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THE AFRICANDERS. [[2]]

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CAPE TOWN, CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.

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The Africanders

A CENTURY OF DUTCH-ENGLISH FEUD IN SOUTH AFRICA

BY
LE ROY HOOKER,
AUTHOR OF
“Enoch, the Philistine,” “Baldoon,” ETC.

Chicago and New York:
RAND, McNALLY & CO., PUBLISHERS.
MDCCCC.

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Copyright, 1900, by Rand, McNally & Co. [[5]]

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Contents.

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Illustrations.

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FOREWORD.

This is the history, briefly told, of the great Dutch-English feud in South Africa, up to the beginning of the Africanders’ second war of independence with Great Britain, which opened on the 11th of October, 1899.

In writing these pages I have not felt conscious of being in controversy with any one. If I had been susceptible to influences that create prejudice, nearly three centuries of American descent from purely Anglo-Saxon progenitors with no admixture of any other blood would have predisposed me to magnify everything in this long feud that exemplified the prowess and the honor of that race, and to minify in the telling whatever faults it had committed. It will be for such readers of my work as are conversant with the ultimate authorities on the subject treated of to judge how far I have succeeded or failed in presenting a “plain, unvarnished” tale. [[10]]

I acknowledge, with much gratitude, indebtedness for data to the following distinguished writers:

Canon W. J. Little, M.A., author of “South Africa”; George McCall Theal, M.A., Official Historiographer and sometime Keeper of the Archives at Cape Town; Professor James Bryce, author of “Impressions of South Africa,” “The American Commonwealth,” etc.; F. Reginald Statham, author of “South Africa as It Is”; Olive Schreiner, author of “The South African Question”; the British Blue Books and other sources of reliable information.

THE AUTHOR. [[11]]

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THE AFRICANDERS.

CHAPTER I.

THE DUTCH AT THE CAPE.

(1652–1795.)

This is the story, briefly told, of the Dutch Boers in South Africa.

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to visit the shores of South and Southeastern Africa, but they made no attempt to settle the country south of Delagoa Bay. They were traders. The Hottentots had little to sell that they cared to purchase. The route for Portuguese commerce with the East was west of Madagascar, consequently they found it unnecessary to put into Table Bay; the voyage from St. Helena to Mozambique could be made comfortably without seeking a port of supply.

But when the Dutch wrested the eastern trade [[12]]from the Portuguese, the southeastern portion of Africa assumed an importance to them that it had never before possessed in the esteem of any other nation. Their sea route to the East was south of Madagascar, and it was all but imperative that they should have a port of supply at the turning point of the long voyage between Holland and Batavia. It soon became their practice to call at Table Bay for the purpose of obtaining news, taking in fresh water, catching fish, and bartering with the natives for cattle—in which they were seldom successful.

In 1650 the Dutch East India Company, acting upon the reports and suggestions of influential men who had visited Table Bay and resided in Table Valley several months, determined to establish at Table Bay such a victualing station as had been recommended. In accordance therewith the ships Reiger and Dromedaris and the yacht Goede Hoop—all then lying in the harbor of Amsterdam—were put in commission to carry the party of occupation to Table Bay, under the general command of Jan Van Riebeek.

On Sunday, 24th of December, 1651, the expedition sailed, accompanied by a large fleet of merchant vessels. On the morning of Sunday, the 7th of April, 1652, after a voyage of one [[13]]hundred and four days, the site of their future home greeted the eyes of the sea-worn emigrants,—Table Mountain, 3,816 feet high, being the central and impressive feature of the landscape. In due time preparations were made to land and begin the necessary operations in establishing themselves in the new and entirely uncivilized country.

The organization of the Dutch East India Company was on a thoroughly military system. It graduated downward from the home Assembly of Seventeen—who were supreme—to a governor-general of India and his council resident in Batavia, and, ranking next below him in their order, to a vast number of admirals, governors and commanders—each having his own council, and acting under the strict rule that whenever these came in contact the lower in rank must give place and render obedience to the higher. It is important to bear this in mind, as it gives a clear insight into the mode of government under which the occupation took place, and which prevailed with little variation for more than a hundred years. The ranking officer of the expedition was Jan Van Riebeek, and next to him in authority were the three commanders as his council in founding the settlement. [[14]]

Van Riebeek and the three skippers, having inspected Table Valley, selected a site for the fort a little in rear of the ground on which the general postoffice of Cape Town now stands. On that spot a great stronghold was built in the form of a square strengthened by bastions at its angles. Each face of the fort measured 252 Rhynland feet—about 260 feet English measure. The walls were built of earth, twelve feet high, twenty feet in thickness at the base, tapering to sixteen feet at the top, and were surmounted by a parapet. Surrounding the whole structure was a moat, into which the water of Fresh River could be turned. Within the walls were dwellings, barracks, storehouses and other conveniences that might be required in a state of siege. Around the fort were clustered a walled kraal for cattle, a separate inclosure for workshops, and the tents in which the settlers began their life in Africa.

On the 28th of January, 1653, the last of the ships, the Dromedaris, sailed away and left the colonists to their own resources.

The history in detail of this first European settlement in South Africa is of surpassing interest; but, here, it must be sketched in the briefest outline possible, up to the first contact of Boer with Briton. [[15]]

For the first twenty-five years the aim of the colonists was to keep within easy reach of the fort at the Cape. Up to 1680 the most distant agricultural settlement was at Stellenbosch, about twenty-five miles from the Cape. Not till the end of the century did they push pioneering enterprises beyond the first range of mountains.

There was a steady though not very rapid increase of population. As early as 1658 the disastrous step was taken of introducing slave labor, performed at first by West African negroes—a step which encouraged in the whites an indisposition to work, and doomed that part of Africa to be dependent on the toil of slaves. To their African slaves the Dutch East India Company added numbers of Malay convicts from Java and other parts of its East Indian territories. These Malays took wives from the female convicts of their own race, and to some extent intermarried with the native African slave-women. From such marriages there arose a mongrel, dark people of the servile order, which became a considerable element in the population of Cape Town and its neighboring regions.

In 1689 some three hundred French Huguenots came from Holland in a body and joined the colonists at the Cape. These were a valuable [[16]]acquisition as an offset to the rapidly increasing servile element. They were mostly persons of refinement, and brought with them habits of industry, strong attachment to the Protestant faith, and a supreme love of liberty. Many of the more respectable colonial families are descended from that stock.

The somewhat intolerant government of the Company hastened the blending of the various classes of the population in one. The Huguenots loved their language and their peculiar faith, and greatly desired to found a separate religious community. But the Company forbade the use of French in official documents and in religious services. As a result of this narrow but far-seeing policy, by the middle of the eighteenth century the Huguenots had amalgamated with their Dutch fellow-colonists in language, religion and politics. It was not until 1780 that the Company’s government permitted the opening of a Lutheran church, although many Germans of that persuasion had emigrated to the Cape.

The distinctive Africander type of character began to appear at the time when the settlers began to move from the coast into the interior of the country. There was everything to favor the rapid development of a new type of humanity. [[17]]For the most part the Dutch and the Germans belonged to the humbler classes; the situation was isolated; the home ties were few; the voyage to Europe was so long that communication was difficult and expensive; and so they maintained little connection with—and soon lost all feeling for—the fatherlands. As for the Huguenots, they had no home country to look to. France had banished them, and they were not of Holland—neither in blood nor in speech. Thus it came to pass that the whites of South Africa who went into the interior as pioneers went consenting to the feeling that every bond between Europe and themselves was severed—that they were a new people whose true home and destiny, to the latest generations, were to be in Africa.

Many of them became stockmen, roaming with their flocks and herds over vast tracts of grazing lands, for which they paid a nominal rent to the Company. Some of them became mighty hunters of big game—like Nimrod; and even those who herded cattle and sheep were forced to protect themselves and their live stock against lions and leopards and the savage Bushmen who waged a constant warfare in which quarter was neither given nor expected. In such circumstances it is not wonderful that the people who [[18]]had in their veins the blended blood of Holland and Navarre developed to an almost unparalleled degree courage, self-reliance and love of independence, coupled with a passion for solitude and isolation.

As inevitable results of the life they led—so isolated and wild—the children grew up untaught; the women, being served by slaves, lost both the Dutch and French habits of thrift and cleanliness; and the men became indifferent to the elegancies of life, and grew more and more stern and narrow-minded on all questions of public policy and religion. But there was no declension of religious fervor. In all their wanderings the Bible went with them as an oracle to be consulted on all subjects, and the altar of family worship never lacked its morning and evening sacrifice. And they retained a passionate love of personal freedom which no effort of the Company’s government could bring under perfect discipline.

Magistrates and assessors were appointed in some of the distant stations, but they failed to control the wandering stockmen, who were called Trek Boers because they “trekked” from place to place. Being good marksmen and inured to conflict with wild beasts and wilder [[19]]men, they formed among themselves companies of fighting men whose duty it was to disperse or destroy the savage Bushmen. These independent military organizations the government recognized and approved by appointing over them a field commander for each district and a subordinate called a field cornet for each subdivision of a district. These officers and their respective commands became permanent features of the system of local government, and the war bands—called commandos—have always been recognized in the records of military operations by the Boers.

The administration, through a governor and council appointed by the Dutch East India Company in Holland, was never popular with the colonists. The governor was in no sense responsible to the people he governed. This was one of the causes which prompted the Boers to go out into the wilderness, where distance from the center of authority secured to them greater freedom.

In 1779 the disaffected colonists sent commissioners to Holland to demand of the States-General redress of the grievances suffered under the rule of the Dutch East India Company and a share in the government of the colony. This action was due, in part, to actual wrongs inflicted [[20]]on a liberty-loving people, and, in part, to the spirit of independence which characterized the temper of the age and had led the British colonists in North America to throw off the control of their mother country.

After prolonged negotiations the States-General sent out two commissioners to investigate the state of affairs in the Cape colony and to recommend measures of reform. The degree of relief proposed was considered inadequate—especially by those who dwelt in the more distant settlements. Therefore, in 1795, the people of the interior rose up in revolt against the Company’s government—professing, however, unabated loyalty to the mother country. The magistrates appointed by the company were deposed, and little republics were set up, each with a representative assembly. It would have been an easy matter for the government at the Cape to have suppressed these uprisings by cutting off their food supplies. But just then other events claimed the attention of both the governor and the governed—events which drew South Africa into the tumultuous tide of European politics and led to the immediate contact of Boer and Briton, and initiated a struggle between the two [[21]]which has been renewed at intervals, with varying fortunes, for more than a hundred years.

Before going forward to the event of 1795—the first contact of Boer and Briton—it will be well to note some of the more important features of the condition in which that contact found the Boer.

The total Boer population of South Africa in 1795 was about seventeen thousand, with a rapid rate of increase. In the mixed blood of the people the proportions of national elements were: Dutch, a little less than two-thirds; French, one-sixth; the remainder was principally German, with a sprinkling of other nationalities.

The popular language differed largely from that of Holland at the close of the eighteenth century. The amalgamation with a large body of foreigners, the scant instruction in book learning, and above all the necessity of speaking to the slaves and Hottentots in the simplest manner possible had all tended to the destruction of grammatical forms. The language in common use by the Boer had become a mere dialect, having a very limited vocabulary. But the Dutch Bible—a book that every one read—greatly increased the number of words with which he was familiar. With this addition, however, [[22]]most of the uneducated South African colonists were unable to understand fully the contents of a newspaper of the time printed in Holland, or a book treating of a subject unfamiliar to them. Naturally this dialect of the Dutch was greatly beloved by the people using it—it was the language of mother, of lover, of friend to friend in parting to meet no more.

In no other country were women more completely on an equality with men than in South Africa. Property belonging to a woman while she was single, or acquired by her after marriage, was secured to her in perpetuity so that her husband could neither squander it nor dispose of it in any way without her consent. Neither was it subject to seizure for debts contracted by him, but was as absolutely hers as if no marriage existed.

The rights of children to be provided for were sacredly guarded. An individual having five or more children could only dispose by will of half the estate; the remainder belonged to the children, and upon the death of the parent it was equally divided among them; if any were minors their share was taken in trust for them by guardians provided by law. If there were [[23]]not more than four children the parent could dispose by will of two-thirds of the estate.

The industrial pursuits of the people outside of Cape Town were almost entirely agricultural and pastoral. There were no mining interests. There was abundance of fish, but the taking of them was discouraged by government prohibitions of fishing in any waters but Table Bay in summer and False Bay in winter. This measure was taken to save the Company the expense of providing military protection for fishermen at a distance from the fort. In 1718 it was permitted to fish in Saldanha Bay, also, but as one-fifth of the product was exacted as a tax the license was not accepted.

The making of wagons and carts of the peculiar kind needed in Africa at that time was carried to great perfection. This, however, was the only important manufacturing industry in the country. For the most part families supplied themselves with homemade articles of use, such as soap, candles, furniture, leather, cloth, harness and farming implements. Everything thus produced was crude and clumsy, but the articles were durable and served the purpose fairly well.

All in all, they were a worthy and a very [[24]]peculiar people—these Boers. They differed largely from all others in habits, language and ideals; but they were loyal to their ideals, and acted with rare good sense and manly energy in carrying them into effect. They were so far free from the prevailing spirit of religious bigotry that in 1795, besides the Dutch Reformed Church—in a sense the national church—the Lutheran and the Moravian denominations were tolerated.

The territory in South Africa that had been explored, up to 1795, included the Cape colony, the western coast as far north as Walfish Bay, the eastern coast to the Zambesi River and the Zambesi Valley to a point above Tete, and a few localities in the region now known as Rhodesia. Possibly some roving elephant hunters had crossed the Orange River, but, if so, they were silent as to any discoveries made.

The Bushmen had retired from the populous parts of the Colony, and were numerous only along the mountain range in the interior. The Hottentots had dwindled away to a few thousand. The thinning out of these native races was due not so much to mortal conflict with the whites as to the ravages of smallpox and strong drink. Like all savage people they [[25]]seemed to melt away before these scourges as stubble before flames.

And here we close this chapter of the history of the Boers. We leave them, for the moment, divided as to the government of the Dutch East India Company, but a homogeneous people seventeen thousand strong, and having developed out of the elements mixed in their blood and the peculiar environment and experiences in which they lived a new race of civilized men to be known in the history of commerce, diplomacy and war as Africanders. [[26]]

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CHAPTER II.

FIRST CONTACT OF AFRICANDER AND BRITON IN DIPLOMACY.

(1795.)

Colonel Robert Jacob Gordon was in chief command of all the regular military forces maintained in the Cape colony. These consisted of a regiment of infantry numbering twenty-five officers and five hundred and forty-six rank and file, an artillery corps mustering twenty-seven officers and four hundred and three rank and file, fifty-seven men stationed at the regimental depots Meuron and Württemberg and a corps of mountaineer soldiers, called pandours, numbering two hundred and ten.

It is important to remember that at this time the colonists were divided in sentiment as to the government of the Dutch East India Company, but united in loyalty to the States-General and the Stadtholder of Holland. In the interior the people had risen up in a mild revolt, had dismissed [[27]]the local magistrates who were the appointees of the Company, and had instituted incipient republics under the government of representative assemblies. Even in Stellenbosch and Cape Town the majority sympathized with these movements, and only waited a favorable opportunity to declare against the Company’s rule.

It is equally important to know that the military, also, were divided in sentiment on this subject. Of the infantry, the officers were loyal to the Orange party, but the rank and file were mercenaries from nearly every country in the north of Europe, and were zealous for that party or nation from whom they could draw the highest pay. The artillery corps, on the contrary, was composed almost entirely of Netherlanders, with a few French and Germans. These men were attached to the mother country. A large majority of them, however, sympathized with the republican movement in Europe, and would have preferred alliance with the French rather than with the English, for, at that time, the lead of France was toward republicanism.

Thus weakened by internal divisions, the Colony presented an open door to invasion by any power that might covet a point of so great [[28]]strategic importance on the ocean thoroughfare between Europe and the Orient.

The English government, when about to enter into hostilities with France, became apprehensive that the French would perceive the value of the Cape colony and instantly take forcible possession of it. This they determined to prevent at any cost; for the military occupancy of the Cape by the French would bring England’s highway to India under the control of her hereditary foe.

As early as the 2d of February, 1793, negotiations were opened between the British government and the Dutch home and colonial authorities concerning a strengthening of the garrison at the Cape by a contingent of British troops from St. Helena. The States-General and the Dutch East India Company, in response to this proposal, signified their desire for aid in the form of warships to guard the coast of the Cape peninsula, and that in case such assistance could not be given they would accept the offered troops.

While this correspondence was going on events were transpiring that occasioned ill-feeling between the Dutch and the English, although they were in alliance against the French. Being [[29]]paralyzed by dissensions among their own people, the States-General made urgent appeals to the British government for more efficient aid in both men and money. To these appeals the answer of the English authorities was a bitter complaint that their troops were already bearing the brunt of the war in defense of the Netherlands, and that the Stadtholder and his government were not making proper exertions to raise men and money at home.

In making such answer, the British ministers seemed to be willfully blind to the prostrate condition of the Dutch government. The French had put the army of invasion under the command of Pichegru, one of the ablest generals of his time. One after another the Dutch strongholds were falling before him. The province of Friesland was threatening to make a separate peace with France if the States-General did not hasten to act in that direction for all Holland. The patriot party felt such antipathy to their English allies that it was difficult to get hospital accommodation in Dutch towns for the wounded British soldiers. And notwithstanding all these circumstances the English authorities asserted that the Stadtholder’s failure to put in the field a large and well-equipped force was due to [[30]]apathy in his own cause rather than to weakness. The one measure of additional help offered was that if the Dutch government would furnish five hundred to a thousand troops for the better defense of Cape Colony the English East India Company would transport them thither free of charge. It being impossible for the Dutch to furnish the men, the negotiations came to an end.

Meanwhile, as was signified in the attitude of Friesland, the Dutch people were considering the question of changing sides in the war. That fact—without the knowledge of the Stadtholder—was informally communicated to the governor of Cape Colony in a letter written by the chief advocate of the Dutch East India Company, with the approbation of the directors. The letter reached the Cape on the 7th of February, 1795, informing the colonists that in all probability Holland might soon dissolve the alliance with the English and make common cause with France. The letter stated that matters at home were in an uncertain condition; that the French armies were advancing and already had occupied a part of the country, and that it would be necessary to be vigilant so as not to be surprised by any European power. The warning, though not [[31]]specific as to what power, evidently referred to England.

Later reports informed the colonists that a French army under Pichegru was besieging Breda and threatening the region across the Maas. But these reports were not in the nature of official dispatches. They were communicated verbally by Captain Dekker of the frigate Medemblik, which arrived at the Cape on the 12th of April, 1795.

The next intelligence from Europe was calculated to perplex and alarm the colonists to a high degree. On the 11th of June, 1795, successive reports came by messengers from Simonstown to the castle to the effect that several ships of unknown nationality were beating into False Bay; later that the ships had cast anchor, and at ten in the evening that Captain Dekker had sent a boat to one of the stranger ships to ascertain particulars, directing the lieutenant in charge to wave a flag if he found them friendly, and that no such signal had been made, nor had the boat returned.

The situation so suddenly developed was, to say the least, disturbing. The governor called his council together to consider it. After conference the signals of danger were made summoning [[32]]the Burghers of the country districts to Cape Town. Lieutenant-Colonel De Lille was ordered to proceed at once to Simonstown with two hundred infantry and a hundred gunners to strengthen the garrison there. The troops left the castle within an hour and reached Simonstown before noon of the next day.

The council continued in session until past midnight, and after adjournment remained at the castle in readiness to deal with any emergency that might arise. At half-past two in the morning of the 12th they were called together again to consider a letter just received from Simonstown. The communication was from Mr. Brand, the official resident at Simonstown, and contained interesting news. Captain Dekker’s boat had returned from its long visit to the strange fleet. With it had come a Mr. Ross, bearing letters for the head of the Cape government from the English admiral, Sir George Keith Elphinstone and Major-General James Henry Craig.

Mr. Ross, having been supplied with a horse and a guide, reached the castle and delivered the letters in due time. They proved to be three complimentary notes from directors of the English East India Company to Commissioner [[33]]Sluysken, governor of the colony. Mr. Ross also presented an invitation from Admiral Elphinstone to the Commissioner and Colonel Gordon to visit his ship, intimating that there they would receive important information and a missive from the Stadtholder of the Netherlands. It was noted that in the conversation Mr. Ross was careful to evade all questions concerning the state of affairs in Europe and the destination and business of the fleet.

While the council pondered these things, Lieutenant Van Vegezak, who had visited the English admiral’s ship, arrived at the castle. He had little information to impart. There were in the fleet three seventy-four gun ships, three of sixty-four guns each, a frigate of twenty-four guns, two sloops of war carrying the one eighteen and the other sixteen guns; and there were troops on board under the command of Major-General James Henry Craig, but how many he had not been able to learn.

Now, the facts which accounted for the presence at the Cape of this British naval and military force were unknown to the colonists. The Stadtholder’s government had been overthrown. The democratic party in Holland had received the French with open arms. The national government [[34]]had been remodeled. The States-General had abolished the Stadtholderate. And the British ministers, alarmed for their vast possessions in India, and realizing that they must now depend upon their own exertions to keep the French from seizing the port which practically commanded the sea route thither, had fitted out and dispatched with all haste this expedition, with orders to occupy—peacefully if they could, but forcibly if they must—the castle and harbor of Cape Town. The fleet had made a rapid passage. One division sailed on the 13th of March, the other on the 3d of April. The two squadrons met off the Cape on the 10th of June and on the 11th cast anchor in False Bay.

The colonial officers acted with marvelous caution, considering the fact that they were in ignorance of the late events which had led to the appearing of this formidable expedition in South African waters.

To the note inviting the commissioner and Colonel Gordon to visit the English admiral on his ship, they courteously replied that it was impossible for these officers to leave Cape Town, and begged the admiral to send ashore a responsible representative with the promised information and dispatch. They also instructed [[35]]the resident at Simonstown to permit the English to provision their ships, but to allow no armed men to land. A force of eighty-four Burghers and thirty gunners, with three field pieces, was posted at Muizenburg in a position to command the road to Simonstown. On the 13th of June the defensive works of Simonstown Bay were strengthened by additional troops, and three hundred and forty infantry and artillerymen were sent to further strengthen the post at Muizenburg.

On the 14th of June there came to the castle a deputation from the Admiral, consisting of Lieutenant-Colonel McKenzie, Captain Hardy of the sloop Echo and Mr. Ross, secretary to General Craig.

Mr. Ross handed to Commissioner Sluysken a communication from the prince of Orange—late the Stadtholder of the Netherlands, and supposed to be so still by the colonists. The prince’s mandate, dated at Kew on the 7th of February, 1795, ordered the Commissioner to admit the troops of the King of England into the colony and the forts thereof and to admit the British ships of war into the ports, and to treat the British troops and ships of war as the forces of [[36]]a power friendly to Holland and sent to protect the colony against the French.

The deputation from the admiral also delivered to the Commissioner a joint letter from Admiral Elphinstone and General Craig, in which was written their account of the then condition of affairs in the Netherlands. They informed him that the winter in Europe had been exceptionally severe; that toward the close of January the rivers had been frozen so hard as to make them passable for armies; that the French had crossed on the ice into Utrecht and Gelderland and had driven the English troops into Germany and compelled the Dutch forces to surrender. They represented that it was a matter of only a few days for the whole of the country to fall into the possession of the French by forced capitulation, without any previous terms of surrender, and that the Stadtholder only escaped capture by taking passage in a fishing boat, which carried him from Scheveningen to England. They further intimated to the Commissioner that this gloomy state of things was only temporary; that Britain and her allies were preparing to enter the field with overwhelming force, and were confident of being [[37]]able to drive the French out of Holland in the next campaign.

The letter stopped short of full particulars, leaving the colonial authorities in ignorance of the cordial welcome given to the French by the democratic party in Holland, and of the remodeling of the national government and the abolition of the Stadtholderate. The impression the British officers sought to make was that Holland had been overrun and conquered, and was being treated with the utmost rigor by the French. They carefully withheld the facts that the remodeled government of the Netherlands was still in existence and that the French were regarded as friends by a majority of the people. They wished the colonists to believe that the Prince of Orange was still the Stadtholder of the Netherlands, though temporarily a fugitive in England; that he would be reinstated by the help of his faithful allies in the next campaign, and that loyalty to his prince required the Commissioner of the Cape Colony to throw open the ports and the forts of the colony to the friendly occupation of the British forces.

The council decided that no immediate action should be taken on the prince’s mandatory letter. It was the command of a fugitive in a [[38]]foreign land and lacked the indorsement of the States-General, and, therefore, had no official force. They were loyal to the House of Orange, but they felt that any present action would be taken in ignorance of the true state of affairs. There was nothing to guide them but this letter of their fugitive prince and the word of these armed and interested visitors who sought to occupy their harbors and strongholds at once. They decided to temporize as far as they could without giving the strangers peaceable possession, hoping that more complete and reliable intelligence from the Netherlands would reach them.

The council’s answer to Admiral Elphinstone is an example of rare diplomatic acumen. It assured him that the fleet would be permitted to take in all necessary provisions, but requested that in doing so only small bodies of unarmed men be sent ashore. It also expressed gratitude to the British government for its evident goodwill, and intimated that, while confident of their ability to resist any attack that might be made, they would ask the British for assistance in case the French should attempt to seize the colony. It further requested the admiral to inform the council what number of troops he could furnish, [[39]]if any were needed. The admiral replied that General Craig would visit the Commissioner in Cape Town and impart fuller information. Meanwhile the arrival of Burgher forces from Stellenbosch enabled the council to add two hundred horsemen to the post at Muizenburg.

On the 18th of June General Craig met the Commissioner at Cape Town. The next day the general was introduced to the council, and laid before the members the mission upon which he had been sent and his instructions as to the manner of accomplishing it. He stated that the fleet and the troops had been sent by his Britannic Majesty to defend the colony against seizure by the French, or any other power, and that the British occupancy was intended to last only until the government in the Netherlands could be restored to its ancient form, when it was his Majesty’s purpose to give up the colony to its proper rulers—the Stadtholder and the States-General of Holland. He assured them that no changes would be made in the laws and customs of the country, nor would any additional taxes be levied without the expressed desire of the people. The colonists would be required to bear no cost but that of their own government as it then existed, and they would be at [[40]]liberty to profit largely by trade with England’s possessions in India. The colonial troops would be paid by England, on condition that they take an oath of allegiance to his Britannic Majesty—the obligation thereof to last only as long as the British occupancy of the colony. The civil service would remain as it was, and the present incumbents retain their offices until his Majesty’s pleasure should be made known.

To this proposal the council made answer in writing, declining it, and notifying the general that they would protect the colony with their own forces against all comers.

Admiral Elphinstone and General Craig responded to this act of the council by a general proclamation to the government and inhabitants of the country, inviting and requiring them to accept his Britannic Majesty’s protection in view of the certainty that the French would endeavor to seize the colonial dependencies of the Netherlands.

Three days later the same officers published an address to the inhabitants, in Dutch and German, renewing the offer of protection under the conditions laid before the council by General Craig, and inviting them to send a committee of their own selection to Simonstown to [[41]]confer with the heads of the British expedition. The address emphasized the alternative before the people—a French or an English occupation. The former, it affirmed, would introduce a government on Jacobin principles, and would result in anarchy, the guillotine, an insurrection of the slaves with all the horrors that had been enacted at St. Domingo and Guadeloupe, isolation from Europe, the destruction of commerce and a dearth of money and of the necessaries of life. But the English occupation, it went on to say, would give them safety under the wing of the only power in Europe that was able to assure protection of person and property under the existing laws, or any others the colonists might choose to enact; it would secure a free market for all their products at the best prices; it would release their trade from the heavy imposts of the Dutch East India Company; it would open and promote commerce by sea and land between all parts of the colony, and it would secure better pay for such of the colonial troops as might choose to enter the British military service.

This appeal directly to the people over the heads of their chief officials, and to the cupidity of their mercenary soldiers, was resented by the council, who notified the British representatives [[42]]forthwith that further communication on the subject of British occupancy was not desired.

Nevertheless, on the 26th of June, the admiral and the general sent the colonial authorities another long letter, reiterating therein their former statements to the effect that the Netherlands had been absorbed by France; that if left to itself the Cape colony would be absorbed in like manner, and adding the significant intimation that his Britannic Majesty could not allow it to fall into the hands of his enemies.

The council responded to this letter by prohibiting any further supply of provisions to the British force, and strengthening the post at Muizenburg with Burgher horsemen, pandours and the entire garrison from Boetselaar except one man; he was left to spike the guns in case the English should land. The council also wrote the British commanders that they noted the difference between proffered assistance against an invader and a demand to surrender the colony to the British government.

When the real design of the English was revealed, the disaffected Burghers of the Cape and of Stellenbosch ceased all opposition to the government, and offered to do their utmost in defense of the colony. When the Commissioner [[43]]announced that the country would not be surrendered to the English, the people cheered him rapturously in the streets, and saluted him as Father Sluysken.

But notwithstanding these outward signs of unity the high officials and the people were not quite of one mind. A majority of the Burghers had adopted republican ideas, and, if they were to be left to themselves, were ready to welcome the French. Such English visitors as had come to the Cape had exasperated the colonists by boastfully predicting the ultimate subjection of the colony to Great Britain. The Burghers believed that they had now come in the guise of friendship to make good the insulting prediction. On the other hand, the official heads of the colony were lukewarm in doing what they knew and admitted to be their duty for the defense of the colony. Colonel Gordon openly expressed his readiness to admit the English troops whenever the French should threaten an attack. He went so far as to say that even in existing circumstances he would admit them if they would covenant to hold the country for the Prince of Orange, but if their purpose was to take possession of it for Great Britain he would resist them to the utmost of his power. The colonel was [[44]]a disappointment to the English, for they had counted upon the Scotch strain in his blood and his well-known Orange partisanship to bring him over to their designs at the first.

Thus three lines of cleavage militated against the perfect solidarity of the colonists. A majority of the Burghers were prepared to resist the British because they preferred the French, if there must be a change of masters. Most of the lower officials and some of the town Burghers were ready to accept the British occupancy, and went about singing Orange party songs because they believed the English were sincere in professing that it was their sole purpose to hold the colony in trust for the Prince of Orange. As for Commissioner Sluysken and Colonel Gordon, while it was their duty to defend the Cape interests against any power that sought to subvert the rule of the Stadtholder and the States-General of Holland, they were not quite sure of the course they ought to pursue with reference to the English, who had come to them professing loyal friendship to the fugitive prince and accredited to them by his mandatory letter. There was possible treason in either admitting or resisting them. These circumstances account for some lack of energy on the part of the civil [[45]]and the military heads of the colony in defending it against the British attack that was soon to follow. [[46]]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER III.

FIRST CONTACT OF AFRICANDER AND BRITON IN WAR.

(1795.)

Toward the end of June, 1795, it became evident that the British commanders, having failed to obtain peaceable possession of the Cape colony, meant to use all the force necessary to carry out their purpose.

On the 24th of June, three Dutch merchant ships lying in Simon’s Bay received instruction from Commissioner Sluysken to proceed to Table Bay, but Admiral Elphinstone forbade them to sail. On the 28th of June, two small vessels sailing under American colors anchored in Simon’s Bay. One of these—the Columbia—carried Dutch dispatches from Amsterdam to the Cape and Batavia. The English admiral promptly placed the Columbia under guard and seized her mails. Such letters and dispatches as related to public affairs were either suppressed [[47]]or mutilated, and measures were taken to prevent newspapers from reaching the shore. A single paper, however, was smuggled into the hands of a Burgher, and was the means of conveying astonishing news to the colonists. The most startling of its contents was an official notice by the States-General of Holland, under date of the 4th of March, 1795, absolving from their oaths of allegiance to the Prince of Orange all his former subjects, both in the Netherlands and in the Dutch colonies.

From this notice and from hints left in mutilated letters to private individuals it was learned that so far from being a conquered country under the heel of a rigorous French military administration, Holland was a free and independent republic; that the Stadtholderate had been abolished by the free-will action of the nation, and that France was in friendly diplomatic relations with the Dutch Republic.

Thereupon, the Commissioner and his council determined that it was their duty to hold out against the English. They reasoned that, should the colonial forces be overpowered in the end, the Netherlands would have a better claim to the restoration of the country when peace should be made than would exist if the protection of [[48]]Great Britain had been accepted without a struggle. They saw a bare possibility that the British force might be starved into departure by refusing to furnish them with provisions. Moreover, aid from Europe might then be on the way and might reach them in time to save the colony to Holland. In any case, they judged, there was nothing to lose in opposing the British but the control of the colony, whereas, they might lose their heads as traitors should a combined Dutch and French fleet arrive and they be found to have surrendered to the British without a show of resistance. They decided that both duty and personal interest required them to make what preparation they could for defense.

PRESIDENT KRUGER.

By order of the council, on the night of the 29th of June, Simonstown was abandoned as untenable. All the provisions there were destroyed, the guns were spiked, such ammunition as could not be carried away was thrown into the sea and the troops joined the force at Muizenburg. Not being able to evade the ships blockading Table Bay, the council chartered a cutter then lying at anchor in Saldanha Bay and sent her with dispatches to Batavia informing the Dutch colonists there of the state of things both at the Cape and in Holland. [[49]]

When the call to assemble at the Cape was signaled to the country Burghers, only seventy men from the Swellendam district responded. The nationals, who had been in revolt against the Dutch East India Company’s government, declined to obey. Further appeals by letter failed to bring any more of them in. At last, on the 7th of July, in a written communication, it was proposed by the nationals that they would rally to the defense of the country if the government would grant them amnesty for the past and pledge a reasonable redress of their grievances as soon as possible. Among the principal stipulations were these: The nationalists were to be exempted from direct taxation and to have free trade; the cartoon money—a depreciated currency—was to be withdrawn from circulation, and they were to be granted permission to hold in perpetual slavery all Bushmen captured by commandos or individuals.

The nationals had no sooner dispatched the letter containing their overture than it occurred to some of them that their claims would surely be ignored if the British obtained control of the colony. Therefore, without waiting for a response from the government, they resolved to aid in the defense of the country, and at the [[50]]same time continue to assert their right to self-government. In accordance therewith a company of one hundred and sixty-eight mounted men was organized under Commandant Delpont and at once set out for Cape Town.

The rally from the country districts of Swellendam, Stellenbosch and Drakenstein brought together a force of eleven hundred and forty horsemen. Two hundred of these were added to the post at Muizenburg. The rest were stationed at Cape Town and along the road to the camp as pickets.

Hostile operations came on very slowly. Admiral Elphinstone seized three more Dutch merchant ships that were lying in Simon’s Bay on the 9th of July. On the 14th he landed four hundred and fifty soldiers, who occupied Simonstown, and strengthened the post a week later by adding four hundred marines.

Strangely enough, neither the English commanders nor Commissioner Sluysken chose to regard these movements as acts of war. The Commissioner had been careful to order that no attack should be made on the English, and that nothing whatever should be done that would provoke retaliation or furnish grounds for them to throw the blame of opening hostilities on the [[51]]Dutch. It was not until the 3d of August that any act was committed which was by either party construed into an act of war. On that day a Burgher officer fired at an English picket and wounded one of the men. For this he was reprimanded by the Commissioner. General Craig reported it in his dispatches as the beginning of hostilities.

The time soon came when the British officers thought an advance might be made. The Dutch had been remiss in not strengthening their earthwork defenses toward the sea. They had permitted English boats to take soundings off Muizenburg unmolested. And the English commanders had been encouraged to hope that the nationals in the colonial force did not intend to seriously oppose the British advance—that in all probability they would come over in a body to the British side as soon as the first engagement opened. On the other hand, the invading army was utterly without field guns and could not muster more than sixteen hundred men. Re-enforcements were on the way, but no one could foretell the time of their arrival. To advance any part of their military force beyond the range of the guns on the ships would expose the whole expedition to destruction in the event [[52]]of a French squadron appearing in Table Bay to co-operate with the Dutch colonists. In view of all the circumstances the British commanders determined to capture Muizenburg, to reopen negotiations with the Cape government from that position and to attempt no further aggressive movement until the arrival of the expected re-enforcements.

On the morning of the 7th of August it became evident to the Dutch officers at Muizenburg that the British were about to attack. A column of sixteen hundred infantry and marines was advancing from Simonstown. Two small gunboats, and the ships’ launches, carrying lighter guns, moved close in shore about five hundred yards in advance of the column, to keep the road open. The war vessels America, Stately, Echo and Rattlesnake were heading for Muizen Beach.

The Dutch camp was at the foot of the mountain facing False Bay on the west, the camp looking south and east, for it was at the northwest angle of the bay. They had planted eleven pieces of artillery so as to command the road from Simonstown, which ran along the west coast of False Bay. From Kalk Bay to Muizenburg the roadway was narrow, having the water [[53]]on one side and the steep mountain, only a few paces away, on the other. The mountain terminates abruptly at Muizenburg, where begin the Cape Flats, a sandy plain stretching across from False Bay to Table Bay. Near the north end of the mountain is a considerable sheet of shallow water called the Sandvlei, fed in the rainy season by an intermittent brook called Keyser’s River, emptying into the north side of the vlei.

As soon as they came within range of the post at Kalk Bay the British ships opened fire and the picket stationed there retired over the mountain. On coming abreast of Muizenburg the fleet came to anchor and delivered their broadsides at easy range upon the Dutch camp. The thunders of the first fire had hardly ceased when the national battalion of infantry, and a little later the main body thereof, led by Colonel De Lille, fled from the post through the Sandvlei. One company under Captain Warneke retired more slowly and in a little better order. Many of the artillerymen followed, leaving only a single company under Lieutenant Marnitz to work the two twenty-four pounders. These, being planted on loose soil, were thrown out of position by the recoil of every discharge and could not be fired again until they had been handled back [[54]]into place. The firing was, therefore, slow and with uncertain aim. Two men were killed, four wounded and one gun disabled on the America, and one man was wounded on the Stately, by Lieutenant Marnitz’s fire. Whether it was through bad marksmanship or by design one can hardly decide, but the English guns were aimed so high that the shot passed over the camp and lodged in the mountain behind it. Marnitz soon perceived that the post could not be held, and, first spiking the cannon, retired before the charge of the British column. Nothing was saved from the camp but five small field pieces.

The English followed the retreating burghers with a cheer. As soon as they were out of range of the British ships the Dutch endeavored to make a stand, but were quickly driven from it by a bayonet charge. After gaining the shelter of the mountain the Dutch again faced their pursuers, this time with the support of guns brought to bear on the English from the opposite side of the Sandvlei, and with such effect that they fell back to Muizenburg. In this second collision one English officer, one burgher and two Dutch artillerymen were killed and one pandour was wounded.

Instead of rallying his men and making a [[55]]stand behind the Sandvlei, as he might have done with a well-protected front, De Lille continued his flight to Diep River, where he arrived with a fragment of his command, not knowing what had become of his artillerymen and burghers.

As soon as news came that the English were advancing, a detachment of five hundred burgher horsemen was hastened forward from Cape Town to Muizenburg. On the way they learned from the fugitives that Muizenburg, the camp and everything in it had been taken by the British. Then they halted and encamped on the plain in small parties.

Next morning, the 8th of August, De Lille made some show of rallying and returned to the head of the Sandvlei leading a part of the infantry that had been discomfited the day before. The 8th became a day of general panic. The English advanced in column to attack De Lille at the head of the vlei—wading through water that, in places, came above their waists. Notwithstanding the advantage this gave him, De Lille and all his command fled precipitately on their approach. As the British issued from the water and pursued them across the plain they observed a party of burghers coming from behind some sandhills on their flank—the detachment [[56]]that had come from Cape Town and camped on the plain during the night. Assuming that the flight of De Lille and the movement of this body were in the carrying out of an ambuscade, the British fled, in their turn, and were pursued by the Dutch until they came under the fire of their own cannon, spiked and abandoned by Lieutenant Marnitz, but drilled and placed in service by General Craig. While the English were being driven in by the Cape Town detachment, De Lille and his command fled all day in the opposite direction, and in the evening camped within a mile of the camping ground of the night before, near Diep River.

De Lille’s conduct in the field caused widespread indignation. In a formal document drawn up by a number of burgher officers and forwarded to the Commissioner, he was charged with treason. The fiscal who investigated the case acquitted De Lille of treason, there being no proof that he had conspired with the British to betray his trust. And yet he was neither a coward nor an imbecile. His conduct can be explained in no other way than to say that he was a devoted partisan of the House of Orange, that he regarded the nationals as traitors to their legitimate ruler and that he believed the English [[57]]were the loyal friends of the rightful sovereign and the ancient government of the Netherlands. For these reasons he would not fight against the British. He held that success in repelling them would result in handing the country over to the colonial national party and to republicanism, which would be an offense against the divine rights of the Prince of Orange. Later he took service with the British and was made barrack master in Cape Town. Thereafter he wore the Orange colors, and openly vented his abhorrence of all Jacobins—whether French, Dutch or South African.

On the 9th of August the expected British re-enforcements began to arrive. On the 12th Admiral Elphinstone and General Craig wrote the Commissioner and his council announcing that already they had received an accession of strength, and that they expected the immediate arrival of three thousand more soldiers. They also repeated the offer to take the Cape colony under British protection on the same terms as were proffered at first, and added, as a threat, that their men were becoming exasperated at the resistance offered and it might become impossible to restrain their fury.

The letter of the British commanders was laid [[58]]before the Commissioner’s council, the councillors representing the country burghers and the burgher militia; and these were all requested to express their judgment and their wishes freely. With a single exception they were unanimous in adopting a resolution declaring that the colony ought to be and would be defended to the last. In accordance therewith the Commissioner transmitted to the British officers the decision of the people, notifying them that the colony would still be defended.

Notwithstanding the brave front thus presented to the invaders, influences were at work which tended toward the rapid disintegration of the burgher forces. It was being rumored among them that the Bushmen were threatening the interior, and that the Hottentots in Swellendam, and the slaves in Stellenbosch and Drakenstein, were about to rise in revolt. True or false, these alarming rumors caused many burghers to forsake the ranks and go to the protection of their homes and their families. In July the burgher cavalry numbered eleven hundred and forty; by the first of September it was reduced to nine hundred. Efforts to keep up the original strength by the enlistment of foreign pandours, native half-breeds and Hottentots were [[59]]unsuccessful. Only the burgher infantry, numbering three hundred and fifty, remained intact—being composed of residents of the town.

The colonists were further dispirited by an abortive attempt to capture certain English outposts on the Steenberg. The attack was gallantly made by the burgher militia and pandours, but being unsupported by regular troops and field artillery they were repulsed. On the same day the pandours mutinied. One hundred and seventy of them marched in a body to the castle and made complaint that their families had been ill-treated by the colonists, that their pay was inadequate, that they were insulted by abusive remarks, that a bounty of £40 promised them for good conduct had not been paid, and that their rations of spirits were too small. Commissioner Sluysken so far pacified them with promises of redress that they returned to the ranks, but from that time they were disaffected and sullen, and their service was of little value.

The Dutch officers had planned a night attack in force on the British camp at Muizenburg. When they were about to attempt it, there arrived, on the 4th of September, a fleet of East Indiamen bringing the main body of the British re-enforcements. These consisted of infantry of [[60]]the line, engineers and artillerymen, numbering, in all, three thousand troops under the command of General Alured Clarke. This had the effect of so completely discouraging the burgher cavalry that many of them gave up hope and returned to their homes. By the 14th of September only five hundred and twenty-one of this branch of the colonial force remained in the ranks.

Once more, on the 9th of September, the British commanders issued an address to the colonists calling upon them to give peaceable admission to the overwhelming force now at their gates, and warning them that, otherwise, they would take forcible possession. Commissioner Sluysken replied, as before, that he would hold and defend the colony for its rightful owners, for so he was bound to do by his oath of office.

The English army in two columns, between four and five thousand strong, marched from Muizenburg to attack Cape Town, at 9 o’clock in the morning of the 14th of September. This movement was signaled to the colonial officers at the Cape, who ordered all the burgher cavalry, with the exception of one company, to the support of the regular troops at Cape Town. A part of the burgher force was sent out to strengthen the Dutch camp at Wynberg, about [[61]]half way from Muizenburg to Cape Town on the route of the British. Some attempt was made to harass the columns on the march, but with so little effect that only one was killed and seventeen were wounded.

Major Van Baalen, then in command of the regular troops at Wynberg, arranged a line of battle that was faulty in the extreme, and planted his cannon in such position that they were practically useless as weapons of offense against the advancing army. Certain officers of the artillery and of the burgher militia contingent remonstrated against his plan of battle, but it was in vain, and when the English came within gunfire he retreated with the greater part of the regulars. Then followed a scene of confusion. The burghers protested, and cried out that they were being betrayed in every battle. One company of infantry and most of the artillery made a brief stand and then retreated toward Cape Town, leaving the camp and all its belongings to the British.

It had now become clear to the burgher cavalry that Commissioner Sluysken, Colonel Gordon, and most of the officers of the regular force intentionally fought to lose—that so far as the republican government then prevailing in Holland [[62]]was concerned they were traitors at heart, and that they were willing—after a mere show of resistance—to let the colony fall into the hands of the British in order to have it held in trust by them for the fugitive prince of Orange. The burghers, therefor, not being willing to risk capture or death in battles that were not meant to win by those who directed them, dispersed and returned to their homes. Meantime a British squadron was threatening Cape Town, but keeping out of range of the castle guns.

The commissioner’s council was convened at six o’clock in the evening of the 14th of September to consider a very serious situation. A British force of over four thousand men, thoroughly disciplined and equipped, was then in bivouac at Newlands, less than ten miles from Cape Town. The colonial force was only about seventeen hundred strong and nearly half of these had that day retreated before the enemy without giving battle; the remainder were distributed among the fortified posts at Hout Bay, Camp’s Bay and Table Valley. If these were all loyal and united in a determination to fight to the last they would certainly be overpowered in the end. But they were not at one in their loyalty. Some were for the deposed and banished prince of Orange, and [[63]]therefore favorable to the English who professed to be his friends. Others were strong in their preference for the new republican government in the Netherlands. While thus divided in political sentiments they were without leaders in whom they could place confidence. Further effort at defense seemed unjustifiable in view of certain defeat, and of the useless destruction of property and life it would cause.

One member of the council, Mr. Van Reede von Oudtshoorn, stood out against capitulation, offering to take, with the corps of pennists he commanded, the brunt of a final battle with the English. The other members were unanimous in deciding to send a flag of truce to the British at Newlands, asking for a suspension of hostilities during the next forty-eight hours in order to arrange terms of surrender. General Clarke consented to an armistice of twenty-four hours only, beginning at midnight on the 14th of September.

As a result of conference between the representatives of the Cape government and the British commanders the following terms of capitulation were agreed to: The Dutch troops were to surrender as prisoners of war, but their officers might remain free in Cape Town or return [[64]]to Europe on their parole of honor not to serve against Great Britain during the continuance of hostilities. No new taxes were to be levied, and the old imposts were to be reduced as much as possible in order to revive the decaying trade of the colony. All the belongings of the Dutch East India Company were to be handed over to the English, but private rights of property were to be respected. The lands and other properties of the Dutch East India Company were to be held in trust by the new authorities for the redemption of that portion of the company’s paper currency which was not secured by mortgage.

Early in the morning of the 16th of July these terms of surrender were officially completed by the signing of the document in which they were written by General Clarke and Admiral Elphinstone. At eleven o’clock on that day the council ordered the publication of the articles, and that official notice of what had been done be sent to the heads of departments and other officers in the country districts. Then the council formally closed its last session and its existence.

The ceremonial in connection with the capitulation took place at three o’clock in the afternoon of Wednesday, the 16th of September, 1795. [[65]]Twelve hundred British infantry and two hundred artillerymen under command of General Craig drew up on the open grounds in front of the castle. The Dutch troops marched out of their late stronghold with colors flying and drums beating, passed by the British line, laid down their arms and surrendered as prisoners of war. Some of them did so in great bitterness of soul, muttering and calling down curses upon Commissioner Sluysken and Colonel Gordon for having betrayed and disgraced them. Lieutenant Marnitz, in writing of these events, emphasized the fact that the only occasion on which the head of the colonial military establishment, Colonel Gordon, drew his sword in the conflict with the English was when he gave the order for the troops he had commanded to lay down their arms.

Thus it was, after an almost bloodless war, that Cape Colony, founded by the Dutch and governed continuously by the Netherlands for one hundred and forty-three years, passed into the possession of Great Britain and became a crown colony thereof. The charges made by some that Commissioner Sluysken and Colonel Gordon were either imbeciles or traitors may not be quite in accordance with the facts. Certainly [[66]]there is a wide disparity between the always strong and defiant words in which they announced, to the last moment, their determination to defend the colony, and the puerile efforts they made to do so. The only rational explanation of their conduct is that they preferred yielding to the British, after making a show of resistance, to accepting in the colony the new regime of republicanism that prevailed in the mother country. In all probability their secret thought was that by prolonging a nominal resistance they might gain time enough for something to occur in Europe—where events were moving with bewildering rapidity—something that would reinstate the Prince of Orange as Stadtholder of the Netherlands, and so leave the British no pretext for seizing the colony in his interest.

This chapter may fittingly close with a few brief records of events that lead up to the first trek northwards of the Africanders.

The Cape colony was restored to the Dutch on the conclusion of the peace of Amiens, in 1802. When war broke out afresh in Europe, in 1806, the English again seized the Cape to prevent Napoleon from occupying so important a naval station and half-way house to the British possessions in India. The second seizure was [[67]]accomplished after a single engagement with the Dutch. In 1814 the colony was formally ceded to the British crown together with certain Dutch possessions in South America, by the reinstated Stadtholder of the Netherlands, who received in return therefor a money consideration of thirty million dollars. [[68]]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER IV.

THE AFRICANDERS’ FIRST TREK TO THE NORTH.

1806–1838.

When the British took forcible possession of the Cape colony a second time, in 1806, they found a total population of 74,000. Of these 17,000 were native Hottentots, 30,000 were slaves of African, Asiatic and mixed blood, and 27,000 were of European descent—mostly Dutch, with a sprinkling of German and French. Nearly all spoke the dialect of Holland Dutch, into which the speech of a people so mixed and so isolated had degenerated.

In the beginning of the second English regime there was a fair promise of peace and of the gradual fusion of the Africander and the English elements in a homogeneous people. The Dutch, from whom the Africanders were principally descended, and the English were cognate nations. Though separated as to national life and history [[69]]by fourteen centuries, they possessed the same fundamental principles that give tone to character—the two languages were so far alike that the one people found it easy to learn the speech of the other; they both loved liberty, and they both held the Protestant faith. On the surface of things there was every reason to expect that the common features in blood, language, political ideals and religion would lead to kindly intercourse, intermarriages, and a thorough blending of the two races in one.

The first few years of experience seemed to strengthen this promise of good into certainty. Two successive British governors were men of righteousness and wisdom. The restrictions upon trade imposed by the Dutch East India Company were removed. Schools were founded. Measures were taken to improve the breed of horses and cattle. The trade in slaves was forbidden, and missionaries were sent among the natives. The administration of this period was careful to leave untouched as far as possible the local institutions, the official use of the Dutch language, and the Dutch-Roman law, which had become the common law of all civilized South Africa, both Dutch and English.

Under these favoring influences the two peoples [[70]]became friendly and began to intermarry. In 1820 the British government promoted emigration from England and Scotland to South Africa, to the extent of about five thousand. From that time there was a steady increase of the population from Great Britain, and to a much smaller extent from Germany, France and other European nations. The newcomers from continental Europe soon lost their nationality and learned to speak either English or the local Dutch dialect.

The promise of peace, and of the complete fusion of all the elements in one people loyal to the British crown, was not fulfilled. The causes of the failure—then insidious, but now easy to detect and analyze—must be considered at this point, for only in their light can we understand the Africander people and form a just judgment of their subsequent course.

Doubtless the colonists were influenced, to a greater degree than they realized, by the natural dislike of any civilized people to be transferred to the rule of a foreign nation. They were not the kind of people to make much of the fact that the Dutch and the English sprang from a common origin more than fourteen hundred years before—if they had any knowledge of it. To them [[71]]the British were a different race, and the British government was a kind of unloved step-father who had first conquered dominion over them by the strong hand and then bought them with money, as perpetual chattels, from their degenerate mother country.

Another cause of the failure to amalgamate was in the now fixed character of the South African Dutch. Few of them dwelt or cared to dwell in village communities. Some were farmers, it is true, living in touch with the towns; but most of them were stockmen roaming in a pastoral life over large tracts of the country—almost without local habitation. At long intervals they saw something of their always distant next neighbor ranchmen, but they saw nothing of the life in the few colonial towns. The intercourse between these pastoral Africanders and the British was so infrequent, and so limited as to scope, that the two races knew but little of one another. As a result, the process of social amalgamation, going on at Cape Town and in some other places where the population lived in communities, made little progress in the country districts where the great majority of the Africanders dwelt.

LIGHTHOUSE, DURBAN.

A single incident, of no great proportions in itself, must be given a separate mention among [[72]]the causes of estrangement between the two civilized races in South Africa. It was not so much the cause of a new line of cleavage as it was the wedge driven to the head into one of the existing lines. In 1815 a Boer was accused of seriously injuring a native servant. When the authorities sent out a small force to arrest the accused his neighbors rallied to his defense, and a brief resistance was offered to the serving of the warrant. The uprising—a mere neighborhood affair—was easily suppressed. Several prisoners were taken, six of whom were condemned to death. Five of the condemned were hanged, and their women—who had fought beside them—were compelled to stand by and witness the execution. Some promise of reprieve had been made by the governor, Lord Charles Somerset. The crowd of Africanders stood about the gallows on the fatal day, hoping to the last moment that their friends would be spared, but no reprieve came. The tragedy was completed, and the story of it went into the Africander folklore, becoming, and remaining to this day, a part of the nursery education of every Africander child. They named the ridge on which the execution took place, “Schlachter’s Nek,” which, being interpreted, is “Butcher’s Ridge.” Canon [[73]]Knox Little, in his late work on South Africa, is authority for the statements that Lord Somerset actually reprieved the condemned men, that the reprieve reached the Field-Cornet appointed to carry out the execution in good time to save the victims, and that the Field-Cornet executed the death warrant having the governor’s reprieve in his pocket, being actuated to the murderous deed by private spite. The Canon adds that the Field-Cornet was so sure that he, himself, would be punished for his iniquity that he committed suicide. It is to be devoutly hoped that the learned Canon is well informed both as to the governor’s purpose of mercy and the Cornet’s motive for suicide. Whatever the interior facts may have been, they were unknown to the Africanders. The cruel act—justified by the doers as a piece of necessary firmness—caused bitter and widespread resentment at the time, and continues to foster anti-British feeling among all the Dutch of South Africa.

Another cause that made for disruption was an unwarrantable and most unwise interference of the British authorities with two cherished and guaranteed rights of the colonists—the old system of local government, and the use of the Dutch language in official documents and legal proceedings. [[74]]In the forms of government changes were made which greatly reduced the share formerly enjoyed by the people in the control of their local affairs. The substituting of English for Dutch in official and legal documents was a still more serious grievance to a people of whom not more than one-sixth understood English.

Still another cause of disaffection grew out of wars with the Kaffirs on the eastern border. Between 1779 and 1834 four struggles to the death occurred between the whites and the tribes living beyond Fish river. By dint of hard fighting the Kaffirs were finally subdued and driven forth into the Keiskama river region. But for some reason the home government assumed that the colonists had ill-treated the natives and provoked them to war. The dear bought victories of the whites were rendered sterile by strict orders from the British Colonial Office that the Kaffirs be allowed to return to their old haunts, where they once more became a source of constant apprehension to the border farmers. This action on the part of the home authorities was taken as an evidence of either weakness or hostility to the Africander population, and led them to think of the British Colonial Office as their enemy.

The final, probably the principal, cause, the one that fanned the slumbering resentment of [[75]]many things into active flame, arose out of the slave question. To the great detriment of their manhood and womanhood the early Dutch colonists resorted to slave labor. From 1658 onward slavery had been practiced throughout the colony, as, indeed, it had prevailed in most of the world. Trouble began to grow out of it as early as 1737. In that year the first European mission to the Hottentots was undertaken by the Moravian church. Their work was much obstructed by the colonists, who even compelled one pastor to return to Europe because he had administered Christian baptism to some native converts. In later years most of the missionaries came from England, where the anti-slavery sentiment was fast becoming dominant, and from 1810 the English missionaries were cordially disliked by the colonists because they openly espoused the cause of the slaves and reported every case of cruelty to them that came to their knowledge. Possibly they sometimes exaggerated, as it has been asserted of them, but this may be excused in the only friends the oppressed blacks had. Besides this conflict between the slave-owners and the missionaries, there was a steady increase of disaffection from a cognate cause—the temper and action of the government towards the servile classes. In 1828, to the great [[76]]disgust of the colonists, a civil ordinance placed all Hottentots and other free colored people of South Africa on the same footing with the whites as to private civil rights. This was followed by enactments restricting the authority of masters over their slaves, the purpose being to mitigate the sufferings of the enslaved. Then came the abolition of slavery in all British dominions, in 1834. To provide compensation to slave-owners parliament set apart the sum of £20,000,000, to be distributed to the several colonies where slavery had existed. The share of this amount appropriated to the Cape Colony slave-holders was a little over £3,000,000—a sum considerably below the equitable claim for the 39,000 slaves to be set free. Additional irritation was felt when it was found that the certificates for compensation were made payable in London only, so that most of the Cape slave-holders were forced to sell them to speculators at a heavy discount. Many farmers were impoverished by the change, and labor became so scarce and dear that it was impossible to carry on agriculture to profit.

Serious enough was the summing up of the causes that made for the disruption of the Dutch and the English classes in Cape Colony. Hitherto the Africanders had been able to indulge [[77]]their love of independence by living apart from the centers of organized government. But now they had come under the conquering hand of an alien and masterful people; they had been sold for money by their mother country; they had been treated with undue sharpness and cruelty—as witness the atrocity of Schlachter’s Nek; they had been spied upon and denounced by the missionaries; they had been forced to transact all their official and legal business in a foreign language which few of them understood; the savage native blacks had been put on a level with them; their victory over the Kaffirs at the cost of much blood had been rendered fruitless by the interference of the home government; and now their slave property, which they had acquired under law, had been taken away without adequate compensation, and the further practice of slavery had been interdicted.

Rebellion against the power of Great Britain was hopeless and not to be thought of. But they could go out into the wilderness and begin life anew where they could follow the independent pastoral pursuits they preferred, enjoy the isolation and solitude they loved, preserve all their ancient customs, and deal with whatever native people they might find there in their own way, untrammeled by the English who had undertaken [[78]]to govern them on principles which they could neither understand nor approve.

Then began the “Great Trek” of 1836—the Africander secession and exodus, leaving their former country to the possession of the English, and seeking towards the north for a country wherein they would be free according to their own ideals of liberty.

To the north and east of the utmost limit of European settlement in 1836 was a region now divided into the Orange Free State, The Transvaal or South African Republic, and the British colony of Natal. A few hunters had penetrated a little way into it, and some enterprising border farmers had occasionally driven their flocks and herds into the southern fringe of it in search of better pasture. It had been described by the few who had explored it as having districts that were well watered and fertile—a country of arable and pasture lands. Within it, and bordering close to it on the northwest, were the fierce Zulus; and it abounded with big game and enormous beasts of prey. But the Africanders knew what it was to battle for place and for life with wild beasts and savage men. They had less dread of these than of the experiences they foresaw for themselves under the new government set up in Cape Colony. They made choice of the [[79]]wilderness with all its hardships and perils, and set forth.

One may not be able to laud all their motives for taking this course, as we judge such matters now, after more than half a century during which there has been a constant brightening of the light of moral truth. It must be admitted that their action was taken, in part, because of attachment to slavery. But condemnation of that part of their complex motives should be modified by the thought that the best peoples of the world were just then coming to see with John Wesley that human slavery is “the sum of all villainies.” And it should be remembered that nearly thirty years later than the Africander secession and exodus partly in the interest of slavery, fully one-third of the free population of the United States seceded from the Union wholly in the interest of the same “peculiar institution,” claiming to hold their lands as well as their slave property, and that it cost the nation a million lives and a thousand million dollars to transmute into American practice the lofty sentiment embodied in the American Declaration of Independence that, being created equal, all men have sacred rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

After discounting fairly the nobility of their [[80]]motives in making the “Great Trek,” it will be allowed by every unprejudiced mind that with the less laudable were mingled the love of manly independence and a reasonable resentment at injustices done them in several matters, and that they were supported in the hazardous undertaking by a courage equal to that of the Pilgrim Fathers in venturing into the New England wilderness.

Not inaptly they compared themselves to Israel forsaking Egypt and beginning the long wilderness journey to a land of promise, thinking it not unlikely that the British governor, like Pharaoh, would pursue after them and try to turn them back. But their Pharaoh, after consulting his legal adviser, decided to let them go. It was serious, indeed, to lose so many stalwart and useful citizens, but there was no legal way of stopping them; and it would not do to use the strong hand, for Great Britain had just abolished slavery.

Slowly and in small parties the exodus began, for there must not be cattle enough in one train to exhaust the pasture along the route they were to follow. Places of rendezvous were appointed beforehand, where, at necessary intervals of time, all might come together for mutual encouragement and counsel. The men carried [[81]]arms for defense and for the killing of game for food. Long experience in shooting, not for sport but for life itself, had made them almost infallible marksmen—an accomplishment that proved their only salvation in the fierce and long continued struggle that was before them.

Between 1836 and 1838 nearly 10,000 Africanders set forth, traveling in large covered wagons drawn by strings of oxen numbering in some cases ten and even twelve yoke. It is interesting to know that among the few survivors of that historic pilgrimage is Paul Kruger, who, as a boy of ten years, helped to drive his father’s cattle across velt and mountain range.

The story of the wanderings of these emigrant Africanders, and of their conflicts with the warlike aborigines, is romantic to the highest degree, recalling in some of its features the adventures of the eleventh century crusaders and of the Spaniards in Mexico in the sixteenth century.

The first division that trekked, consisting of ninety-eight persons traveling in thirty wagons, suffered defeat and almost ruinous disaster. They had penetrated into the far northeast beyond the Vaal river—the territory of the present South African Republic—where many of their number fell in battle with the natives. The remainder [[82]]was rapidly thinned out by deaths from fever and from privation caused by the wholesale destruction of their cattle by the tsetse-fly. After incredible sufferings a mere handful escaped eastward to Delagoa Bay.

Another and larger division was formed by the union of several smaller parties at a rocky peak called Thaba ’Ntshu, situated near the eastern border of what is now the Orange Free State, and visible from Bloemfontein. This division soon became involved in hostilities with a branch of the fierce Zulu race, known in later history as the Matabele. The chief of this tribe, Moselekatse, was a general of much talent and energy as well as a brave warrior. The Matabele, regarding the Africanders as trespassers upon their territory, immediately provoked war by attacking and massacring a small detached body of emigrants. Doubtless the whites were intruders; but they knew that the Matabele had lately slaughtered or driven out of that region the weaker Kaffir tribes, and therefore had no conscientious scruples about meting to them the same treatment they had measured to others. Indeed, the Africanders seem to have regarded their relation to all the natives as being similar to that of the Israelites under Joshua to the tribes of Canaan—they were there to possess the [[83]]land, and to reduce the heathen inhabitants to submission and servitude by whatever means it might be necessary to use. They now had an unprovoked and murderous attack to avenge, which they proceeded to do with great promptitude and courage. Hurling their whole strength against Moselekatse with the utmost fury, they routed his greatly superior force with terrific slaughter, so that he fled before them, far and fast, toward the northwest, not halting in his flight until he had crossed the Limpopo River. There he, in turn, made havoc of the natives dwelling between that stream and the Zambesi River, and established in that region the Matabele kingdom in such strength that it continued a scourge to all neighboring peoples until its overthrow in 1893. By the defeat and expulsion of the Matabele the Africanders obtained possession of the immense territories lying between the Orange River on the south and the Limpopo on the north. The small communities with which they were able to people the country at first grew in numbers until they became in course of time, the population of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic.

Meantime, the largest and best organized of the three pioneering expeditions, under the capable leadership of Pieter Retief—a man much [[84]]respected by all Africanders to this day—trekked eastward and then southward into the warmer and more fruitful country lying between the Quathlamba range of mountains and the Indian Ocean. Here they found a region practically emptied of native inhabitants, save a not very numerous tribe of Zulus. Native wars had nearly depopulated the country in 1820. They also found a small English settlement at Fort Natal, where the flourishing town of Durban is now situated. These few Englishmen had obtained a cession of the narrow maritime strip they occupied from King Tshaka, and were maintaining a little republic as a temporary form of government until they could obtain the status of a British colony. They had applied for that standing in 1835, with the request that a legislature be granted them. The British government was still considering their request, and was in doubt as to whether it should occupy the fort and establish a colony there, when the Africanders arrived. The settlement was so insignificant, and the prospective action of the British authorities so uncertain that the emigrants paid little attention to it.

Desiring to live on terms of peace with the Zulus the Africanders applied to their king, Dingaan, for a cession of territory, rashly visiting [[85]]his kraal for that purpose. The king made the grant readily enough, but the next day when they were about to depart after drinking a farewell cup of native beer, he treacherously ordered his warriors to slay his guests, alleging that they were wizards. Pieter Retief, with all who had accompanied him on the embassy perished that day, and the deed was followed up with an attack on a small body of emigrants camped near by. The surprise was complete, and every soul was massacred without mercy.

These atrocities roused the whole body of emigrants to execute vengeance, and they did it so effectually that anniversaries of that day, December 16th, 1838, are still observed by the people of the Transvaal. A mere handful of the Africanders decimated and put to rout King Dingaan’s great host. They owed their victory to expert markmanship and horsemanship as well as to their lion-like bravery and prowess. Riding swiftly into easy range they fired a volley with deadly precision and then wheeled and as swiftly rode out of reach of the Zulu assagais without suffering harm. Several repetitions of this maneuver so reduced the fighting force and the courage of the Zulus that they turned and fled precipitately. Two years later, 1840, the king’s brother, Panda, then in rebellion against Dingaan, [[86]]made common cause with the Africanders, and together they drove the warlike king out of Zululand. Panda was then made king in his brother’s stead, accepting the relation of vassal to the government of the Natalia Republic established by the Africanders. They began about this time to survey and apportion the land, and founded a city about sixty-five miles inland from Port Natal, known ever since as Pietermaritzburg.

This action, with some others of a like nature, brought about the second contact of Boer and Briton, the subject to be treated in the next chapter. [[87]]

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CHAPTER V.

SECOND CONTACT OF AFRICANDER AND BRITON—IN NATAL.

The British authorities at Cape Colony suffered the Africanders to go forth in peace on their Great Trek in search of isolation and independence. But the light of succeeding events shows that, without formally announcing it at first, the government held that the Africanders, go where they might, were to be considered British subjects, and that any territory they might occupy would become British territory by virtue of such occupancy.

About the time when the Republic of Natalia was being organized by the Africanders a small detachment of British troops which had been landed at Port Natal was withdrawn. This was construed by the emigrants as an abandonment by the British government of all claim to the country.

It soon became evident, however, that the proceedings of the new settlers in Natal were [[88]]narrowly watched by the authorities at the Cape, and that some of the measures taken were looked upon with serious displeasure. The expulsion of the Kaffirs, and an attempt to force them into a territory already occupied by another tribe, were condemned as being likely to provoke further disorder and conflict. And then, the Cape government, since the Great Trek, had asserted over and over again its right to control the Africanders in any region they might occupy, as subjects of the British crown. Their action in establishing a new and independent white state on the coast was viewed with alarm; for it would certainly affect trade with the interior tribes, and it might create a local rival to Britain’s maritime supremacy within what had been considered her own borders. Besides, the colonial government held that it was the natural guardian and protector of the natives, and the attack of the Africanders on the Kaffirs living in near neighborhood to the eastern borders of the Cape settlements was regarded as an insolent aggression which ought to be resented and checked.

PRESIDENT STEYN, ORANGE FREE STATE.

The Africanders, on the other hand, denied that the Cape government had any authority over them. The British government, they averred, was territorial and had no authority outside [[89]]the region hitherto formally claimed by the British crown. And they had trekked out of the territory to which Great Britain had laid claim purposely to be a separate, free and independent people. England’s thirty million dollars had purchased such territorial rights and public improvements in South Africa as were formerly possessed by the Netherlands, but her money had not bought people.

At this time the British government was unwilling to add to its already too extensive colonial possessions and the heavy responsibilities connected with them. Nevertheless, after careful consideration of all that would be involved in not checking the Africander aspirations and movements towards independence, it was determined to establish British dominion over Port Natal and the territory west of it as far as the crest of the Quathlamba chain of mountains and the extension of them to the north. Pursuant to this policy a small military force under Captain Smith was sent to take possession of Port Natal in 1842.

Smith’s command was selected from the post garrison at Umgazi River, and consisted of only two hundred men and two field pieces. The route was over nearly three hundred miles of sea coast in a wilderness state, across numerous rivers, [[90]]and through the habitat of elephants and lions whose fresh spoor the men saw frequently. After an arduous march of thirty-five days, from the 31st of March to the 4th of May, they reached Port Natal and camped on a hill about six miles from the town.

The resident English, while rejoiced to see the soldiers, were both amused and alarmed when they saw how small a force had been sent to deal with a people who could muster 1,500 well-armed men. Nothing daunted, however, Captain Smith took a few of the artillery and marched into the town on the 5th day of May, hauled down the flag of the Natalia Republic, hoisted in its place the British Union Jack, and spiked the one Africander gun found beside the flagstaff.

For the next few days there was much diplomatic correspondence between the Africander leader, A. W. Pretorius, and the English commander—without coming to any terms of agreement. In the meantime the English moved their encampment to a piece of level ground in front of the town, and the Africanders began to gather a force at the old Dutch camping ground on the Congella, about three miles from the British force. Captain Smith had written instructions to give the “emigrant farmers” fifteen days [[91]]to come to a decision, which time the farmers used in strengthening their ranks and intrenching their camp.

It will throw light on the policy pursued at this time by the Africanders to take into view the action of a certain Dutch ship-master who put into Port Natal one day before the arrival of the British. This man, Captain Reus, speaking as one having authority, gave the Africanders to understand that the Dutch government would espouse their cause and interest other European powers therein. He also advised them to pursue an evasive policy, to avoid collision, and to keep the English in play till their friends in Europe could act. In accordance with this advice the Africanders drew up a declaration of allegiance to the Dutch government, coupled with a protest against the occupation of the country by the English. With the exception of the occasional lifting of cattle, they refrained from acts of hostility.

Matters continued in this state until the 23d of May—three days in excess of the fifteen allowed the Africanders for consideration—when a night attack was made on their camp by the British. Captain Smith found his enemy on the alert, and after a sharp engagement in which the British lost 103 men in killed, wounded and missing, [[92]]and both the field guns, he retired to the fortified camp near Port Natal.

The Africanders immediately laid siege to the British garrison and, doubtless, would have compelled it to surrender in the end had it not been for the bravery and endurance of a young Englishman named Richard King. It was six hundred miles, across the breadth of Kaffraria, from Port Natal to Grahamstown, the nearest point at which help for the beleaguered garrison could be found. Young King made the distance, crossing two hundred rivers on the way, in ten days—really in eight, for he was compelled by fever to rest two days out of the ten.

Immediately on receipt of the news at Grahamstown, a force under Lieutenant-Colonel Cloete was dispatched by sea, and reached the famished garrison after it had endured a close siege of thirty-one days. The approach of the re-enforcements was resisted in an action in which the British succeeded in landing, drove the Africanders from their positions, and effected a junction with the garrison in Port Natal. The loss of life in this engagement was not severe, but the siege was raised, and no fresh hostilities were undertaken at that time. The Africanders withdrew to a camp about twelve miles from Port Natal, where they awaited developments[[93]]—expecting to be attacked. But the British commander was not in a position for immediate aggression. His provisions and ammunition were to be landed, and there were safe magazines to be provided and strategic posts to be established.

On the 30th of June, 1842, A. W. Pretorius, commandant of the Africander force—now four hundred strong—sent a communication to Lieutenant-Colonel Cloete, asking if he wished to confer with them. The reply was to the effect that no negotiations would be entered into without a previous declaration by the Africanders of their submission to the British government.

On the 3rd of July Mr. Pretorius again wrote the British commander, complaining that the Kaffirs were committing serious outrages upon his people and plundering them of their cattle, which were being sold to the English. He also informed the commander that, anxious as they were to put an end to the war and so prevent all future bloodshed, the Africanders found it impossible to accede to the condition imposed as a necessary preliminary to negotiations for peace, viz.: that the Africanders should declare their submission to the British crown. Mr. Pretorius added, as a reason for this, that they had [[94]]already made over the country to the king of the Netherlands, and had invoked his protection.

Lieutenant-Colonel Cloete replied on the same date, deploring the melancholy prospect of continued war, which would doubtless be complicated with such barbarities as the native savages might be expected to perpetrate. But he maintained that the Africanders were themselves responsible for that prospect, because of their determined acts of hostility to the British government. He intimated that, if they were sincere in the professed desire to avert the coming bloodshed, there would be nothing degrading in giving in their submission to her Britannic Majesty’s government, and assured them that there was every disposition on the part of the British authorities to make the final adjustment of affairs both just and generous toward the emigrant farmers. He also expressed much regret that they had allowed themselves to be deceived with regard to the intentions of the King of Holland by a person possessed of no authority to act in the matter. He should be happy, he added in closing, to use his best efforts to prevent acts of violence by the Zulus and Kaffirs, but felt his inability to do much in that respect as long as the Africanders continued in arms against her Majesty’s authority, and thus gave these tribes reason to think [[95]]that whatever injury done to her rebellious subjects must be pleasing to her government.

The diplomatic correspondence was prolonged into 1843, when a meeting between Mr. Pretorius and other Africander leaders and Lieutenant-Colonel Cloete attended by three or four advisers took a place at Pietermaritzburg. The outcome of the conference was a treaty by which Natal was declared a British colony, but it was remarkably indefinite as to other particulars. The Africanders were to acknowledge themselves British subjects, but were not required to take the oath of allegiance to the queen. The guns they had captured, as well as all their own ordnance, were to be given up. All public and private property was to be restored to the rightful owners or custodians. All prisoners were to be released, and a general amnesty was to be proclaimed to all persons who had been engaged in hostilities against her Majesty’s troops and authority, with the exception of four persons, among whom was Mr. Pretorius. By a subsequent article in the treaty the lieutenant-colonel included Mr. Pretorius in the amnesty in consideration of his valuable services and co-operation in arranging the final adjustment of the terms of surrender.

The Volksraad of the little Africander republic [[96]]submitted to the terms of the treaty, and to the British administration, in much bitterness and wrath, protesting vehemently but without effect against a certain leveling up process, introduced soon after the transfer of authority, by which the savage blacks were given equal civil rights with the whites.

How the Africanders of Natal in general received the new regime, and how they acted under it, will be the subject of another chapter.

THE VAAL RIVER.

The annexation of the young republic by the English defeated the first attempt of the Africanders to secure access to the sea. It seemed to be a turning point in the history of South Africa, for by it Great Britain obtained command of the east coast, and established a new center of British influence in a part of the country which has come to be called the garden of Africa. Moreover, it opened the way for the acquisition of large contiguous territories in Zululand and in Tongaland.

It has been said that if the little Dutch republic had been left to itself the natives would have suffered under a more rigorous treatment than they have experienced at the hands of the British government, and that the internal dissensions which became quite serious during its brief history would have necessitated British interference [[97]]in the general interest of European South Africa. But one cannot feel perfect confidence in uninspired prophecy. And one cannot repress the feeling that the people who had trekked into an unclaimed and unoccupied country for the sake of being isolated from the British, who had subdued the savage Zulu tribes and set up a civilized government of their own, were seized of sacred rights to peaceful possession and independence. [[98]]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER VI.

SECOND CONTACT OF AFRICANDER AND BRITON—NORTH OF THE ORANGE RIVER.

The Africanders who had trekked into the spreading uplands lying between the Orange River and the Limpopo, west of Natal, were not exempt from the tribulations experienced by their brethren who had turned eastward to the coast. Like them they were forced to wage incessant war with the natives; but the enemies they had to encounter were less formidable than the Zulus. One tribe, however, and their historic chief, Moshesh, were foemen worthy of their steel. In the nineteenth century there were three men of the Kaffir race who were vastly superior to any of their own people, and measured up evenly with the ablest white opponents they met in diplomacy and war. These men were Tshaka the Zulu, Khama of the Bechuanos, and Moshesh the Basuto. It was the fortune of the Orange River emigrants to meet this Moshesh and the Basutos in many a hard-fought battle for the possession of the country. [[99]]Moshesh differed from other Kaffir leaders in that he was merciful to his wounded and captive enemies and ruled his own people with mildness and equity. As early as 1832 he opened the way for, and even invited, missionaries to teach the Basutos a better way of life, and they exerted a powerful formative influence on the Basuto nation. The missionaries were all European—some of them were British—which latter fact was made apparent in the result of their work. When the unavoidable conflict between the Basutos and the whites came, the Basutos, guided by their missionaries, were careful to avoid any fatal breach with the British government. Several times Moshesh engaged in war with the Orange River emigrants, but only once with the English.

In 1843 the Africanders of this region were widely scattered over a vast spread of country measuring seven hundred miles in length and three hundred in width. To the southeast it was bounded by the Quathlamba mountains, but on the north and west there were no natural features to delimitate it from the plain which extends to the Zambesi on the north and to the Atlantic Ocean on the west. Within this territory the Africander population, in 1843, was not much more than 15,000. This seems a small [[100]]number in view of the fact that the pioneer emigrants of 1836 to 1838 had been largely re-enforced from the Cape colony. But it must be remembered their life was precarious in the extreme; many had died—some from disease, some in conflict with wild beasts, and a still greater number in their frequent wars with the natives. The white population was further recruited between 1843 and 1847 by a second Africander trek from Natal—which will be described in another chapter.

So small a body of people, of whom not more than 4,000 were adult males, occupying so vast a territory, experienced serious difficulties in establishing an efficient government. The difficulties growing out of that cause were enhanced by the very qualities in the Africanders which had led to their emigration from the old colony, and which had made them successful in their wars of conquest in the interior. To an excessive degree they were possessed by a spirit of individual poise and independence. They desired isolation—even from one another. They chafed and grew restive under control of any kind, so much so that they were indisposed to obey even the authorities created by themselves. For warlike expeditions, which yielded them a pleasant excitement, enlarged their territory by [[101]]conquest, and enriched them with captured cattle and other spoil, they readily united under their military leaders and rendered them obedience, but any other form of control they found irksome. This predilection towards solitary independence was constantly strengthened by the circumstances in which they lived. The soil, being dry and parched in most places, did not invite agriculture to any considerable extent. Most of the people turned to stock-farming, and the nomadic life it necessitated in seeking change of pasture for the flocks and herds confirmed the disposition to live separate from other people.

Out of these causes grew the determination to make their civil government absolutely popular, and conditioned, entirely, on the will of the governed. But unity of some kind must be had, for their very existence depended on acting together against the natives, and against the repeated claims of the British government to exercise sovereignty over the region they occupied. The first steps towards instituting civil government were taken in the organizing of several small republican communities, the design being that each should manage its own affairs by a general meeting of all the citizens. It was found, however, as the population spread over the country, that such independent neighborhood governments [[102]]failed to secure the necessary unity of the whole people in any matter requiring the aggregate strength of the whole people. To remedy this element of weakness and danger, the Africanders instituted a kind of federal bond between the little republican communities, in an elective assembly called the Volksraad—a Council of the People composed of delegates from all the sectional governments. This federative tie was of the weakest—its authority resting upon an unwritten understanding and common consent rather than upon formal articles of confederation, and its meaning being always subject to such interpretation as might be suggested by the error or the passion of the passing moment.

The territory beyond the Vaal River, to the far northeast from Cape Colony, was left undisturbed by the British government. The Africanders living there were hundreds of miles from the nearest British outpost. Their wars with the natives projected no disturbing influence upon the tribes with whom the colonial government was in touch and for whose peace and prosperity it felt responsible. Moreover, the British authorities at the Cape were under instructions from the Colonial Office of the home government to rather contract than expand the scope of British influence in South Africa. For these [[103]]reasons the Cape government cared nothing for what took place in the outlying regions beyond the Vaal, unless, indeed, it was some event calculated to disturb the natives dwelling next the colonial borders.

Altogether different, in the esteem of the Cape authorities and of the Colonial office, were the affairs of the region extending southwestward from the Vaal River to the borders of Cape Colony. Within that territory there had been frequent dissensions between Africander communities. And there had been a rapid increase of dangerous elements in the native population. The Basutos had grown powerful. Intermixed with the whites were the Griquas, a half-breed hunting people, sprung from Africander fathers and Hottentot mothers, and partially civilized. The possibility of serious native wars growing out of quarrels between the white emigrants themselves and between them and the mixed colored population was a constant distress to both colonial governors and the home authorities.

At this time the Cape was regarded the least prosperous of all the British colonies, and there was a growing indisposition to annex any more territory in South Africa. The soil was mostly arid. The Africander population was alien. The [[104]]Kaffir wars threatened to be endless and very costly in men and in money. This reluctance to enlarge had been overcome in the case of Natal; but Natal was the garden of South Africa and the possession of it gave the British command of the east coast almost to Delagoa Bay. But to the north there seemed to be nothing sufficiently inviting to justify the taking up of new responsibility and expense.

The problem of how to safeguard the peace of the old Cape Colony without undertaking the burdens involved in governing and holding the whole Africander territory to the northeast, including the region beyond the Vaal River, was thought to have been solved by Doctor Philip, an English missionary, who had some influence with the government. The scheme recommended by Doctor Philip was that the government should create a line of native states under British control along the northeast border of Cape Colony. These would act, he claimed, as a barrier to break the influence of the more turbulent Africanders in the regions north of that line on those of their blood who were yet citizens of the old colony, and they would, in like manner, separate between the native tribes in the colony and those in the interior.

Doctor Philip’s plan was adopted with much [[105]]enthusiasm. A treaty suitable to the purpose contemplated had already been made with a northern Griqua leader named Waterboer. In 1843 two other treaties were made, one with Moshesh of the Basutos and the other with Adam Kok, a leader of the Orange River Griquas. It was fondly believed that these three states, recognized by and in treaty with Great Britain, would isolate the colony from the disturbing and dangerous people to the north of them.

Doctor Philip’s promising arrangement disappointed every one. The Africanders living in the territory of the Griquas refused to be bound in any sense by a treaty made by the despised half-breeds, and the former troubles continued. A further effort was made to give effect to the doctor’s statesmanship by establishing a military post at Bloemfontein, about half way between the Orange River and the Vaal, for the purpose of enforcing order and of carrying out the provisions of the treaty. This step was followed up in 1848 by the formal annexation to the British dominions in South Africa of the entire country lying between the Orange and the Vaal, under the name of the Orange River Sovereignty. The second contact of Boer and Briton, begun in [[106]]Natal in 1842, was thus extended into the Orange River territory.

The Africanders rose up to assert their independence, encouraged and re-enforced by their brethren from beyond the Vaal. Under the able and energetic leadership of Mr. Pretorius, who had opposed the British in Natal, they attacked Bloemfontein, captured the garrison posted there and advanced to the south as far as Orange River.

The governor of Cape Colony, Sir Harry Smith, hastily dispatched a sufficient force, which met and defeated the Africanders at Bloomplats, about seventy-five miles north of the Orange River, on the 29th of August, 1848. The sole result of this battle was the restoration of British authority over the Orange River Sovereignty. The territory was not incorporated with that of Cape Colony, neither were the Africanders dwelling north of the Vaal River further interfered with.

The old conditions of unrest continued. Fresh quarrels among the native tribes seemed to call for British interference, and led them into war with the Basutos under Moshesh. Out of this conflict and its threatened complications grew a deliberate change of imperial policy in [[107]]South Africa, which the English have never ceased to regret.

The situation, so pregnant with far-reaching results, may be stated thus, in brief: The British resident at Bloemfontein had no force at his command that could cope with the Basutos under the masterly leadership of Moshesh. The Africanders living in the district were disaffected—even hostile—to the British government. They therefore refused to support the resident, preferring to fight only their own battles and to make their own terms with the Basutos. The situation of the British grew still more critical when Mr. Pretorius—yet a leading spirit among the Africanders north of the Vaal—threatened to make common cause with the Basutos. As for the old colony at the Cape, it was already involved in a fierce conflict with the south coast Kaffirs, and could not spare a man to aid in quieting the northern disturbances.

At this juncture of circumstances Mr. Pretorius made overtures to the colonial authorities, intimating that he and the northern Africanders desired to make some permanent pacific arrangement with Great Britain. The British authorities, disavowing all right to control the territory north of the Vaal, but still claiming the allegiance [[108]]of the Africanders resident therein, appointed commissioners to negotiate with Mr. Pretorius and other representatives of the Transvaal group of emigrants. Subsequently the home authorities of the British government appointed and sent out Sir George R. Clark, K. C. B., as “Her Majesty’s Special Commissioner for settling the affairs of the Orange River Sovereignty.” Having conferred with all who were concerned personally in the affairs of the Sovereignty, Sir George, in a meeting held at Sand River in 1852, concluded a convention with the commandant and delegates of the Africanders living north of the Vaal.

In the provisions of this convention the British government expressly “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,” and it permitted the emigrants to purchase ammunition in the British colonies in South Africa. It also disclaimed “all alliances with any of the colored nations north of the Vaal River,” and stipulated that “no slavery is or shall be permitted or practiced by the farmers north of the Vaal River.” [[109]]

The Transvaal Republic, called, later, the South African Republic, dates its independence from this convention, concluded at Sand River in 1852. It also, by the same instrument, severed itself and its interests from the Africander emigrants living in the Sovereignty south of the Vaal—an act which their southern brethren deemed little short of a betrayal.

For a few months after the convention of 1852 the Sovereignty continued British, and might have done so for many years but for a serious defeat of the British arms in that territory by the Basutos. General Cathcart, who had just been installed as governor of the Cape, rashly attacked the Basutos with a strong force of regulars, was led into an ambush and suffered so great a disaster that further hostile operations were impossible without a new and larger army. The politic Moshesh saw in the situation an opportunity to make peace with the English on favorable terms, which he at once proceeded to do.

This crushing reverse called out a report to the British ministers relative to the condition of affairs in the Sovereignty, and a statement of the policy he favored in reference to that part of her majesty’s dominions, from Sir George Clark, the [[110]]special commissioner appointed to settle the affairs thereof. The closing paragraphs of that report read as follows:

“The more I consider the position, relative both to the Cape colony and its (the Sovereignty’s) own internal circumstances, the more I feel assured of its inutility as an acquisition, and am impressed with a sense of the vain conceit of continuing to supply it with civil and military establishments in a manner becoming the character of the British Government, and advantageous to our resources.

“It is a vast territory, possessing nothing that can sanction its being permanently added to a frontier already inconveniently extended. It secures no genuine interests; it is recommended by no prudent or justifiable motive; it answers no really beneficial purpose; it imparts no strength to the British Government, no credit to its character, no lustre to the crown. To remain here, therefore, to superintend or to countenance this extension of British dominion, or to take part in any administrative measure for the furtherance of so unessential an object, would, I conceive, be tantamount to my encouraging a serious evil, and participating in one of the most signal fallacies which has ever come under my notice in the [[111]]course of nearly thirty years devoted to the public service.”

The British Government, weary of the perpetual native wars, disgusted at the late defeat of the British regulars by Moshesh and his Basutos, and influenced by the emphatic and very significant report of their special commissioner, which report was heartily indorsed by Governor Cathcart, decided to abandon the Orange River Sovereignty altogether. An act of parliament in accordance with that decision was passed. Later, when there were vehement protests against the abandonment—protests from the missionaries who feared for the welfare of the natives, and from English settlers in the Sovereignty who desired to remain subject to the British crown—a motion was made in the House of Commons begging the Queen to reconsider the renunciation of her sovereignty over the Orange River territory, but the motion found no support at all, and had to be withdrawn. Instead, parliament voted £48,000 to compensate any who might suffer loss in the coming change, so eager were the authorities to be rid of this large territory with its constant vexations and its costliness. And thus it was that independence was literally forced upon the Orange River country. [[112]]

By the convention of the 23d of February, 1854, signed at Bloemfontein, the British government “guaranteed the future independence of the country and its government,” and covenanted that they should be, “to all intents and purposes, a free and independent people.” It further provided that the Orange River government was to be free to purchase ammunition in the British South African colonies, and that liberal privileges were to be granted it in connection with import duties. As in the case of the Transvaal, so in this convention it was stipulated, that no slavery or trade in slaves was to be permitted north of the Orange River. The name given to the new nation was “The Orange River Free State.”

It cannot be denied that these conventions of 1852 and 1854 created two new and independent states. Nor can it be denied that in consenting to their creation the action of the British government was taken under no pressure of war, under no powerful foreign interference, but altogether of its own free will, and with the conviction that in cutting loose from undesirable and disputed territory it was acting for the good of the empire.

DOCTOR JAMESON.

Canon Knox Little, in his “South Africa,” calls this action of the British government “a serious blunder.” Be that as it may, the Africanders [[113]]acted in perfect consistency with all their former aspirations and claims, and they made no blunders in the negotiations that secured to them independent national existence. The British “blunder”—if blunder it was—was written in a formal official document, and subscribed by the authorised representatives of the government, appointed expressly to give effect to imperial legislation, and can no more be repudiated righteously than can a written contract between private individuals. [[114]]

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CHAPTER VII.

THE AFRICANDERS’ SECOND TREK TO THE NORTH.

The purview intended to be given in these pages requires that we now look back to Natal, and to the condition and movements of the Africanders living in that region after it became British territory. As has been stated in chapter V., the English took forcible possession of Natal in 1843. Two years later it was made a dependency of the older colony at the Cape; in 1856 it was constituted a separate colony, and so remains to this day.

A small minority of the Africanders—about five hundred families—being greatly attached to the homes they had founded in that most attractive part of South Africa, reconciled themselves to the British administration and remained. But the majority, including all the fiercer and more restless spirits, took their families and goods, their flocks and herds, and once more trekked in [[115]]search of independence. Their course lay northwestward across the mountains to the elevated plateaus of the Orange River district and the Transvaal.

Very reluctantly the Africanders abandoned sunny and fruitful Natal, and the one hold they had ever gained of a part of the coast. But a goodly land and access to the sea, to be of great value in their esteem, must be associated with freedom to govern themselves and to deal with the native population as an inferior and servile race not entitled to civil equality with the whites.

The Africander love of independence, and their reasonable objection to be civilly on a level with the ignorant and savage blacks, command respect and admiration; but their treatment of the natives, where unrestrained by British rule, was anything but creditable. They may be excused for many wars with Bushmen and Kaffirs, for their very lives depended on either reducing these to submission or driving them to a safe distance from the white settlements. But the enslaving of men and women, and, later, of children under the subterfuge of apprenticeship for a term of years, cannot be justified; it was monstrously incompatible with the insistent demand for personal freedom for themselves so conspicuous [[116]]in the Africander race. The one extenuating circumstance is the fact that, leading an isolated life, they were slower than other civilized peoples in catching the spirit of the age—a spirit that makes for freedom, and a growing betterment in the condition of every man.

The exodus of Natal Africanders between 1843 and 1848 encouraged an immense influx of Kaffirs, who repopulated the country so plentifully that the proportion of blacks to whites has been as ten to one ever since.

The emigrants who settled north of the Vaal, both those of the Great Trek and those from Natal who began to join them in 1843, were rude and uneducated as compared to their brethren of the Orange River region. The northern group had less of English blood in their veins, and because of distance and difficulty of communication they were not at all affected by intercourse with the more cultured people of Cape Colony.

Lacking the upward lead that contact with a progressive civilization would have given, there took place a marked degeneration of character in these more northern emigrants. Their love of independence was developed into a spirit of faction and dissension among themselves. Their lionlike bravery was perverted into a too great [[117]]readiness to fight on the smallest provocation, and a disposition to prey upon their weaker native neighbors. Through a desire to enlarge their grazing lands they became greedy as to territory, and were almost constantly engaged in bloody strife with the native occupants of the regions they insisted on annexing.

The almost patriarchal mode of life they followed had the effect of segregating them into family groups widely separated from one another, largely exempted from any control of magistrates and law courts, and susceptible to family feuds and bitter personal rivalries between faction leaders. This absence of efficient control was a cause of further evil in encouraging an influx of unprincipled adventurers from other parts of South Africa. These went about through the more unsettled parts and along the border, cheating and often violently illtreating the natives to the great peril of peace both in the Transvaal and in the contiguous British provinces. As an example of the turmoil in which the people lived and participated, the following account is introduced of an Africander expedition under Acting Commandant-General Scholtz against Secheli, chief of the Baquaines, a tribe of Zulus. It also covers the incident of the plundering of Doctor [[118]]Livingstone’s house by the force under General Scholtz.

The matter of complaint was that the Baquaines had been constantly disturbing the country by thefts and threatenings, and that they were sheltering a turbulent chief named Mosolele. In order to punish and reduce them to obedience a commando was sent against them. After some petty encounters with scouts the Africander force drew near to Secheli’s town, in the direction of the Great Lake, on the 25th of August, 1852. Two days’ further march brought them so near that the Africander scouts discovered and reported that Secheli was making every preparation for defense.

On the 28th Scholtz marched close by the town where Secheli was fortified, and camped beside the town-water, a little distance from the intrenchments. It being Saturday Scholtz resolved to do nothing to provoke a battle before Monday, being desirous of keeping the Lord’s Day in quiet. He did, however, dispatch a letter to Secheli demanding the surrender of Mosolele, in the following terms:

“Friend Secheli: As an upright friend, I would advise you not to allow yourself to be misled by Mosolele, who has fled to you because [[119]]he has done wrong. Rather give him back to me, that he may answer for his offense. I am also prepared to enter into the best arrangements with you. Come over to me, and we shall arrange everything for the best, even were it this evening. Your friend,

“P. E. SCHOLTZ, Act. Com.-Gen.”

To this Secheli replied:

“Wait till Monday. I shall not deliver up Mosolele. * * * But I challenge you on Monday to show which is the strongest man. I am, like yourself, provided with arms and ammunition, and have more fighting people than you. I should not have allowed you thus to come in, and would assuredly have fired upon you; but I have looked in the book, upon which I reserved my fire. I am myself provided with cannon. Keep yourself quiet to-morrow, and do not quarrel for water till Monday; then we shall see who is the strongest man. You are already in my pot; I shall only have to put the lid on it on Monday.”

On Sunday Secheli sent two men to the camp to borrow some sugar—which Scholtz regarded as bravado. The messengers also brought word from Secheli directing Scholtz to take good care that the oxen did not pasture on the poisonous [[120]]grass in the neighborhood of his camp, for he now looked upon them as his own.

On Monday Scholtz sent messengers to Secheli to ascertain his intentions and to renew the offers of peace. The Zulu chieftain replied that he required no peace, that he now challenged Scholtz to fight, and added, “If you have not sufficient ammunition, I will lend you some.”

MAJUBA HILL.

After some further exchanges of diplomatic courtesies between the African and the Africander the battle began. By six hours of hard fighting Scholtz carried all the native intrenchments, killed a large number of the warriors, and captured many guns and prisoners. The Zulus still held one fortified ridge of rocks when nightfall put an end to the battle. In the morning it was found that Secheli had retreated from his stronghold under cover of night. Scholtz sent out a force in pursuit, who inflicted further punishment on the fugitives and returned the next day without loss of a man.

General Scholtz’s official report of this expedition contains the following remarkable statement regarding the looting of Doctor Livingstone’s house:

“On the 1st of September I dispatched Commandant P. Schutte with a patrol to Secheli’s [[121]]old town; but he found it evacuated, and the missionary residence broken open by the Kaffirs. The commandant found, however, two percussion rifles; and the Kaffir prisoners declared that Livingstone’s house, which was still locked, contained ammunition, and that shortly before he had exchanged thirteen guns with Secheli, which I had also learnt two weeks previously, the missionaries Inglis and Edwards having related it to the burghers, A. Bytel and J. Synman; and that Livingstone’s house had been broken open by Secheli to get powder and lead. I therefore resolved to open the house that was still locked, in which we found several half-finished guns and a gunmaker’s shop with abundance of tools. We here found more guns and tools than Bibles, so that the place had more the appearance of a gunmaker’s shop than a mission-station, and more of a smuggling-shop than a school place.”

Doctor Livingstone’s character is too well known in all the civilized world to need even a word of vindication. General Scholtz, being taken as sincere in his statements, fell into an egregious and well-nigh inexcusable error concerning the tools found in the doctor’s house and the guns in various stages of completeness. In those parts, so distant from carpenters, wagon-makers [[122]]and smiths, it was absolutely necessary for the explorer to have with him all tools required in making or repairing wagons, harness, guns, and whatever else belonged to his outfit. It is impossible to account for General Scholtz’s statements concerning the altogether blameless Doctor Livingstone in any other way than to ascribe them to prejudice. It is well known that there was in the Africander mind a deep-rooted hostility against the missionaries, of whom David Livingstone was chief, because they denounced the practice of slavery and reported the cruelties incident to it. Had General Scholtz been entirely free from the prejudice due to this cause he would have seen on Doctor Livingstone’s premises not an illicit gun factory, but an honest repair shop such as any pioneer in those parts must have. [[123]]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER VIII.

THE INDEPENDENT AFRICANDER AND SLAVERY.

It will be remembered that the conventions of 1852 and 1854, by which the absolute independence of the Africanders living beyond the Vaal River and of those resident in the Orange River district was guaranteed, bound them to renounce the practice of slavery. They did not find it easy, however, to keep either the letter or the spirit of that covenant. For generations both the men and the women had been accustomed to immunity from the more severe and disagreeable work of life. Twice had they trekked, largely to get away from British power because it would no longer tolerate slavery on British soil. But now they had accepted independent national life, and were in honor bound to carry out the stipulation of the treaties which guaranteed their independence, by liberating such slaves as they possessed and by acquiring no more. It is next in order, therefore, to consider the manner in which these obligations were carried out. [[124]]

Whatever outward appearances there may have been of ceasing to enforce servitude from the blacks, there is indubitable evidence that little more than a change of name for it was effected—the thing went on. A new system of virtual slavery was invented and prevailed extensively under the plausible name of “apprenticeship,” and “registration” of prisoners taken in war with the natives; and it is to be feared that many predatory expeditions were undertaken chiefly to secure fresh victims for this new method of enforcing unpaid service—all of which was in flagrant violation of the treaties by which the republics were established and guaranteed independence.

The new system was defended by those who devised it and profited by it, as a benevolent institution, because it took the orphan children of the Kaffirs—for whom their own people made no provision—and apprenticed them to Africander masters for a limited period, to terminate in every case at twenty-one years of age. But when it is understood that in many cases the Kaffir bond-children had been made orphans by Africander bullets the benevolence of the institution becomes a vanishing quantity. And it is to be remembered, in judging of this matter, that these ignorant [[125]]Kaffir apprentices had no means of knowing their own age, nor was there any one to speak and act for them when the proper time for their release from bondage came. The new system was slavery under a less repulsive name, and was so regarded by its victims.

It is only fair to the Africanders to trace their conduct in this matter back to the convictions and principles honestly held by them, and by which they justified to themselves their practices toward the natives. Almost without exception they were men of intense religiousness and devout regard for the Bible. It was a great misfortune to themselves and to the natives of South Africa that they found their standard of ethics, not in any of the moral precepts of the New Testament or the Old, but in their own deductions from scraps of Old Testament history which were never intended to furnish ideals and standards of virtue and righteousness for later generations. Thus, they looked upon the dark races about them as the yet “accursed” sons of Canaan the son of Ham, doomed by heaven to perpetual servitude to any people who might care to enslave them, because of the sin of their forefather, Ham. They seem to have forgotten, too easily, that the divine entail of evil consequences to follow [[126]]certain sins was limited to “the third and fourth generation,” and insisted without warrant of any kind on bringing it over to and enforcing it upon the one hundred and thirtieth generation. Holding such views, they considered themselves as doing service to God when they inflicted the degradations, hardships and cruelties of slavery upon the offspring of Ham. It was their custom to meet for prayer before going on one of their forays, to implore the help and protection of the Almighty in what they were about to do; then they went forth heartened and emboldened by the conviction that the coming battle was the Lords, and to fall therein would be a sure passport to heaven. It would be untrue to say that all the Africanders were of this belief and practice, but undoubtedly the majority of them so believed and so acted.

Many of the whites quarreled with their ministers because they persisted in teaching Christianity to the people held to be accursed—by their masters. The Dutch term Zendeling, originally signifying “missionary,” was turned into an epithet of reproach, bearing the new interpretation of a petty artisan and pedlar, who, under pretense of instructing the natives, wandered [[127]]about prosecuting a secular business for gain—a man to be despised and shunned.

Instances are not wanting in the records of this period to show that the spirit and practice of some Africanders were as set forth above. Mr. Holden, in the appendix to his “History of Natal,” quotes from a friend of the enslaved blacks as follows:

“As to slavery, in spite of the treaty with the Assistant Commissioner, two Kaffir boys have this very week been sold here—the one for a hundred rix-dollars to a Boer, and the other for a hundred and fifty rix-dollars to a dealer at Rustenburg. Last month, also, two were sold to Messrs. S. and G. Maritz, traders of Natal, and were immediately ‘booked’ (ingeboekt) with the Landdrost of Potchefstroom for twenty-five years each! Is this according to treaty? If not, why does not Governor Cathcart interfere by force, if reasoning be unavailing? For, without some force, I see little prospect of the natives being saved from utter and universal slavery.”

Mr. Holden also quotes from the “Grahamstown Journal” of September 24, 1853, the following significant incident:

“We are credibly informed that, in a private interview with Sir G. R. Clark, one of the most [[128]]respectable and loyal Boers, resident on a confiscated farm in the most disaffected district, ‘inter alias res,’ plainly told Sir George that he had some twenty or thirty Bushman children on his place; and that if government withdrew he must sell them, as, if he did not do so, other persons would come and take them, and sell them. The reply, as stated to us, was to the effect, ‘You have been too long a good subject to lead me to think you would do such a thing now.’ To this the answer was, ‘I have been a good subject; but if government will make me a rascal, I cannot help it’ ”

These testimonies coming from separate and widely distant sources, and giving the particulars of direct and positive slavery practiced under another name, leave no reasonable doubt that the spirit of the compact between the British government and the Africanders was being violated.

It has been thought that the account of the same matter given by Mr. Theal, in his “South Africa,” puts an entirely different aspect on the practice of “apprenticeship.”

“At this time,” he writes (1857), “complaints were beginning to be heard that the practice of transferring apprentices, or selling indentures, was becoming frequent. It was rumored also [[129]]that several lawless individuals were engaged in obtaining black children from neighboring tribes, and disposing of them under the name of apprentices. How many such cases occurred cannot be stated with any pretension to accuracy, but the number was not great. The condition of the country made it almost impossible to detain any one capable of performing service longer than he chose to remain with a white master, so that even if the farmers in general had been inclined to become slaveholders, they could not carry such inclinations into practice. The acts of a few of the most unruly individuals in the country might, however, endanger the peace and even the independence of the republic. The president, therefore, on the 29th of September, 1857, issued a proclamation pointing out that the sale or barter of black children was forbidden by the recently adopted constitution, and prohibiting transfers of apprenticeships, except when made before landdrosts.”

Treating of a later period (1864–65), he returns to this matter, saying:

“A subject that was much discussed in Europe, as well as in South Africa, during this period was the existence of slavery in the republic. Charges against the burghers of reducing [[130]]weak and helpless blacks to a condition of servitude were numerous and boldly stated on one side, and were indignantly denied on the other. That the laws were clearly against slavery goes for nothing, because in a time of anarchy law is a dead letter. There is overwhelming evidence that blacks were transferred openly from one individual to another, and there are the strongest assertions from men of undoubted integrity that there was no slavery. To people in Europe it seemed impossible that both should be true, and the opinion was generally held that the farmers of the interior of South Africa were certainly slave-holders.

“Since 1877 much concerning this matter that was previously doubtful has been set at rest. On the 12th of April of that year the South African republic was proclaimed British territory, and when, soon afterward, investigation was made, not a single slave was set free, because there was not one in the country. In the very heart of the territory kraals of blacks were found in as prosperous a condition as in any part of South Africa. It was ascertained that these blacks had always lived in peace with the white inhabitants, and that they had no complaints to make. Quite as strong was the evidence afforded by the number [[131]]of the Bantu. In 1877 there were, at the lowest estimate, six times as many black people living in a state of semi-independence within the borders of the South African Republic as there had been on the same ground forty years before. Surely these people would not have moved in if the character of the burghers was such as most Englishmen believed it to be. A statement of actual facts is thus much more likely now to gain credence abroad than would have been the case in 1864.

“The individuals who were termed slaves by the missionary party were termed apprentices by the farmers. The great majority—probably nineteen out of every twenty—were children who had been made prisoners in the wars which the tribes were continually waging with each other. In olden days it had been the custom for the conquering tribe to put all the conquered to death, except the girls and a few boys who could be made useful as carriers. More recently they had become less inhuman, from having found out that for smaller children they could obtain beads and other merchandise.

“With a number of tribes bordering on the republic ready to sell their captives, with the Betshuana everywhere prepared to dispose of the [[132]]children of their hereditary slaves, a few adventurous Europeans were found willing to embark in the odious traffic. Wagon loads of children were brought into the republic, where they were apprenticed for a term of years to the first holder, and the deeds of apprenticeship could afterward be transferred before a landdrost. This was the slavery of the South African Republic. Its equivalent was to be found a few years earlier in the Cape colony, when negroes taken in slave-ships were apprenticed to individuals. There would have been danger in the system if the demand for apprentices had been greater. In that case the tribes might have attacked each other purposely to obtain captives for sale. But the demand was very limited, for the service of a raw black apprentice was of no great value. A herd boy might be worth something more than his food, clothing, and a few head of cattle which were given him when his apprenticeship expired; but no other class of raw native was.

“It is an open question whether it was better that these children should remain with the destroyers of their parents, and according to chance grow up either as slaves or as adopted members of the conquering tribe; or that they should serve ten or fifteen years as apprentices to white people, [[133]]acquire some of the habits of European life, and then settle down as freemen with a little property. It was answered in 1864, and will be answered to-day according to the bias of the individual.”

After all, Mr. Theal’s account of it does not materially change the aspect of the system of enforced servitude that prevailed in the Africander communities after they became independent. These bond-children were either captured or bought from dealers in children; they were held under bill of sale and indenture; and they were sold from master to master by legal transfer of indenture before a magistrate.

Mr. Theal’s low estimate of the value of the services that could be rendered by raw black children, and of the limited demand for them, is not in harmony with his own statement that such children were brought into the republic in wagon loads, nor with the testimony, quoted by Mr. Holden, covering two specific cases wherein one Kaffir boy was sold for one hundred, and another for one hundred and fifty rix-dollars. And his averment that in 1877 the British authorities could not find a single slave to liberate in all the territory of the South African Republic is simply amusing when viewed in the light of what he states on the next page—that this system of enforced [[134]]servitude under indentures that were legally merchantable “was the slavery of the South African Republic.” Undoubtedly; and, so far as is known, no other form of slavery was ever seriously charged against the Africanders after their independence was established. It is matter of surprise, however, that the British conscience of this period was not able to scent the malodor of slavery under the new form and title of “apprenticeship” which covered a marketable property-right in the human chattel. [[135]]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER IX.

THIRD CONTACT OF AFRICANDER AND BRITON—IN THE ORANGE FREE STATE.

The “Great Trek” of 1836 and 1838 removed from the old colony at the Cape an element in the population which, however worthy in some regards, was unrestful and disaffected, leaving abundant room for a new immigration from Europe. It was some years, however, before there was any considerable influx from continental Europe. Judged by the grim rumors that were afloat everywhere, South Africa was a dangerous country to live in because of the warlike and merciless Kaffirs; and the trend of British emigration was yet towards America.

About 1845 the tide of fortune-seeking people was turned towards Cape Colony. The British government of this time stimulated immigration to that field so liberally that in five years between four and five thousand loyal subjects from the mother country removed to the Cape. Later, [[136]]a considerable number of disbanded German soldiers who had served under the British colors in the Crimean war were sent there as citizens, and in 1858 over two thousand German civilians of the peasant order were settled along the south coast on lands once occupied by the Kaffirs.

GENERAL JOUBERT.

Industries natural to the climate and soil were slowly but steadily developed. Sheep and cattle raising, and agriculture to a limited extent, became sources of wealth, and correspondingly expanded the export trade. Public finances were gradually restored to a healthy state, churches and schools sprang up, and there was no serious drawback to the progress of the colony but the frequent Kaffir invasions across the eastern border. These cost much loss of life and property to the raided settlements, but the expense of the resulting wars was borne by the home government. Under British rule the population had increased from 26,000 Europeans in 1806 to 182,000 in 1865.

With the growth of population there came changes in the form of government. The earlier governors exercised almost autocratic power, fearing nothing but a possible appeal against their acts to the Colonial Office in London. It should be stated, however, that the colonists [[137]]found as frequent cause to complain of the home government as of their governors. The occasional irritation which broke out into open protest was caused, for the most part, by difficulties with the natives. The Europeans, dwelling among an inferior race, naturally looked upon the natives as existing for their benefit, and bitterly resented the disposition of both the imperial authorities and the governors to give equal civil rights and protection to the blacks. The missionaries were the special objects of this resentment, because they held themselves bound by their sacred office to denounce the wrongs inflicted on the Kaffirs, and to even defend their conduct in rebelling against oppression.

These unfortunate dissensions had the effect of uniting the English and the Dutch colonists in questions of policy and government regarding the natives. After various attempts to satisfy the people with a governor appointed by the crown and a Legislative Council constituted by the governor’s nomination and imperial appointment, the home authorities, in 1854, yielded to the public demand for representative institutions.

A legislature, consisting of a Legislative Council and a House of Assembly, was established, both to be elected on a franchise wide [[138]]enough to include people of any race or color holding the reasonable property qualification. The sole check upon the colonial legislature retained by the imperial government was the right of the British crown to disallow any of its acts considered objectionable, on constitutional or other grounds, by her Majesty’s ministers. The executive power remained, for a time, with the governor and his council, who were appointed by the crown and in no way responsible to the colonial houses. Later, the executive power was taken from the governors and vested in a cabinet of ministers responsible to the colonial legislature and holding office during its pleasure.

The range of industries followed by the people of Cape Colony was not enlarged until the discovery of diamonds in 1869. This brought in a sudden rush of population from Europe and America and so inflated trade that the colonial revenue was more than doubled in the next five years. Then began that unparalleled development of mineral resources in South Africa which created immense wealth and furnished the elements of a political situation whose outcome the wisest cannot foresee.

With this general view of the condition of Cape Colony in the three decades succeeding the [[139]]Great Trek of the Africanders, we turn again to the special study proposed and consider the chain of events that led up to the third unfriendly contact between Boer and Briton—this time beginning in the Orange Free State.

By the conventions of 1852 and 1854 Great Britain formally relinquished all claim to that part of the interior of South Africa lying to the north of Cape Colony, and recognized the republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. There can be no doubt of the sincerity of the British government in taking this action. The prevailing desires actuating both the parliament and the executive were to be rid of the responsibility and expense of governing these regions, and to leave the two new Africander republics to work out their own destiny in their own way.

For a few years the relations of the Cape government and its northern neighbors were friendly. The first occurrence that disturbed the welcome peace and harmony was a serious war which broke out in 1858 between the Basutos under Moshesh and the Orange Free State. The Basutos laid claim to certain farms, held under English titles, in Harrismith, Wynberg and Smithfield districts. These were taken possession [[140]]of by the petty Basuto captains, and when attempts were made to eject the intruders, Moshesh, the paramount chief, and his eldest son Letsie, assumed the right to interfere. This episode, together with other unfriendly acts on the part of the Basutos, brought on a condition which, it became evident, nothing but war could remedy. Accordingly, the Volksraad of the Orange Free State authorized the President, Mr. Boshof, to take any steps necessary to prevent intrusion upon the territory of the State. After much and very insincere diplomatic correspondence, the time of which was used by the Free State government in collecting the forces of its western and northern divisions, and by the Basutos in assembling their warriors, petty raids began the conflict and led on to hostilities on a larger scale near the end of March, 1858.

By the 26th of April Mr. Boshof became convinced that the Free State could not hold its own against the Basutos, and that the salvation of the country from being overrun by its enemies depended upon obtaining aid from some quarter. Acting on this conviction, on the 24th of April Mr. Boshof wrote Sir George Grey, governor of Cape Colony, informing him of the critical condition of the Free State, and imploring his mediation. [[141]]Sir George, after obtaining the sanction of the House Assembly to such a course, immediately tendered his services as mediator to Mr. Boshof and Moshesh, and was unconditionally and cordially accepted by both. Thereupon a cessation of hostilities was agreed to pending the arrangement of final terms of peace by Sir George.

In the meantime, the Free State was being ravaged on its western border by petty chiefs, who saw in the struggle between the whites and the powerful Basutos a favorable opportunity to enrich themselves with spoil. In the distress occasioned by these forays the Free State was aided by a force of burghers from the Transvaal Republic, under Commandant Paul Kruger.

Out of this friendly act there grew up a desire and even a proposition to unite the two republics in one. President Pretorius, Commandant Paul Kruger, and about twenty other representatives from the Transvaal visited Bloemfontein to confer with the Free State Volksraad on the matter of union—a measure considered by many the only means of saving the country from its savage foes.