DISGRACE AND DISASTER.

261 takes to an almost laughable extent of the nature of an "outdoor relief."

Having received further accounts of, amongst others, the fight at Magnet Heights, I desire again to draw attention to the difference in the estimate of the work done there by those acquainted with Kafir warfare and by inexperienced persons. The Morning Post' said that the Kafirs were driven from their strongholds and positions into the cliffs and caves, but that certain volunteers, too eager to follow the enemy, "prejudiced" (the word is my own) what it evidently wanted us to believe, a victory. This is a most mistaken idea. The Kafir caves and cliffs are their only stronghold, to which they very cleverly and properly lured on Captain Clarke's forces, flushed by their useless conquest of outlying rocks, dry stone walls, and straw huts; and whence, having got the men under an intentional cross-fire, the natives had the pleasure of seeing the dead and wounded borne out by their comrades, whose retreat from before the despised caves and cliffs left to the Kafirs the decided impression that they had won a victory.

A long time ago, Moselekatze, with his formidable “Amandabele," occupied the very position now held by Secocoeni. The Dutch twice, and the Griquas once, penetrated to those rugged north-eastern valleys. On two occasions they remained long enough to expose themselves to, and consequently to meet with, serious disaster. The third time, however, the Dutch merely surprised the enemy's outlying pickets at Mosegu, refrained from pressing home their attack, and fell back rapidly on the Highveld with what cattle they had taken. This utterly disheartened the "Amandabele," who evacuated all their positions and fled no less than 500 miles to the northwards. (Thomas's 'South Africa,' p. 162.)

It is in this way Kafirs must be harassed. They are undoubtedly superstitious, and if made uncomfortable by an enemy whose movements they cannot foresee, and on whom they cannot inflict palpable loss, will rather abandon perfect locations for defence than dwell in them in continual terror.

In the midst of its wars and losses, the Transvaal is torn and divided by contending parties, whose numbers, principles, and programmes I shall endeavour to describe.

The State is peopled by something like 56,000 whites and 300,000 blacks, the majority of whom live on and around the borders.

It might be made a great corn-producing country, but it is importing flour. It has no manufactures; and its exports are confined to a few commodities, which hardly pay for its imports.

It has vast resources, which cannot be developed, because it has no railways-no means of short and easy communication with the markets of the world. For the same reason its fields are untilled, and its wonderful and undoubted agricultural opportunities and advantages neglected. Can you wonder that there should exist parties and factions in such a country? We may blame the factious spirit, but we cannot wonder at its existence.

The Boer party complain bitterly of the annexation. They say, "Our liberties have been unnecessarily taken from us, and our country annexed, not only against the will of the majority, but in utter disregard of Lord Carnarvon's instructions, which state 'that no such proclamation shall be issued by you (Sir Theophilus Shepstone), unless you shall be satisfied that the inhabitants, or a sufficient number of them, or the Legislature, desire to become our subjects.'" The Boers

object also to the annexation, because they assert that the arguments put forward to justify its necessity by Sir Theophilus Shepstone are not borne out by facts; and they are still more angry because they believe the annexation was brought about by false pretences, accompanied and strengthened by attacks made upon their honour and character by a party press interested in their destruction. They say, further, that the terms of the annexation proclamation have not been adhered to; and this party-undoubtedly the strongest in the country-appeal to England to do them justice, and to restore to them their country.

But these people have no personal antipathy to Sir Theophilus Shepstone. They respect in him a man of wonderful experience and superior tact and attainments, who executed. what seemed to him to be a necessary act of policy in a most conciliatory and able manner. Neither do they blame Lord Carnarvon or Sir Theophilus Shepstone because the annexation has hitherto not brought to the country that peace and prosperity which it was undoubtedly expected to produce. They feel deeply the vilification to which they have been subjected; and resent strongly the annexation itself and the pretences by which it was brought about. They are emphatically the people of the country.

แ

The next party in importance may be described as the Railway party." It complains most bitterly that the progress of the country has been retarded by its being ruled with a view to the interests of the neighbouring colonyNatal; and complains that, whereas the country might be made rich and prosperous by its being rapidly connected by railway with the port of Delagoa Bay, and by its being thus thrown open to European industries and emigrants, it has, on the other hand, been placed under personal rule; been treated as a close Crown colony, contrary to the terms of the fifteenth paragraph of the annexation proclamation; has been deprived of its railway prospects; and has been made commercially subject and tributary to Natal. This party embraces the intelligence and enterprise of the country.

These people want railways and progress, with self-gov1 See Appendix C.

ernment, as the only means by which the annexation can be justified, and the country saved from utter ruin.

There is a third and more noisy party, which lately devoted itself simply and purely to the vilification of Sir Theophilus Shepstone. These are a minority amongst minorities; but it is not a little interesting to remark that they are, as a rule, the very same persons who worshipped Sir Theophilus as a saviour about sixteen months ago.

They are literally "the Annexationists." They are the same people who vilified the Boers and misrepresented the course of public opinion, and who, by the success of their schemes for the destruction of the Republic, secured the annexation, the great agent of which they now denounce.

All that they sought in a change of government seems to have been additional sources of consideration or of wealth for themselves. Some of them dreamed of large mineral concessions, others expected public employment; but they have shown by their turbulence under the new Government, following so fast on their opposition to the old one, that they are mainly those pests of society who would be discontented and a nuisance under any rule, good, bad, or indifferent.

The Government itself is practically without local support. It has, as most Governments have in our days, a paper in its pay; but unless a sound public opinion soon comes to its assistance, it must fall, even though supported for years, at vast expense to England, by Imperial troops. Besides the internal troubles and the war with Secocoeni, the country is additionally embarrassed by the near prospect of a Zulu war, for which preparations are, on an extensive scale, now being made.1 Twice since the annexation have the Transvaal farmers been forced to fly from the district in dispute between the Government and Cetywayo, who is more hostile

1 "I am not in the least degree surprised that those troubles should now be threatening, because for twenty or twenty-five years Sir Theophilus Shepstone, as representing the head of affairs in Natal, has been supporting Cetywayo and his father, the former king, in their position with reference to the Transvaal Boers. The Transvaal Boers have been represented as encroaching year after year upon the Zulu country; and the Natal Government, of which Sir Theophilus Shepstone was, in regard to native affairs, at the head, appears to have supported the Zulu king in the position he assumed.”—Mr Sanderson's Speech at Lecture of G. Pigott Moodie, Esq., United Service Institute, May 3, 1878.

ARGUMENTS FOR ANNEXATION.

to the British than he ever was to the Boers.

265

There are

not wanting in the Transvaal those who assert that, originally, the Zulu king was incited to make demonstrations against the Boers in order that the embarrassment so created might furnish an additional reason for annexation; and they now say, with some semblance of truth, that the Zulu king, disappointed of the reward promised him for his material assistance, is only anxious to avenge himself in any opportune direction against white colonists, without respect to birth or nationality. There can be no doubt that, in some way or another, the Zulus were led to believe that they might look to the English as allies against the Boers. This, with the revelations of Magema Mahala, has undoubtedly operated to prevent people from recognising the beneficent and friendly intentions of Earl Carnarvon towards the colonists, and tends to cause a universal distrust of the real meaning and objects of English policy to be felt amongst the Boers.

People say that one of the arguments, and the principal one used, in favour of the annexation, was actually furnished by a restlessness amongst the savage Zulus, fostered by the known hostility of Natal colonists and newspapers towards the Transvaal. It is also pointed out by the discontented, that it is not a little singular that the first Secocoeni war, which was held up by the Annexationists as the cause of a general danger to neighbouring colonies, did not provoke or incite any of the numerous tribes-numbering, according to Sir Theophilus Shepstone, 1,700,000, within and without the borders of the Republic-to any acts of hostility to the settlers.

War, as we all know, broke out in September 1877, far down in the Cape Colony, between tribes in immediate contact with the English, which resulted in the campaign of the combined Imperial and Colonial forces against the Red Kafirs of the east coast. This could have been hardly excited by any success claimed by Secocoeni, who, eight months before, had submitted to the Republic, after having failed in securing allies against the Boers amongst any of the numerous tribes of the north and west. It is to be regretted and very much regretted that so much distrust