strenuous love of independence, had they been wisely dealt with. But the British government proceeded forthwith to commit three capital blunders.

The first of these, and the least excusable, was the failure to grant that local autonomy which Sir T. Shepstone had announced when he proclaimed annexation. The Volksraad which the people were promised was never convoked; the constitution under which they were to enjoy self-government was never promulgated. There was no intention to break these promises, but merely a delay, culpable, indeed, but due to ignorance of the popular Boer sentiment, and to the desire of the Colonial Office to carry out its pet scheme of South African confederation before conceding to the Transvaal such a representative assembly as would have had the power to reject, on behalf of the people, the scheme when tendered to them. Nor were matters mended when at last a legislature was granted, to consist of some officials, and of six members nominated by the Governor, for this made the people fear that a genuine freely elected Volksraad would never be conceded at all.

The second blunder was the selection of the person who was to administer the country. Sir T. Shepstone, who knew it well and was liked by the Boers, was replaced by a military officer who had shown vigour in dealing with local disturbances in Griqualand West, but was totally unfit for delicate political work. As representative government had not yet been introduced, his administration was necessarily autocratic in form, and became autocratic in spirit also. He was described to me by some who knew him as stiff in mind and arrogant in temper, incapable of making allowances for the homely manners of the Boers and of adapting himself to the social equality which prevailed among them. A trifling cause aggravated their dislike. His complexion was swarthy, and they suspected that this might be due to some tinge of negro blood. He refused to listen to their complaints, levied taxes strictly, causing even the beloved ox-waggon to be seized when money was not forthcoming, and soon turned their smouldering discontent into active disaffection.

Finally, the British government removed the two native dangers which the Boers had feared. In 1879 Sir Bartle Frere's war with Cetewayo destroyed the Zulu power, the dread of which might have induced the Boers to resign themselves to British supremacy, and an expedition under Sir Garnet Wolseley reduced Sikukuni's strongholds and established peace in the north-east. It was probably necessary to deal with Sikukuni, though the British government seems to have forgotten its former doubts as to the right of the Boers to the territory of that chief; but in extinguishing the Zulu kingdom the High Commissioner overlooked the fact that he was also extinguishing the strongest motive which the republicans had for remaining British subjects. The British government were doubly unfortunate. It was the annexation of the Transvaal in 1877 that had alarmed Cetewayo and helped to precipitate the war of 1879. It was now the overthrow of Cetewayo, their formidable enemy, that helped to precipitate a revolt of the Boers.

At this time, however, everybody in British South Africa, and nearly everybody in England, supposed the annexation to be irrevocable. Leading members of the parliamentary Opposition had condemned it. But when that Opposition, victorious in the general election of 1880, took office in April of that year, the officials in South Africa, whose guidance they sought, made light of Boer discontent, and declared that it would be impossible now to undo what had been done in 1877. Thus misled, the new Cabinet refused to reverse the annexation, saying by the mouth of the Under Secretary for the Colonies, "Fieri non debuit, factum valet." This decision of the British government, which came as a surprise upon the recalcitrant republicans in the Transvaal, precipitated an outbreak. In December, 1880, a mass-meeting of the Boers was held at a place called Paardekraal (now Krugersdorp). It was resolved to rise in arms; and a triumvirate was elected, consisting of Messrs. M.W. Pretorius, Kruger and Joubert, which proclaimed the re-establishment of the South African Republic, and hoisted the national flag on Dingaan's day, December 16.[28] The Boers, nearly every man of whom was accustomed to fighting, now rose en masse and attacked the small detachments of British troops scattered through the country, some of which were cut off, while the rest were obliged to retire to posts which they fortified. The Governor of Natal, General Sir George Colley, raised what troops he could in that Colony, and marched northward; but before he could reach the Transvaal border a strong force of Boers, commanded by Commandant-General Joubert, crossed it and took up a position at Laing's Nek, a steep ridge close to the watershed between the upper waters of the Klip River, a tributary of the Vaal, and those of the Buffalo River, which joins the Tugela and flows into the Indian Ocean. Here the British general, on January 28, 1881, attacked the Boers, but was repulsed with heavy loss, for the ridge behind which they were posted protected them from his artillery, while their accurate rifle fire cut down his column as it mounted the slope. A second engagement, eleven days later, on the Ingogo heights, caused severe loss to the British troops. Finally, on the night of February 26, General Colley, with a small detachment, seized by night Majuba Hill, a mountain which rises about 1500 feet above Laing's Nek, and completely commands that pass.[29] Unfortunately he omitted to direct the main force, which he had left behind at his camp, four miles south of the Nek, to advance against the Boers and occupy their attention; so the latter, finding no movement made against them in front, and receiving no artillery fire from Majuba Hill above them, checked the first impulse to retire, which the sight of British troops on the hilltop had produced, and sent out a volunteer party to scale the hill. Protected by the steep declivities from the fire of the soldiers above them, they made their way up, shooting down those whom they saw against the sky-line, and finally routed the British force, killing General Colley, with ninety-one others, and taking fifty-nine prisoners. By this time fresh troops were beginning to arrive in Natal, and before long the British general who had succeeded to the command had at his disposal a force which the Boers could not possibly have resisted. The home government, however, had ordered an armistice to be concluded (March 5), and on March 23 terms were agreed to by which the "Transvaal State" (as it was called) was again recognized as a quasi-independent political community, to enjoy complete self-government under the suzerainty of the British crown. These terms were developed in a more formal convention, signed at Pretoria in August, 1881, which recognized the Transvaal as autonomous, subject, however, to the suzerainty of the Queen, to British control in matters of foreign policy, to the obligation to allow British troops to pass through the Republic in time of war, and to guarantees for the protection of the natives.[30] The position in which the Transvaal thus found itself placed was a peculiar one, and something between that of a self-governing Colony and an absolutely independent State. The nearest legal parallel is to be found in the position of some of the great feudatories of the British crown in India, but the actual circumstances were of course too unlike those of India to make the parallel instructive.