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YALE
UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

THE AFRICANDERS.

The Africanders
A CENTURY OF
DUTCH-ENGLISH FEUD
IN SOUTH AFRICA

LE ROY HOOKER,
AUTHOR of
"Enoch, the Philistine," "Baldoon,"
etc.

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

Copyright, 1900, by Rand, McNally & Co.

YALE

H7ir

Contents.

Chapter. Page.
I — The Dutch at the Cape (1652-1795), 11
II — First Contact of Africander and Briton
in Diplomacy (1795), 26
III — First Contact of Africander and Briton
in War (1795), - 46
IV — The Africanders' First Trek to the
North (1806-1838), 68
V — Second Contact of Africander and
Briton — In Natal, 87
VI — Second Contact of Africander and
Briton — North of the Orange River, 98
VII — The Africanders' Second Trek to the
North, - - 114
VIII — The Independent Africander and
Slavery, - 123
IX — Third Contact of Africander and
Briton — In the Orange Free State, 135
X — Third Contact of Africander and
Briton — In the Transvaal, 148
XI — The Africanders' First War of Inde
pendence, - 165
XII — The Africander Republics and British
Policy, - , 178
XIII — Causes of the Africanders' Second War
of Independence, 188
XIV — Causes of the Africanders' Second War
of Independence — Continued, 207
XV — Causes of the Africanders' Second War
of Independence — Continued, 221
XVI — Causes of the Africanders' Second War
of Independence — Concluded, - 241
XVII — The Country of the Africanders, 261

Illustrations.

Cape Town, Cape of Good Hope, Frontispiece

President Kruger, Facing page 48

Lighthouse, Durban,

" 72

President Steyn, Orange Free State,

" 88

The Vaal River,

" 96

Doctor Jameson,

' " 112

Majuba Hill,

" 120

General Joubert,

" 136

Pietermaritzburg, .

" 15a

Cecil J. Rhodes,

" 168

Government Building, Pretoria,

" 176

Joseph Chamberlain,

' " 192

Bloemfontein,

' ' 208

General Cronje,

' ' ' 224

Pritchard Street, Johannesburg, .

' " 240

Cattle on the Vaal River,

" 264

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 in
dependence with Great Britain, which opened on
the nth of October, 1899.
In writing these pages I have not felt con
scious of being in controversy with any one. If
I had been susceptible to influences that create
prej'udice, 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 subj'ect
treated of to j'udge how far I have succeeded or
failed in presenting a "plain, unvarnished" tale.

IO FOREWORD
I acknowledge, with much gratitude, indebt
edness 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 Ar
chives 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 Ques
tion"; the British Blue Books and other
sources of reliable information.
THE AUTHOR.

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 Portu
guese commerce with the East was west of Mada
gascar, consequently they found it unnecessary to
put into Table Bay ; the voyage from St. Helena
to Mozambique could be made comfortably with
out seeking a port of supply.
But when the Dutch wrested the eastern trade

12 THE AFRICANDERS
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 impera
tive that they should have a port of supply at the
turning point of the long voyage between Hol
land 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, act
ing upon the reports and suggestions of influ
ential men who had visited Table Bay and re
sided in Table Valley several months, determined
to establish at Table Bay such a victualing sta
tion 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, 165 1, the ex
pedition sailed, accompanied by a large fleet of
merchant vessels. On the morning of Sunday,
the 7th of April, 1652, after a voyage of one

DUTCH AT THE CAPE 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 govern
or-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 pre
vailed with little variation for more than a hun
dred years. The ranking officer of the expedition
was Jan Van Riebeek, and next to him in au
thority were the three commanders as his coun
cil in founding the settlement.

14

THE AFRICANDERS

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 Rhyn-
land 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 para
pet. Surrounding the whole structure was a
moat, into which the water of Fresh River could
be turned. Within the walls were dwellings, bar
racks, 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 inter
est ; but, here, it must be sketched in the briefest
outline possible, up to the first contact of Boer
with Briton.

DUTCH AT THE CAPE 1 5
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 enter
prises beyond the first range of mountains.
There was a steady though not very rapid in
crease of population. As early as 1658 the dis
astrous step was taken of introducing slave labor,
performed at first by West African negroes — a
step which encouraged in the whites an indispo
sition 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 Hugue
nots came from Holland in a body and joined the
colonists at the Cape. These were a valuable

l6 THE AFRICANDERS
acquisition as an offset to the rapidly increasing
servile element. They were mostly persons of
refinement, and brought with them habits of in
dustry, 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-see
ing policy, by the middle of the eighteenth cen
tury the Huguenots had amalgamated with their
Dutch fellow-colonists in language, religion and
politics. It was not until 1780 that the Com
pany'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 be
gan 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.

DUTCH AT THE CAPE I 7
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 circum
stances it is not wonderful that the people who
2

l8 THE AFRICANDERS
had in their veins the blended blood of Holland
and Navarre developed to an almost unparalleled
degree courage, self-reliance and love of inde
pendence, coupled with a passion for solitude and
isolation. As inevitable results of the life they led — so
isolated and wild — the children grew up un
taught ; 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 pub
lic policy and religion. But there was no declen
sion of religious fervor. In all their wanderings
the Bible went with them as an oracle to be con
sulted 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 Com
pany'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

DUTCH AT THE CAPE 19
men, they formed among themselves companies
of fighting men whose duty it was to disperse or
destroy the savage Bushmen. These independ
ent military organizations the government recog
nized and approved by appointing over them a
field commander for each district and a subordi
nate called a field cornet for each subdivision of a
district. These officers and their respective com
mands 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 Com
pany in Holland, was never popular with the
colonists. The governor was in no sense re
sponsible 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 com
missioners 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 THE AFRICANDERS
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 colo
nists in North America to throw off the control
of their mother country.
After prolonged negotiations the States-Gen
eral 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 — es
pecially by those who dwelt in the more distant
settlements. Therefore, in 1795, the people of
the interior rose up in revolt against the Com
pany's government — professing, however, un
abated loyalty to the mother country. The
magistrates appointed by the company were de
posed, 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

Dutch at the cape 21
which has been renewed at intervals, with vary
ing 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 fea
tures 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 destruc
tion 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, how-

22 THE AFRICANDERS
ever, 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 un
familiar 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 com
pletely on an equality with men than in South
Africa. Property belonging to a woman while
she was single, or acquired by her after mar
riage, was secured to her in perpetuity so that
her husband could neither squander it nor dis
pose of it in any way without her consent.
Neither was it subject to seizure for debts con
tracted 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

DUTCH AT THE CAPE 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 prohibi
tions 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 pe
culiar 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 sup
plied 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 THE AFRICANDERS
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 popu
lous 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

DUTCH AT THE CAPE 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 de
veloped 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 THE AFRICANDERS

CHAPTER II.
FIRST CONTACT OF AFRICANDER AND BRITON IN
DIPLOMACY. (I795-)
Colonel Robert Jacob Gordon was in chief
command of all the regular military forces main
tained 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 Wurttemburg and a corps
of mountaineer soldiers, called pandours, num
bering 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 dis-

DIPLOMACY 27
missed the local magistrates who were the ap
pointees 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 high
est 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 THE AFRICANDERS
strategic importance on the ocean thoroughfare
between Europe and the Orient.
The English government, when about to
enter into hostilities with France, became appre
hensive that the French would perceive the value
of the Cape colony and instantly take forcible
possession of it. This they determined to pre
vent 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, nego
tiations were opened between the British gov
ernment 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-feel
ing between the Dutch and the English, although
they were in alliance against the French. Being

DIPLOMACY 29
paralyzed by dissensions among their own peo
ple, 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 Nether
lands, and that the Stadtholder and his govern
ment 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 com
mand of Pichegru, one of the ablest generals of
his time. One after another the Dutch strong
holds 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 THE AFRICANDERS
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 Stad
tholder — was informally communicated to the
governor of Cape Colony in a letter written by
the chief advocate of the Dutch East India Com
pany, with the approbation of the directors. The
letter reached the Cape on the 7th of February,
1795, informing the colonists that in all proba
bility 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 neces
sary to be vigilant so as not to be surprised by
any European power. The warning, though not

DIPLOMACY 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
Medenblik, which arrived at the Cape on the
1 2th of April, 1795.
The next intelligence from Europe was cal
culated to perplex and alarm the colonists to a
high degree. On the nth of June, 1795, suc
cessive reports came by messengers from Simons-
town 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 ascer
tain 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 con
ference the signals of danger were made sum-

32 THE AFRICANDERS
moning 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 Simons
town 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 emer
gency 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 govern
ment 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 Eng
lish East India Company to Commissioner

DIPLOMACY 33
Sluysken, governor of the colony. Mr. Ross
also presented an invitation from Admiral Elph
instone 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 pres
ence at the Cape of this British naval and mili
tary 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 gov-

34 THE AFRICANDERS
ernment had been remodeled. The States-Gen
eral had abolished the Stadtholderate. And the
British ministers, alarmed for their vast pos
sessions in India, and realizing that they must
now depend upon their own exertions to keep
the French from seizing the port which prac
tically commanded the sea route thither, had
fitted out and dispatched with all haste this ex
pedition, 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 nth 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 re
sponsible representative with the promised in
formation and dispatch. They also instructed

DIPLOMACY 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 sup
posed 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 THE AFRICANDERS
a power friendly to Holland and sent to protect
the colony against the French.
The deputation from the admiral also de
livered to the Commissioner a joint letter from
Admiral Elphinstone and General Craig, in
which was written their account of the then con
dition of affairs in the Netherlands. They in
formed 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
Gildersland 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 Scheven-
ingen 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 over
whelming force, and were confident of being

DIPLOMACY 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 re
modeling 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 Com
missioner 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 let
ter. It was the command of a fugitive in a

38 THE AFRICANDERS
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 posses
sion, 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 good
will, 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,

DIPLOMACY 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 1 8th 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 Britan
nic 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 cus
toms 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 govern
ment as it then existed, and they would be at

40 THE AFRICANDERS
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 re
sponded 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 Nether
lands. 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 Gen
eral Craig, and inviting them to send a corn-
mittee of their own selection to Simonstown to

DIPLOMACY 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 gov
ernment on Jacobin principles, and would re
sult in anarchy, the guillotine, an insurrection of
the slaves with all the horrors that had been
enacted at St. Domingo and Guadeloupe, isola
tion 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 be
tween 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 fhe
heads of their chief officials, and to the cupidity
of their mercenary soldiers, was resented by the
council, who notified the British representatives

42 THE AFRICANDERS
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 Nether
lands had been absorbed by France; that if left
to itself the Cape colony would be absorbed in
like manner, and adding the significant intima
tion that his Britannic Majesty could not allow
it to fall into the hands of his enemies.
The council responded to this letter by pro
hibiting 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 dif
ference 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 re
vealed, the disaffected Burghers of the Cape and
of Stellenbosch ceased all opposition to the gov
ernment, and offered to do their utmost in de
fense of the colony. When the Commissioner

DIPLOMACY 43
announced that the country would not be sur
rendered 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 be
lieved 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 col
ony 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 circum
stances he would admit them if they would cov
enant to hold the country for the Prince of
Orange, but if their purpose was to take posses
sion of it for Great Britain he would resist them
to the utmost of his power. The colonel was

44 THE AFRICANDERS
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 ma
jority 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 Burgh
ers were ready to accept the British occupancy,
and went about singing Orange party songs be
cause 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 ref
erence 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

DIPLOMACY 45
and the military heads of the colony in defend
ing it against the British attack that was soon to
follow.

46 THE AFRICANDERS

CHAPTER III.
FIRST CONTACT OF AFRICANDER AND BRITON IN
WAR.
(I795-)
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

ARMED CONFLICT 47
or mutilated, and measures were taken to pre
vent newspapers from reaching the shore. A
single paper, however, was smuggled into the
hands of a Burgher, and was the means of con
veying 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 muti
lated letters to private individuals it was learned
that so far from being a conquered country
under the heel of a rigorous French military ad
ministration, Holland was a free and independ
ent republic; that the Stadtholderate had been
abolished by the free-will action of the nation,
and that France was in friendly diplomatic re
lations with the Dutch Republic.
Thereupon, the Commissioner and his coun
cil 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 THE AFRICANDERS
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. More
over, 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.
By order of the council, on the night of the
29th of June, Simonstown was abandoned as
untenable. All the provisions there were de
stroyed, 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.

PRESIDENT kruger.

ARMED CONFLICT 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 govern
ment would grant them amnesty for the past
and pledge a reasonable redress of their griev
ances 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 circula
tion, 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 re
sponse from the government, they resolved to
aid in the defense of the country, and at the

50 THE AFRICANDERS
same time continue to assert their right to self-
government. In accordance therewith a com
pany 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 Swell-
endam, 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 sta
tioned at Cape Town and along the road to the
camp as pickets.
Hostile operations came on very slowly. Ad
miral Elphinstone seized three more Dutch mer
chant ships that were lying in Simon's Bay or
the 9th of July. On the 14th he landed four
hundred and fifl y soldiers, who occupied Simons
town, and strengthened the post a week later
by adding four hundred marines.
Strangely enough, neither the English com
manders 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

ARMED CONFLICT 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 be
ginning 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 engage
ment opened. On the other hand, the invad
ing 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 THE AFRICANDERS
of a French squadron appearing in Table Bay
to co-operate with the Dutch colonists. In
view of all the circumstances the British com
manders 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 be
came evident to the Dutch officers at Muizen
burg that the British were about to attack. A
column of sixteen hundred infantry and ma
rines was advancing from Simonstown. Two
small gunboats, and the ships' launches, carry
ing 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 moun
tain facing False Bay on the west, the camp
looking south and east, for it was at the north
west 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 Muizen
burg the roadway was narrow, having the water

ARMED CONFLICT 53
on one side and the steep mountain, only a few
paces away, on the other. The mountain ter
minates 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 shal
low 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 sin
gle 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 THE AFRICANDERS
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 pur
suers, 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

ARMED CONFLICT 55
stand behind the Sandvlei, as he might have done
with a well-protected front, De Lille continued
his flight to Deip 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 infan
try 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. Not
withstanding 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 be
hind some sandhills on their flank — the detach-

56 THE AFRICANDERS
ment that had come from Cape Town and
camped on the plain during the night. Assum
ing that the flight of De Lille and the movement
of this body were in the carrying out of an am
buscade, 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 detach
ment, 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 Deip River.
De Lille's conduct in the field caused wide
spread 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

ARMED CONFLICT 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 impos
sible to restrain their fury.
The letter of the British commanders was laid

58 THE AFRICANDERS
before the Commissioner's council, the council
lors 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 trans
mitted to the British officers the decision of the
people, notifying them that the colony would
still be defended.
Notwithstanding the brave front thus pre
sented 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 Swellen-
dam, and the slaves in Stellenbosch and Draken-
stein, 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 orig
inal strength by the enlistment of foreign pan-
dours, native half-breeds and Hottentots were

Armed conflict 59
unsuccessful. Only the burgher infantry, num
bering 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 out
posts on the Steenberg. The attack was gal
lantly 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 I40 promised them
for good conduct had not been paid, and that
their rations of spirits were too small. Commis
sioner Sluysken so far pacified them with prom
ises of redress that they returned to the ranks,
but from that time they were disaffected and sul
len, and their service was of little value.
The Dutch officers had planned a night at
tack in force on the British camp at Muizenburg.
When they were about to attempt it, there ar
rived, 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 AFRICANDERS
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 col
onists calling upon them to give peaceable ad
mission 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 oclock
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 sup
port of the regular troops at Cape Town. A
part of the burgher force was sent out to
strengthen the Dutch camp at Wynberg, about

ARMED CONFLICT 6l
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 seven
teen 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 prac
tically useless as weapons of offense against the
advancing army. Certain officers of the artillery
and of the burgher militia contingent remon
strated against his plan of battle, but it was in
vain, and when the English came within gun
fire he retreated with the greater part of the regu
lars. 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 cav
alry that Commissioner Sluysken, Colonel Gor
don, and most of the officers of the regular force
intentionally fought to lose — that so far as the
republican government then prevailing in Hoi-

62 THE AFRICANDERS
land 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 cap
ture 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 keep
ing out of range of the castle guns.
The commissioner's council was convened at
six o'clock in the evening of the 14th of Septem
ber to consider a Very serious situation. A Brit
ish 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 hun
dred 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

ARMED CONFLICT 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 po
litical 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 hostili
ties 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 Sep
tember. As a result of conference between the rep
resentatives of the Cape government and the
British commanders the following terms of ca
pitulation were agreed to: The Dutch troops
were to surrender as prisoners of war, but their
officers might remain free in Cape Town or re-

64 THE AFRICANDERS
turn to Europe on their parole, of honor not to
serve against Great Britain during the continu
ance of hostilities. No new taxes were to be lev
ied, 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 prop
erty 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 mort
gage. 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 Elphin
stone. 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 form
ally closed its last session and its existence.
The ceremonial in connection with the capitu
lation took place at three o'clock in the after
noon of Wednesday, the 16th of September, 1795.

ARMED CONFLICT 65
Twelve hundred British infantry and two hun
dred 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. Lieuten
ant Marnitz, in writing of these events, empha
sized 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 THE AFRICANDERS
there is a wide disparity between the always
strong and defiant words in which they an
nounced, 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 re
publicanism 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 bewil
dering rapidity — something that would reinstate
the Prince of Orange as Stadtholder of the Neth
erlands, 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 pre
vent Napoleon from occupying so important a
naval station and half-way house to the British
possessions in India. The second seizure was

ARMED CONFLICT. 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 THE AFRICANDERS

CHAPTER IV.
THE AFRICANDERS' FIRST TREK TO THE NORTH.
l806— 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 re
gime 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 de
scended, and the English were cognate nations.
Though separated as to national life and history

FIRST TREK 69
by fourteen centuries, they possessed the same
fundamental principles that give tone to charac
ter — 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 inter
course, 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 for
bidden, 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 peo-

70 THE AFRICANDERS
pies became friendly and began to intermarry.
In 1820 the British government promoted emi
gration 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 con
tinental 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 com
mon origin more than fourteen hundred years
before — if they had any knowledge of it. To them

FIRST TREK 7 1
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 degen
erate 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 farm
ers, it is true, living in touch with the towns ; but
most of them were stockmen roaming in a pas
toral 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 Brit
ish 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.
A single incident, of no great proportions in
itself, must be given a separate mention among

"J2 THE AFRICANDERS
the causes of estrangement between the two civi
lized 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 tie
accused his neighbors rallied to his defense, and
a brief resistance was offered to the serving of
the warrant. The uprising — a mere neighbor
hood affair— was easily suppressed. Several
prisoners were taken, six of whom were con
demned to death. Five of the condemned were
hanged, and their women — who had fought be
side them — were compelled to stand by and wit
ness 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 folk
lore, becoming, and remaining to this day, a
part of the nursery education of every Africander
child. They named the ridge on which the exe
cution took place, "Schlachter's Nek," which,
being interpreted, is "Butcher's Ridge." Canon

LIGHTHOUSE, DURBAN.

FIRST TREK 73
Knox Little, in his late work on South Africa, is
authority for the statements that Lord Somer
set 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 Afri
canders. The cruel act — justified by the doers
as a piece of necessary firmness — caused bitter
and widespread resentment at the time, and con
tinues 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 pro-

74 THE AFRICANDERS
ceedings. In the forms of government changes
were made which greatly reduced the share for
merly 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. Be
tween 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 al
lowed to return to their old haunts, where they
once more became a source of constant appre
hension 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

FIRST TREK 75
many things into active flame, arose out of the
slave question. To the great detriment of their
manhood and womanhood the early Dutch colo
nists resorted to slave labor. From 1658 on
ward 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 ob
structed 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 mission
aries came from England, where the anti-slavery
sentiment was fast becoming dominant, and from
1810 the English missionaries were cordially dis
liked by the colonists because they openly es
poused the cause of the slaves and reported every
case of cruelty to them that came to their knowl
edge. Possibly they sometimes exaggerated, as
it has been asserted of them, but this may be ex
cused 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 to
wards the servile classes. In 1828, to the great

j6 THE AFRICANDERS
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 fol
lowed 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 do
minions, in 1834. To provide compensation to
slave-owners parliament set apart the sum of
£20,000,000, to be distributed to the several col
onies 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 irrita
tion was felt when it was found that the certifi
cates 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 im
poverished 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. Hith
erto the Africanders had been able to indulge

FIRST TREK TJ
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 mis
sionaries; they had been forced to transact all
their official and legal business in a foreign lan
guage 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 inter
ference of the home government ; and now their
slave property, which they had acquired under
law, had been taken away without adequate com
pensation, 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 independ
ent 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 un-

78 THE AFRICANDERS
dertaken 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 Trans
vaal 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 ara
ble and pasture lands. Within it, and bordering
close to it on the northwest, were the fierce
Zulus ; and it abounded with big game and enor
mous 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 fore
saw for themselves under the new government
set up in Cape Colony. They made choice of the

FIRST TREK 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 at
tachment to slavery. But condemnation of that
part of their complex motives should be mod
ified 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 insti
tution," 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 senti
ment embodied in the American Declaration of
Independence that, being created equal, all men
have sacred rights to "life, liberty, and the pur
suit of happiness."
After discounting fairly the nobility of their

80 THE AFRICANDERS
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 in
justices done them in several matters, and that
they were supported in the hazardous undertak
ing by a courage equal to that of the Pilgrim
Fathers in venturing into the New England wil
derness. Not inaptly they compared themselves to
Israel forsaking Egypt and beginning the long
wilderness journey to a land of promise, think
ing it not unlikely that the British governor, like
Pharaoh, would pursue after them and try to
turn them back. But their Pharaoh, after con
sulting 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 be
gan, 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 ap
pointed beforehand, where, at necessary inter
vals of time, all might come together for mutual
encouragement and counsel. The men carried

FIRST TREK 8l
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 Afri
canders set forth, traveling in large covered wag
ons drawn by strings of oxen numbering in some
cases ten and even twelve yoke. It is interest
ing 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 emi
grant Africanders, and of their conflicts with the
warlike aborigines, is romantic to the highest
degree, recalling in some of its features the ad
ventures of the eleventh century crusaders and
of the Spaniards in Mexico in the sixteenth cen
tury. 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 be
yond the Vaal river — the territory of the present
South African Republic — where many of their
number fell in battle with the natives. The re-
6

82 THE AFRICANDERS
mainder 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 Blemfontein. This di
vision 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,
Mosilekatze, was a general of much talent and
energy as well as a brave warrior. The Mata
bele, regarding the Africanders as trespassers
upon their territory, immediately provoked war
by attacking and massacreing 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

FIRST TREK 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 prompti
tude and courage. Hurling their whole strength
against Motsilekatze 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 Mata
bele 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 posses
sion 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 capa
ble leadership of Peter Retief — a man much

84 THE AFRICANDERS
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 ob
tained 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 legisla
ture 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 authori
ties 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 visit-

FIRST TREK 85
ing 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 fare
well 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 at
tack 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, De
cember 16th, 1838, are still observed by the peo
ple 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 Din-

86 THE AFRICANDERS
gaan, made common cause with the Africanders,
and together they drove the warlike king out of
Zululand. Panda was then made king in his broth
er'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.

IN NATAL 87

CHAPTER V
SECOND CONTACT OF AFRICANDER AND BRITON —
IN NATAL.
The British authorities at Cape Colony suf
fered the Africanders to go forth in peace on
their Great Trek in search of isolation and inde
pendence. 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 THE AFRICANDERS
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 fur
ther 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 Brit
ain's maritime supremacy within what had been
considered her own borders. Besides, the colo
nial 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. 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

PRESIDENT STEYN, ORANGE FREE STATE.

IN NATAL 89
the region hitherto formally claimed by the Brit
ish 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 im
provements in South Africa as were formerly
possessed by the Netherlands, but her money
had not bought people.
At this time the British government was un
willing to add to its already too extensive colo
nial possessions and the heavy responsibilities
connected with them. Nevertheless, after care
ful consideration of all that would be involved in
not checking the Africander aspirations and
movements towards independence, it was deter
mined 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 riv-

90 THE AFRICANDERS
ers, 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 diplo
matic correspondence between the Africander
leader, A. W. Pretorius, and the English com
mander — without coming to any terms of agree
ment. 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 Brit
ish force. Captain Smith had written instruc
tions to give the "emigrant farmers" fifteen days

IN NATAL 91
to come to a decision, which time the farmers
used in strengthening their ranks and intrench
ing 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, speak
ing as one having authority, gave the African
ders 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 col
lision, and to keep the English in play till their
friends in Europe could act. In accordance
with this advice the Africanders drew up a dec
laration 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 al
lowed 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 miss-

92 THE AFRICANDERS
ing, 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 dis
tance, crossing two hundred rivers on the way,
in ten days — really in eight, for he was com
pelled by fever to rest two days out of the ten.
Immediately on receipt of the news at Gra
hamstown, 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 African
ders withdrew to a camp about twelve miles
from Port Natal, where they awaited develop-

IN NATAL 93
ments — expecting to be attacked. But the Brit
ish commander was not in a position for imme
diate aggression. His provisions and ammuni
tion were to be landed, and there were safe mag
azines 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 Lieu
tenant-Colonel Cloete, asking if he wished to
confer with them. The reply was to the effect
that no negotiations would be entered into with
out 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 im
possible 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. Pre
torius added, as a reason for this, that they had

94 THE AFRICANDERS
already made over the country to the king of the
Netherlands, and had invoked his protection.
Lieutenant-Colonel Cloetereplied on the same
date, deploring themelancholyprospectof contin
ued 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 inti
mated 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 govern
ment, and assured them that there was every dis
position 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 in
tentions of the King of Holland by a person pos
sessed 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 author
ity, and thus gave these tribes reason to think

IN NATAL 95
that whatever injury done to her rebellious sub
jects must be pleasing to her government.
The diplomatic correspondence was pro
longed 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 particu
lars. The Africanders were to acknowledge
themselves British subjects, but were not re
quired 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 re
stored to the rightful owners or custodians. All
prisoners were to be released, and a general am
nesty was to be proclaimed to all persons who
had been engaged in hostilities against her
Majesty's troops and authority, with the excep
tion of four persons, among whom was Mr. Pre
torius. 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 adjust
ment of the terms of surrender.
The Volksraad of the little Africander repub-

gS THE AFRICANDERS
lie 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, intro
duced 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 re
ceived the new regime, and how they acted
under it, will be the subject of another chapter.
The annexation of the young republic by the
English defeated the first attempt of the African
ders 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 Brit
ish influence in a part of the country which has
come to be called the garden of Africa. More
over, 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 repub
lic 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 his
tory would have necessitated British interference

THE VAAL RIVE

IN NATAL 97
in the general interest of European South Africa.
But one cannot feel perfect confidence in unin
spired 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 sub
dued the savage Zulu tribes and set up a civilized
government of their own, were seized of sacred
rights to peaceful possession and independence.

98 THE AFRICANDERS

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 in
cessant war with the natives; but the enemies
they had to encounter were less formidable than
the Zulus. One tribe, however, and their his
toric 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 oppo
nents they met in diplomacy and war. These
men were Tshaka the Zulu, Khama of the Bech-
uanos, 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.

NORTH OF ORANGE RIVER 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 na
tion. 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 Ba
sutos and the whites came, the Basutos, guided
by their missionaries, were careful to avoid any
fatal breach with the British government. Sev
eral 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 fea
tures to delimitate it from the plain which ex
tends to the Zambesi on the north and to the
Atlantic Ocean on the west. Within this terri
tory the Africander population, in 1843, was not
much more than 15,000. This seems a small

100 THE AFRICANDERS
number in view of the fact that the pioneer emi
grants of 1836 to 1838 had been largely re-en
forced from the Cape colony. But it must be
remembered their life was precarious in the ex
treme ; 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 be
tween 1843 and l&47 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 diffi
culties 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 exces
sive degree they were possessed by a spirit of
individual poise and independence. They de
sired 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

NORTH OF ORANGE RIVER IOl
conquest, and enriched them with captured cat
tle and other spoil, they readily united under
their military leaders and rendered them obedi
ence, but any other form of control they found
irksome. This predilection towards solitary in
dependence 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 popu
lar, and conditioned, entirely, on the will of the
governed. But unity of some kind must be had,
for their very existence depended on acting to
gether against the natives, and against the re
peated claims of the British government to exer
cise sovereignty over the region they occupied.
The first steps towards instituting civil govern
ment 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 coun
try, that such independent neighborhood gov*

102 THE AFRICANDERS
ernments failed to secure the necessary unity of
the whole people in any matter requiring the ag
gregate strength of the whole people. To rem
edy this element of weakness and danger, the
Africanders instituted a kind of federal bond be
tween the little republican communities, in an
elective assembly called the Volksraad — a Coun
cil 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 con
sent rather than upon formal articles of confed
eration, 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 undis
turbed by the British government. The Afri
canders 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 pros
perity it felt responsible. Moreover, the British
authorities at the Cape were under instructions
from the Colonial Office of the home govern
ment to rather contract than expand the scope
of British influence in South Africa. For these

NORTH OF ORANGE RIVER 103
reasons the Cape government cared nothing for
what took place in the outlying regions beyond
the Vaal, unless, indeed, it was some event cal
culated 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 southwest-
ward from the Vaal River to the borders of Cape
Colony. Within that territory there had been fre
quent dissensions between Africander communi
ties. 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 authori
ties. 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 THE AFRICANDERS
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 responsi
bility 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, in
cluding 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 recom
mended by Doctor Philip was that the govern
ment 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 turbu
lent Africanders in the regions north of that fine
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

NORTH OF ORANGE RIVER 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 Gri
quas. It was fondly believed that these three
states, recognized by and in treaty with Great
Britain, would isolate the colony from the dis
turbing and dangerous people to the north of
them. Doctor Philip's promising arrangement dis
appointed 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 pro
visions 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 THE AFRICANDERS
Natal in 1842, was thus extended into the Or
ange River territory.
The Africanders rose up to assert their inde
pendence, 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 dwell
ing north of the Vaal River further interfered
with. The old conditions oi 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

NORTH OF ORANGE RIVER IO7
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 Brit
ish 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, pre
ferring 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 in
volved 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. Pre
torius made overtures to the colonial authorities,
intimating that he and the northern Africanders
desired to make some permanent pacific arrange
ment with Great Britain. The British authori
ties, disavowing all right to control the territory
north of the Vaal, but still claiming the allegi-

108 THE AFRICANDERS
ance of the Aficanders resident therein, appointed
commissioners to negotiate with Mr. Pretorius
and other representatives of the Transvaal group
of emigrants. Subsequently the home authori
ties 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." Hav
ing conferred with all who were concerned per
sonally 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 Brit
ish 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 govern
ment," and it permitted the emigrants to pur
chase 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."

NORTH OF ORANGE 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 emi
grants living in the Soveregnty 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 at
tacked the Basutos with a strong force of regu
lars, 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 op
portunity 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

IIO THE AFRICANDERS
special commissioner appointed to settle the af
fairs 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 Sovereign
ty'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 con
tinuing to supply it with civil and military estab
lishments 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 se
cures 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 char
acter, 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

NORTH OF ORANGE RIVER III
course of nearly thirty years devoted to the pub
lic service." The British Government, weary of the per
petual native wars, disgusted at the late defeat of
the British regulars by Moshesh and his Basutos,
and influenced by the emphatic and very signifi
cant report of their special commissioner, which
report was heartily indorsed by Governor Cath
cart, decided to abandon the Orange River Sov
ereignty altogether. An act of parliament in ac
cordance 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 de
sired to remain subject to the British crown — a
motion was made in the House of Commons
begging the Queen to reconsider the renuncia
tion 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 suf
fer 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 THE AFRICANDERS
By the convention of the 23d of February,
1854, signed at Bloemfontein, the British gov
ernment "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 pro
vided 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 govern
ment 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.
Canon Knox Little, in his "South Africa,"
calls this action of the British government "a
serious blunder." Be that as it may, the Afri-

DOCTOR JAMESON.

NORTH OF ORANGE RIVER I13
canders 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
authoried representatives of the government, ap
pointed expressly to give effect to imperial legis
lation, and can no more be repudiated righte
ously than can a written contract between private
individuals.

114 THE AFRICANDERS

CHAPTER VII.
the Africander's 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 Afri
canders living in that region after it became
British teritory. As has been stated in chapter
V., the English took forcible possession of Natal
in 1843. Two years later it was made a de
pendency of the older colony at the Cape ; in 1856
it was constituted a separate colony, and so re
mains 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 attrac
tive 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

SECOND TREK 115
search of independence. Their course lay north
westward 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 ex
cused for many wars with Bushmen and Kaffirs,
for their very lives depended on either reducing
these to submission or driving them to a safe dis
tance from the white settlements. But the en
slaving of men and women, and, later, of chil
dren under the subterfuge of apprenticeship for
a term of years, cannot be justified ; it was mon
strously incompatable with the insistent demand
for personal freedom for themselves so conspicu-

Il6 THE AFRICANDERS
ous 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 plenti
fully 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 be
cause 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 fac
tion and dissension among themselves. Their
lionlike bravery was perverted into a too great

SECOND TREK 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 ter
ritory, 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 fol
lowed had the effect of segregating them into
family groups widely separated from one an
other, 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 intro
duced 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

Il8 THE AFRICANDERS
Livingstone's house by the force under General
Scholtz. The matter of complaint was that the Ba
quaines had been constantly disturbing the coun
try 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 re
ported that Secheli was making every preparation
for defense.
On the 28th Scholtz marched close by the
town where Secheli was fortified, and camped be
side the town-water, a little distance from the
intrenchments. It being Saturday Scholtz re
solved 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

SECOND TREK II9
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 ar
range 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 ammu
nition, 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 re
served my fire. I am myself provided with can
non. 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 THE AFRICANDERS
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 chal
lenged Scholtz to fight, and added, "If you have
not sufficient ammunition, I will lend you some."
After some further exchanges of diplomatic
courtesies between the African and the Afri
cander the battle began. By six hours of hard
fighting Scholtz carried all the native intrench
ments, killed a large number of the warriors, and
captured many guns and prisoners. The Zulus
still held one fortified ridge of rocks when night
fall 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 pun
ishment on the fugitives and returned the next
day without loss of a man.
General Scholtz's official report of this expe
dition contains the following remarkable state
ment regarding the looting of Doctor Living
stone's house :
"On the ist of September I dispatched Com
mandant P. Schutte with a patrol to Secheli's

SECOND TREK 121
old town ; but he found it evacuated, and the mis
sionary residence broken open by the Kaffirs.
The commandant found, however, two percus
sion rifles ; and the Kaffir prisoners declared that
Livingstone's house, which was still locked, con
tained ammunition, and that shortly before he
had exchanged thirteen guns with Secheli, which
I had also learnt two weeks previously, the mis
sionaries 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 re
solved 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 gun-
maker'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 con
cerning the tools found in the doctor's house and
the guns in various stages of completeness. In
those parts, so distant from carpenters, wagon-

122 THE AFRICANDERS
makers and smiths, it was absolutely necessary
for the explorer to have with him all tools re
quired 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 en
tirely free from the prejudice due to this cause he
would have seen on Doctor Livingstone's prem
ises not an illicit gun factory, but an honest re
pair shop such as any pioneer in those parts must
have.

SLAVERY 12'

CHAPTER VIII.
THE INDEPENDENT AFRICANDER AND SLAVERY.
It will be remembered that the conventions of
1852 and 1854, by which the absolute independ
ence 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 stipula
tion of the treaties which guaranteed their inde
pendence, by liberating such slaves as they pos
sessed and by acquiring no more. It is next in
order, therefore, to consider the manner in which
these obligations were carried out.

124 THE AFRICANDERS
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 en
forcing unpaid service — all of which was in fla
grant violation of the treaties by which the re
publics were established and guaranteed inde
pendence. The new system was defended by those who
devised it and profited by it, as a benevolent in
stitution, 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 remem
bered, in judging of this matter, that these igno-

SLAVERY 125
rant 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 de
vout regard for the Bible. It was a great misfor
tune 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 deduc
tions from scraps of Old Testament history which
were never intended to furnish ideals and stand
ards of virtue and righteousness for later genera
tions. 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 en
slave them, because of the sin of their forefather,
Ham. They seem to have forgotten, too easily,
that the divine entail of evil consequences to fol-

126 THE AFRICANDERS
low 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 genera
tion. Holding such views, they considered
themselves as doing service to God when they
inflicted the degradations, hardships and cruel
ties 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 min
isters because they persisted in teaching Chris
tianity to the people held to be accursed — by
their masters. The Dutch term Zendeling, orig
inally signifying "missionary," was turned into
an epithet of reproach, bearing the new interpre
tation of a petty artisan and pedlar, who, under
pretense of instructing the natives, wandered

SLAVERY 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 Potchesetroom 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 "Grahams-
town Journal" of September 24, 1853, the follow
ing significant incident :
"We are crediby informed that, in a private
interview with Sir G. R. Clark, one of the most

128 THE AFRICANDERS
respectable and loyal Boers, resident on a confis
cated 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 an
other name, leave no reasonable doubt that the
spirit of the compact between the British govern
ment 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

SLAVERY 129
that several lawless individuals were engaged in
obtaining black children from neighboring tribes,
and disposing of them under the name of appren
tices. 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 be
come slaveholders, they could not carry such in
clinations into practice. The acts of a few of the
most unruly individuals in the country might,
however, endanger the peace and even the inde
pendence of the republic. The presidnt, there
fore, 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 land-
drosts." Treating of a later period (1864-65), he re
turns to this matter, saying :
"A subject that was much discussed in Eu
rope, as well as in South Africa, during this
period was the existence of slavery in the repub
lic. Charges against the burghers of reducing

I3O THE AFRICANDERS
weak and helpless blacks to a condition of servi
tude 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 in
dividual 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 1 2th 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 pros
perous 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

SLAVERY I3I
of the Bantu. In 1877 tnere were, at the lowest
estimate, six times as many black people living
in a state of semi-independence within the bor
ders 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 con
quering 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 THE AFRICANDERS
children of their hereditary slaves, a few adven
turous 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 rn slave-
ships were apprenticed to individuals. There
would have been danger in the system if the de
mand 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 de
stroyers 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,

SLAVERY 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 Afri
cander communities after they became independ
ent. 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 chil
dren, 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 en-

t34 THE AFRICANDERS
forced servitude under indentures that were le
gally merchantable "was the slavery of the South
African Republic." Undoubtedly ; and, so far as
is known, no other form of slavery was ever seri
ously 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 "appren
ticeship" which covered a marketable property-
right in the human chattel.

IN THE FREE STATE 1 35

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 conti
nental Europe. Judged by the grim rumors that
were afloat everywhere, South Africa was a dan
gerous 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 peo
ple was turned towards Cape Colony. The Brit
ish government of this time stimulated immigra
tion to that field so liberally that in five years be
tween four and five thousand loyal subjects from
the mother country removed to the Cape. Later,

I36 THE AFRICANDERS
a considerable number of disbanded German sol
diers 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.
Industries natural to the climate and soil were
slowly but steadily developed. Sheep and cat
tle 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 col
ony but the frequent Kaffir invasions across the
eastern border. These cost much loss of life and
property to the raided settlements, but the ex
pense of the resulting wars was borne by the
home government. Under British rule the pop
ulation 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

general joubert.

IN THE FREE STATE 1 37
found as frequent cause to complain of the home
government as of their governors. The occa
sional 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 pub
lic demand for representative institutions.
A legislature, consisting of a Legislative
Council and a House of Assembly, was estab
lished, both to be elected on a franchise wide

I38 THE AFRICANDERS
enough to include people of any race or color
holding the reasonable property qualification.
The sole check upon the colonial legislature re
tained 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 colo
nial 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 peo
ple 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 develop
ment of mineral resources in South Africa which
created immense wealth and furnished the ele
ments 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

IN The free state 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 con
tact between Boer and Briton — this time begin
ning 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 re
publics of the Orange Free State and the Trans
vaal. There can be no doubt of the sincerity of
the British government in taking this action.
The prevailing desires actuating both the parlia
ment 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 gov
ernment and its northern neighbors were friend
ly. The first occurrence that disturbed the wel
come 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, Wynburg
and Smithfield districts. These were taken pos-

I40 THE AFRICANDERS
session 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 epi
sode, 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.
Roshof, to take any steps necessary to prevent
intrusion upon the territory of the State. After
much and very insincere diplomatic correspond
ence, the time of which was used by the Free
State government in collecting the forces of its
western and northern divisions, and by the Ba
sutos 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 con
vinced 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 de
pended 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 condi
tion of the Free State, and imploring his media-

IN THE FREE STATE I4I
tion. Sir George, after obtaining the sanction of
the House Assembly to such a course, imme
diately 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 oc
casioned by these forays the Free State was aided
by a force of burghers from the Transvaal Re
public, 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 con
fer with the Free State Volksraad on the matter
of union — a measure considered by many the
only means of saving the country from its sav
age foes.
While the conference on union was in prog
ress there arrived, on the nth of June, a letter

142 THE AFRICANDERS
from Sir George Grey announcing that in case
an agreement to unite the two republics were
concluded, the conventions of 1852 and 1854 —
guaranteeing their separate independence —
would no longer be considered binding by Great
Britain. Undoubtedly this action evinced a de
sire, not to say a determination, that the Free
State should find safety not by union with the
sister republic to the north, but by coming again
under British sovereignty and forming one of a
group of colonies to be united in a great British
Dominion in South Africa. The negotiations for
union were dropped on the receipt of Sir George's
letter, and both parties resolved to appoint com
missioners to confer with him after peace with
the Basutos should be arranged.
It was not until the 20th of August that Sir
George Grey arrived at Bloemfontein to act as
mediator between Moshesh and the Free State.
While preliminaries were being discussed the
governor received urgent dispatches from Lon
don ordering him to send all available troops to
India, where the Sepoy rebellion was raging.
It became, therefore, a matter of supreme impor
tance to establish peace between the Free State
and the Basutos at once — for not a soldier could
safely be spared until that was accomplished.

In the free state 143
On the 29th of September the treaty was com
pleted and signed. It settled a new frontier for
the Free State next to Basutoland, and bound
Moshesh to either punish marauders of his peo
ple himself, or consent that the Free State au
thorities should do so.
This peace lasted only seven years. In 1865
new troubles arose leading to a renewal of war
between the Free State and Moshesh. Again
the governor of Cape Colony acted as mediator,
but his decisions were rejected by the Basutos,
and new hostilities began. This time, by a
heroic effort made in 1868, the whites defeated
and scattered the Basutos with great slaughter,
and were at the point of utterly breaking their
power, when the always politic Moshesh appealed
to the British High Commissioner at the Cape
to take his people under British protection.
The commissioner doubtless considered the in
terests of Cape Colony which, in the event of a dis
persion of the Basutos, might be overrun by the
fugitives, and suffer injury thereby. And it is
evident that he was unwilling that the Free State
should strengthen itself, beyond the necessity of
ever seeking readmission to the British domin
ions, by the annexation of Basutoland. So, look
ing to the safety of the old colony, and to the

144

THE AFRICANDERS

hope of some day adding thereto the Orange
Free State, the commissioner took the defeated
Basutos under the wing of the imperial govern
ment and declared them British subjects.
The Free State was allowed to retain a con
siderable area of good land which it had con
quered on the north side of the Caledon River,
but the adjustment reached was anything but sat
isfactory. The British had now established their
authority to the south of the republic all the way
from Cape Colony to Natal, and, thus, had ex
tinguished a second time the persistent African
der hope of extending their territory to the sea.
Thus, in 1869, recommenced the British advance
toward the interior.
Another momentous step towards enlarging
the sphere of British influence was taken almost
immediately. Diamonds were discovered in
1869, in a district lying between the Modder and
the Vaal rivers, where the present town of Kim-
berley stands. Within a few months thousands
of diggers and speculators from all parts of South
Africa, Europe, America, and from some parts of
Asia, thronged into the region and transformed
it into a place of surpassing value and interest.
The question of ownership was raised at once.
The Orange Free State claimed it. The Trans-

IN THE FREE STATE 145
vaal Republic claimed it. It was claimed by Nich
olas Waterboer, a Griqua captain, son of old An-
driesWaterboer; his claimbeing based onan abor
tive treaty made with the elder Waterboer in 1834,
when, at Doctor Philip's suggestion, the attempt
was made to interpose between the old colony
and the northern populations a line of three na
tive states under British protection. And it was
claimed by a native Batlapin chief.
Three of these claimant — the Transvaal Re
public, Nicholas Waterboer for the Griquas, and
the Batlapin chief for his clan — agreed to settle
the conflict by arbitration, naming the governor
of Natal as arbitrator. The governor promptly
awarded the disputed ownership to Nicholas Wa
terboer the Griqua, who as promptly placed him
self under the British government, which, with
equal promptitude, constituted the district a
crown colony under the name of Griqualand.
The Orange Free State, not having been a party
to the arbitration, protested, and was afterwards
sustained by the decision of a British court,
which found that Waterboer's claim to the ter
ritory was null and void. But the colony had
been constituted and the British flag unfurled
over it before the finding of the court could stay
proceedings. 10

1^6 THE AFRICANDERS
Without admitting or denying the Free State's
contention, the British government obtained a
quitclaim title for a money consideration. It
was represented that a district so difficult to keep
in order, because of the transient and turbulent
character of the population, should be under the
control of a more vigorous government than that
of the Free State. Finally, the British offered
and the Free State authorities accepted, £90,000.
in settlement of any claim the republic might
have to the territory of Griqualand.
The incident closed with the payment and ac
ceptance, in 1876, of the price agreed upon. But
the Africanders of the Free State had the feeling
at the time — and it never ceased to rankle in their
breasts — that they had been made the victims of
sharp practice; that the diamond-bearing terri
tory had been rushed into the possession of the
British and made a crown colony without giving
them a fair opportunity to prove their claim to it ;
and that, while the price offered and paid was a
tacit recognition of the validity of their claim, it
was so infinitesimal in proportion to the rights
conveyed as to imply that in British practice not
only is possession nine points in ten of the law
but that it also justifies the holder in keeping
back nine parts out of ten of the value.

IN THE FREE STATE 147
Nor was this the only British grievance com
plained of at this time by the Free State. The
project of uniting the two republics for greater
strength and mutual safety had been vetoed for
no apparent reason than to keep them weak so
that they might the sooner become willing to re
enter the British dominions in South Africa. And
the British High Commissioner at the Cape had
taken the vanquished Basutos and their territory
under imperial protection at the moment when
the victorious Free State was about to reduce
them to permanent submission, and to extend its
territory to the sea — again interposing the arm
of Great Britain to prevent the strengthening of
the republic by its proposed acquisition of Basu
toland and the gaining of a seaport at the mouth
of the St. John River.
Nevertheless, the Orange Free State accepted
the situation philosophically and, outwardly, con
tinued on friendly terms with the British gov
ernment until the outbreak of war between that
power and the Africanders of the Transvaal in
1899.

I48 THE AFRICANDERS

CHAPTER X.
THIRD CONTACT OF AFRICANDER AND BRITON — IN
THE TRANSVAAL.
The aggressive policy of the British, which
had served to widen and deepen the breach be
tween them and the Africanders of the Free State,
was felt in the Transvaal Republic, also, and led
to an open rupture in 1880. It will be necessary
to trace somewhat carefully the conditions and
events which brought on that conflict.
The Africanders who had settled beyond the
Vaal River were of a ruder sort than their breth
ren of the Orange River district. Moreover, the
reckless, unprincipled, and even criminal classes
were attracted to the Transvaal from various
parts of South Africa, seeking freedom from the
restraints experienced under the stricter govern
ment prevailing in the British colonies. These
occasioned much scandal, and provoked many
conflicts with the Kaffirs by their lawlessness and
violence along the border and in the wilder dis
tricts of the territory.

IN THE TRANSVAAL 149
The farmers of the Vaal in a general way con
sidered themselves one people, but had become
grouped in several districts separated by consid
erable distances. Thus, in 1852, there were four
separate communities — Potchefstroom, Utrecht,
Lyndenburg, and Zoutspansberg, each having its
volksraad and president. There was no co-ordi
nate action of the whole for internal administra
tion and public improvement, but for defense
against the natives there was a sort of federative
union — more a matter of mutual understanding
and consent than of loyalty to a formal written
document. That there was occasional independ
ent action by a single community in reference to
outside matters is evident from the invasion of
the Orange Free State by the people of the
Potchefstroom district in 1857, under the leader
ship of Mr. Pretorius. The object was to con
quer the Free State, and was abandoned only
when it was found that the young sister republic
was disposed and prepared to defend itself. This
invasion resulted in a treaty by which the inde
pendence, boundaries and mutual obligations of
the two repubilcs were fully defined and recog
nized. In 1858 a single volksraad was chosen for all
the four districts north of the Vaal, and the

1 50 THE AFRICANDERS
"Grondwet" on Fundamental Law — an instru
ment in the nature of a federal constitution — was
prepared by delegates specially elected for that
purpose. This was adopted at once by Potchef
stroom and Zoutspansberg. In i860 Lynden
burg and Utrecht followed their example. Al
though it has been contended that the "Grond
wet" is not to be regarded as a fixed constitu
tion, like that of the United States of America,
the people of the Transvaal have looked upon it
as a sufficient federative bond for the union of the
four semi-independent districts in one nation
ality. The practical union of all was delayed,
however, by a civil war which broke out in 1862,
and had a most disastrous influence on the future
of the country.
This internal strife grew out of the election of
the president of the Transvaal Republic, the
younger Pretorius, to the presidency of the
Orange Free State. It was hoped by his parti
sans in both republics that the dual presidency
would help to bring about the desired union of
the Free State and the Transvaal under one gov
ernment. While Mr. Pretorius was absent in
the Free State, on a six months' leave granted by
the volksraad of the Transvaal, a faction hostile
to him began to protest against this double dig-

IN THE TRANSVAAL 151
nity being enjoyed by any one man, and to argue
that the advantages of union would be largely
with the Free State. Hostility to Mr. Pretorius
grew apace until it was strong enough to get a
resolution passed in the volksraad forbidding him
to perform any executive act north of the Vaal
during the six months of his slay in the Free
State, and requiring him to give an account of his
proceedings at the expiration of his leave.
On the 10th of September, i860, Mr. Pre
torius appeared before the volksraad of the
Transvaal, accompanied by a commission from
the Free State appointed to ask for a further
leawe of absence for the president, and to further
the interests of union. When Pretorius offered
to give an account of his proceedings as president
of the Free State, the opposition raised the point
that it was manifestly illegal for any one to be
president of the Transvaal Republic and of the
Orange Free State at the same time, for it was
provided in their constitution that during his
term of office the president should follow no
other occupation, and Mr. Pretorius was pressed
to resign one office or the other.
Pretorius at once resigned the presidency of
the Transvaal; but his partisans held a mass
meeting at Potchefstroom, on the 8th and 9th of

152 THE AFRICANDERS
October, at which revolutionary proceedings
were taken. It was resolved, almost unani
mously, that the volksraad no longer enjoyed the
confidence of the people they represented and
must be held as having ceased to exist ; that Mr.
Pretorius should remain president of the Trans
vaal Republic and have a year's leave of absence
to bring about union with the Free State, Mr.
Stephanas Schoeman — instead of Mr. Grobbelear
— to be acting president during his absence ; and
that before the return of Mr. Pretorius to resume
his duties a new volksraad should be elected.
The new election was so manipulated that
only a thousand burghers voted, and of these
more than seven hundred declared in favor of the
resolutions of the Potchefstroom meeting. The
committee that effected this clever political strat
egy was composed of Messrs. D. Steyn, Preller,
Lombard, Spruyt, and Bodestein. The new act
ing president, Mr. Schoeman, assumed official
duty immediately.
With amazing inconsistency — for he was
thought to be a loyal friend of Mr. Pretorius —
Schoeman called a meeting of the old volksraad
that had been dissolved by the revolution. He
held his office from the same authority that had
declared this body to have forfeited confidence,

pietermaritzburg.

IN THE TRANSVAAL 1 53
and to be non-existent, and yet he acknowledged
its legal existence. The old volksraad met on
the 14th of January, 1861, and after a session of
two hours the majority of the members resigned,
being convinced of the general antagonism of the
people. Not content to let matters rest in a
peaceful acquiescence in the revolution, Mr.
Schoeman called the old volksraad together a
second time, under armed protection, and pro
cured an order for legal proceedings to be insti
tuted against the committee that had carried out
the Potchefstroom resolutions. A court consist
ing of two landdrosts — one of whom was Cor
nelius Potgieter, their bitterest political enemy
— tried the committee for sedition, on the 14th of
February, found them guilty and sentenced each
to pay a fine of £100, except Mr. Bodenstein,
whose fine was only £15.
These proceedings led to great disturbances
throughout the republic, and, finally, to war.
Schoeman assembled an armed force to support
his authority. Thereupon, Commandant Paul
Kruger, of Rustenburg, called out the burghers
of his district and marched to Pretoria for the
purpose of driving out Schoeman and establish
ing a better government.
Among the expedients resorted to to prevent

154 THE AFRICANDERS
bloodshed, a new volksraad was elected, a new
acting president was appointed, and for several
months there were two rival governments in the
Transvaal. Acting President Schoeman, sup
ported by a strong party, persisted in endeavors
to rule the country. So grievous a state of an
archy prevailed that Kruger resolved to put an
end to it by the strong hand. Schoeman and his
partisans retreated from Pretoria to Potchef
stroom, where he was besieged by the burgher
force under Kruger. The loss of life in the bom
bardment, and one sortie by the garrison, was
not great; but Schoeman became disheartened
and fled, on the night of the 9th of October, into
the Free State, accompanied by his principal ad
herents. A few days later, Kruger having moved his
force to Klip River, Schoeman re-entered Potchef
stroom, rallied some eight hundred men around
him, and Kruger returned to give him battle. At
this critical point President Pretorius interposed
as mediator, and an agreement was reached by
which immediate hostilities were prevented.
Schoeman, however, continued to agitate.
Under the terms of agreement new elections
were held by which W. C. Janse Van Rensburg

IN THE TRANSVAAL 1 55
was chosen president over Mr. Pretorius, and
Paul Kruger was made Commandant-General.
But the tribulations of the Transvaal were by
no means over. On the pretense that the ballot
papers had been tampered with the standard of
revolt was again raised — this time by Jan Viljoen.
The first encounter was against Kruger, who had
underestimated the strength of the new rebellion.
Later, on the 5th of January, 1864, a battle was
fought in which Viljoen was defeated and com
pelled to retreat to a fortified camp on the Lim
popo. Again Mr. Pretorius offered himself as medi
ator, and by common consent a new election was
held in which Pretorius was chosen president by
a large majority over Van Rensburg. With Pre
torius as president, and Paul Kruger as com
mandant-general, the government was of such
harmony and strength as prevented any further
open rebellion on the part of disaffected burghers.
But though the civil strife was ended, the in
jury it had inflicted was well nigh incurable. It
is to be reckoned chief among the causes of the
weakness in after years that made it possible —
and, in the judgment of some, necessary and justi
fiable — for the British government to thrust in
its strong hand and subvert the independent but

156 THE AFRICANDERS
tottering republic that it might substitute there
for a more stable colonial administration. The
treasury had been impoverished. Taxes were
uncollected and irrecoverable. Salaries and
other public liabilities were heavily in arrears.
Worse than all these, the republic had forfeited
the confidence of other nations to that degree
that no one believed in its stability. Even its
nearest neighbor and sister republic, the Orange
Free State, no longer desired union, preferring
to stand alone before the constant menace of the
Basutos rather than to be joined with a country
wherein efficient government seemed to have per
ished. To make matters still worse, the discord
among the whites was turned to advantage by
their colored foes.
When the several factions in the Transvaal
united on Mr. Pretorius as their executive head,
in 1864, the white population, all told, did not
exceed 30,000 — less than one person to three
square miles — while the blacks in the same terri
tory numbered hundreds of thousands. During
the three years succeeding 1861 the prevailing an
archy made it impossible to give attention to ces
sions of land agreed to by the Zulu chiefs. In
consequence, the boundaries had not been fixed,
and these districts remained unoccupied by the

IN THE TRANSVAAL 1 57
whites. With the restoration of something like
order in 1864, the government realized that its
relations with some of its native neighbors re
quired definition and formal settlement. This
was successfully done, and the lines mutually
agreed upon between the whites and the native
authorities were duly marked.
A leading spirit among the Zulus of this time
was Cetawayo, a chief of remarkable subtlety and
power. In less than two months after the settle
ment and marking of boundaries in the southern
region of the Transvaal Cetawayo found some
pretext for repudiating his bargain, appeared on
the borders of Utrecht at the head of a Zulu
army, in February, 1865, and removed the land
marks so lately set up. During the negotiations
that followed, Cetawayo did not appear at any
conference, but the presence of his force on the
border so far affected the final settlement that the
boundary was changed near the Pongolo River,
restoring a small district in that region to Zulu-
land. This was a time of perpetual struggle with the
blacks. Some of the tribes had been made trib
utary to the Republic, others were practically in
dependent, and with these frequent and cruel
wars were waged. Unspeakable atrocities were

158 THE AFRICANDERS
perpetrated on both sides — the Kaffirs slaughter
ing without mercy such white families as they
were able to surprise in a defenseless state, and
the Africanders inflicting vengeance without
mercy when they came upon the savages in kraal
or mountain stronghold.
The whites could always defeat the natives in
a pitched battle, but to hold so vast a number in
subjection was beyond their power. And they
seem to have relished everything connected with
an expedition against the blacks but the expense ;
they had an invincible dislike to paying taxes for
any purpose.
In a rude way these Transvaal Africanders
lived in the enjoyment of plenty derived from
their flocks and herds, but metal currency was al
most unknown to them. Such business as they
transacted was mostly in the nature of barter.
They were yet too crude and primitive in their
ideas to value aright the benefits secured to a
civilized community by a well organized and
firmly administered government controlling fiscal
and other domestic matters of general interest, as
well as directing foreign policies.
The public treasury was in a state of chronic
emptiness. The paper currency depreciated
more and more till in 1870 its purchasing value

IN THE TRANSVAAL 1 59
was only twenty-five per cent of its face value.
Public works and proper internal administration
were unknown. Largely, every man's will was
his law, which he was disposed to enforce upon
others — whether black or white — by the strong
hand. In 1872 Mr. Pretorius became cordially dis
liked by the people and was forced to resign the
presidency, because he had accepted the finding
of the arbitration which awarded the diamond
fields to Nicholas Waterboer instead of to the
Transvaal Republic. His successor, Mr. Bur
gess, a native of Cape Colony and an unfrocked
clergyman of the Dutch Reformed Church, was
an unfortunate choice. Learned, eloquent and
energetic, he was nevertheless deficient in prac
tical business wisdom and in political acumen,
and he was much distrusted by the burghers on
account of his theological opinions. Some of
them charged that he was guilty of maintaining
that the real Devil differed from the pictures of
him in the old Dutch Bibles, in that he had no
tail. For this and worse forms of heterodoxy he
was blamed as the cause of the calamities ex
perienced by the nation during his presidency.
Mr. Burgers is said to have formed many vision
ary though patriotic plans for the development

l60 THE AFRICANDERS
of his country and the extension of the African
der power over the whole of South Africa, but his
people were not of the sort that could appreciate
them, nor had he command of resources suffi
cient to carry them out.
Then drew near the culmination of evil — the
inevitable consequence of weakness in numbers ;
of indisposition to submit to a strong govern
ment; of a treasury impoverished by civil war;
of continual conflict with the savage blacks ; and,
withal, of a state of anarchy among themselves.
In 1876 the portents of approaching calamity
multiplied. In a war with Sikukuni, a powerful
Kaffir chief paramount in the mountainous dis
trict to the northeast, the Africanders were
worsted so completely that they returned to
their homes disheartened and in confusion. On
the southeast their border was threatened by
hordes of Zulus under Cetawayo, now manifest
ing a decided disposition to attack.
In fact, the weak and disordered condition of
the republic exposed its own people — many of
whom were British subjects — to immediate and
frightful danger. Moreover, it constituted a
danger to all the European communities in South
Africa. In the event of two such chiefs as Siku
kuni and Cetawayo joining forces against the

IN THE TRANSVAAL l6l
whites and prevailing, as they seemed able and
likely to do, over the frontier civilization in the
Transvaal Republic, nothing could prevent them
from moving in strength against the Free State
on the south, and Natal on the southeast, and
later, against Cape Colony itself.
It was not without cause, therefore, that the
British government resolved to avert the threat
ened conflict. There were two possible ways of
doing this. Britain might have taken the field as
a friendly ally, making common cause with the
Transvaal Republic against a common danger,
and leaving its independence intact. The other
way was to annex the Transvaal territory, sub
vert its republican government, and give it the
status and administration of a British colony.
There is no record to show that the British gov
ernment ever entertained the thought of acting
as the ally of the republic. On the contrary, Sir
Theophilus Shepstone was appointed as imperial
commissioner to visit the scene of danger and ex
amine into the state of the country. He was
secretly instructed and authorized to proclaim
the immediate annexation of the Transvaal terri
tory to the British dominions in South Africa in
case he deemed it necessary for the general safety

3 )

l62 THE AFRICANDERS
to do so, and if, in his judgment, a majority of
the people would favor the step.
After three months spent in observing and
studying the situation Sir Theophilus Shepstone,
acting under the secret instructions given him, on
the 12th of April, 1877, declared The Transvaal
Republic annexed, for protection, to British do
minions in South Africa. His act was indorsed
officially by the resident British High Commis
sioner at the Cape, and by the Secretary of the
Colonial Office in England. In 1879 the Terri
tory was declared a crown colony of Great Brit
ain. Thus, in the third contact of Boer and Brit
on, an independent republic was deprived of its
independence by the self-same power that had
guaranteed it in 1852, and was reduced to the
status of a crown colony without the formal con
sent of its people and against the protests of many
of them. Before closing this chapter of events con
nected with this arbitrary and startling measure,
it will be well to consider some further facts which
belong to the setting in which the act should be
viewed. Mr. Burgers, the president, had repeat
edly warned the people that unless certain re
forms could be effected they must lose their inde
pendence. They agreed with him, but did noth-

IN THE TRANSVAAL 1 63
ing to carry out the necessary reforms, nor would
they pay taxes. Mr. Burgers was not strong
with any party in the country. One section of
the people were for Paul Kruger, his rival candi
date for the approaching presidential election.
Another party — principally English settlers — fa
vored annexation. Besides, he had estranged
the great body of the people by his heterodox
opinions in theology. Being helpless, Mr. Bur
gers recorded his personal protest against an
nexation and returned to the Cape, where he
lived on a pension granted him in consideration
of his having spent all his private fortune in the
service of his country.
Mr. Kruger — then the vice-president, the en
tire executive council, and the volksraad, all pro
tested against the annexation; and delegates
were sent to London to carry the protest to the
foot of the British throne. The mass of the peo
ple made no resistance at the time, nor did they
express much displeasure; but, a little later, a
large majority of them signed a petition praying
for a reversal of the act of annexation. Their
temporary acquiescence in the loss of independ
ence was due, no doubt, to the depressing fears
that had so lately burdened them, and a sense of

164 THE AFRICANDERS
relief in knowing that now the Kaffir invasion
that had theatened their very existence would be
repelled by the military power of Great Britain.

FIRST WAR 165

CHAPTER XI.
the Africander's first war of independence.
Notwithstanding their native love of inde
pendence, and their protest to the British throne
against the act of annexation, the Africanders of
the Transvaal might have acquiesced in the Brit
ish rule had they been fairly treated. There
was a good promise of peace at first. The
finances of the country were at once relieved by
the expenditure of English money in liberal
amounts. Numbers of the leading Africanders
retained their official positions at the request of
the British commissioner, Sir Theophilus Shep
stone. It is only reasonable to suppose that the
people at large would have settled down to per
manent content as British subjects had the
affairs of the newly constituted colony been ad
ministered to the satisfaction of the leaders.
But, instead of following a policy dictated
alike by wisdom and righteousness, the very op
posite seems to have been the rule observed in

l66 THE AFRICANDERS
the attempt to govern these new and most dif
ficult subjects of the British crown. A number
of mistakes — so called — were made which, as
even Canon Knox Little admits, were a sufficient
justification of the Africander leaders in plotting
and agitating against the British connection.
The first of these mistakes was the too early
recall of Sir Theophilus Shepstone, who had so
deftly managed the bloodless though arbitrary
annexation, who knew the country well and was
much respected by the people. In place of his
rule as special commissioner was substituted an
administration under Sir Bartle Frere as gov
ernor of Cape Colony and British High Com
missioner for South Africa. There being no rep
resentative government in the Transvaal after
annexation, the administration became, perhaps
necessarily, autocratic both in form and in spirit.
Sir William Owen Lanyon, who had been ap
pointed governor of the Transvaal, was an officer
of some renown in dealing successfully with na
tive uprisings, but proved totally unfit for the
delicate management required in governing the
Africanders. He has been described as haughty
and arrogant in mind, indisposed to excuse the
rudeness of the Transvaal farmers, and incapable
of tolerating the social equality so dear to them.

FIRST WAR 167
His swarthy complexion, also, made against his
popularity, for it suggested the possibility of a
strain of black blood in his veins — a blemish un
pardonable in the eyes of any slaveholding peo
ple. Under his rule complaints were ignored,
taxes were levied and peremptorily collected by
distraint, and soon the latent discontent broke
out into open and active disaffection.
The second mistake — if it does not deserve a
harsher name — was the failure to institute the
local self-government by representatives prom
ised by Sir Theophilus Shepstone when he pro
claimed annexation. The text of that part of the
proclamation reads thus :
"And I further proclaim and make known
that the Transvaal will remain a separate gov
ernment, with its own Laws and Legislature, and
that it is the wish of her Most Gracious Majesty
that it shall enjoy the fullest legislative privileges
compatible with the circumstances of the country
and the intelligence of the people. That ar
rangement will be made by which the Dutch lan
guage will practically be as much the official lan
guage as the English. All laws, proclamations
and government notices will be published in the
Dutch language; and in the courts of law the
same may be done at the option of suitors to a

l68 THE AFRICANDERS
case. The laws so in force in the State will be
retained until altered by competent legislative
authority." Not one of these promises was ever fulfilled.
The volksraad was never convened. The prom
ised constitution of local self-government was
never promulgated. Instead of redeeming these
promises the Transvaal was put upon the status
of a crown colony in 1879, and the legislature
proposed for it was to consist of some crown offi
cials and six members — all to be the nominees of
the governor.
Mr. Bryce, in his "Impressions of South
Africa," calls this failure to redeem a promise au
thoritatively made as a concession to a people
whose independence was being arbitrarly sub
verted, a "blunder." Canon Little uses a still
softer term, calling it a "mistake" ; and adds, "It
was given in good faith, and in good faith was
received. Sir Theophilus Shepstone tried to ful
fill it. He at once submitted his views as to the
necessary legislative arrangements. No action
whatever was taken on it, either by Conserva
tives or Liberals, and his dispatch is probably
lying uncared for in the Colonial Office now !" —
(1899.) And so, in the mutations of language as cur-

CECIL J. RHODES.

FIRST WAR 169
rently used in history and in Christian ethics, it
has come to pass that this piece of national
treachery — this treachery of the strong against
the weak — this treachery implicating both of the
leading political parties of Great Britain and
their chiefs, is only a "blunder," a "mistake" !
One real and very serious blunder was com
mitted, if one judges of it from the view point
of the policy intended to be pursued in the Trans
vaal by the British government. The African
ders had accepted, under protest, the act of an
nexation mainly because they were in mortal fear
of the Zulus. That reason for submission the
British proceeded to remove by overthrowing the,
Zulu power.
In the northeast Sir Garnet Wolseley defeated
Sikukuni and established what promised to be a
permanent peace. In 1879 Sir Bartle Frere in
flicted a like reverse upon Cetewayo, in the south
east, and so completed the subjugation of the
Zulus. The blunder in taking this course de
clared itself when, after subduing the natives at
great cost of blood and treasure, the British
found that in so doing they had relieved the
Africanders of the one fear that thus far had pre
vented them from reasserting their independence.
Many people, both in England and in South

170 THE AFRICANDERS
Africa, regarded the annexation of the Transvaal
as final. But leading members of the Liberal
party, then in opposition, had emphatically con
demned it, and this had raised hopes in the
Transvaal Africanders and their sympathizers in
England that when Gladstone came into power
again the things which they regarded as wrong
would be righted. Such hopes were doomed to
disappointment. In 1880 the Liberals carried the country and
took office in April of that year. Guided by in
formation derived from the crown officials in
South Africa, the new ministers were misled as
to the measure of discontent in the Transvaal,
and declared that the act of annexation would
not be reversed.
This flat refusal brought matters to an imme
diate issue. The Transvaal burghers, though
they had continued to agitate and protest and
memorialize the throne, had waited with con
siderable patience for three years, hoping for
either a restoration of their independence or —
as the next best thing — the instituting of such a
representative local government as had been
promised them by the imperial authorities. But
now the new Liberal government, after using
the Transvaal grievances for electioneering pur-

first war 171
poses, had refused to consider and redress those
grievances ; the military administration of a mere
crown colony continued in full force under the
detested Sir William Owen Lanyon; and there
appeared to be no hope that the promises made
to mollify their indignation when their independ
ence was being subverted would ever be fulfilled.
It has been said, in extenuation, that the Brit
ish government of this time was too busy with
other pressing matters to give the attention nec
essary to a correct understanding of the condition,
and the rights and the wrongs, of the Transvaal
Africanders. And it has been said, in further
extenuation, that there was an honest intention
on the part of the government to fulfill the prom
ises made — some time — as soon as the authorities
could get to it. Be that as it may, at the end of
three years, which had brought no betterment
of their state, the burghers concluded that their
protests and their patience had been wasted, and
determined to wait no longer.
Accordingly a mass-meeting was held at
Paardekraal, in December, 1880, at which it was
resolved to appeal to arms. The burghers
elected Messrs. Pretorius, Paul Kruger and Jou
bert to proclaim for them the re-establishment of
their former government as the South African

I72 THE AFRICANDERS
Republic, which was done in Heidelberg, and
the national flag was raised, on the 16th of De
cember, 1880.
The first battles of this war were little more
than skirmishes. The British troops were scat
tered through the country in small detachments,
which the Africanders — every man of whom was
a marksman and an experienced fighter — found
it easy to either cut off or drive before them to
positions that could be fortified.
The nearest available British troops, besides
those already in the Transvaal, were in Natal.
General Sir George Colley, governor of that col
ony, raised what force he could and marched
northward to check the uprising. Before he
could enter the Transvaal, however, Command
ant-General Joubert crossed the border into
Natal and took up a strong position at Laing's
Nek. This now historic spot is a steep ridge
forming the watershed between the Klip River,
a tributary of the Vaal, and Buafflo River, a con
fluent of the Tugela, which flows into the Indian
Ocean. Here a sanguinary battle was fought
on the 28th of January, 1881. The British at
tacked the Africanders with great spirit, but Jou-
bert's position was invulnerable. The ridge pro
tected his men from the artillery fire of the Brit-

FIRST WAR 173
ish, while they, in charging up the slope, were
cut down by the accurate rifle fire of the Afri
canders, and forced to retreat. On the 8th of
February, in the same neighborhood, on the In-
gogo heights, the British were again defeated
after suffering severe loss.
General Colley now decided to seize by night
Majuba Hill, which is really a considerable
mountain, rising nearly 2,000 feet above Laing's
Nek, and commanding that ridge for the pur
pose of artillery fighting. On the night of Feb
ruary 26th, leaving the main body of his army in
camp, and unaccountably forgetting to order it to
advance on the enemy so as to divert atten
tion from his tactical movement, General Colley
led a smaller division to the top of Majuba Hill.
The burgher force was thrown into tempo
rary dismay when they first observed British sol
diers in that commanding position. But when
there was no advance against them in front, and
no artillery fire from the top of Majuba, they sent
out a volunteer party to storm the hill. The
story of that charge has gone into history to stay
as an example, on the one side, of rugged bravery
and splendid courage achieving victory, and on
the other of equal bravery and courage strangely
betrayed by some one's blunder into defeat and

174 THE AFRICANDERS
ruinous disaster. Why the main force of the
British army was not ordered to co-operate in
the movement, why there were no entrenchments
thrown up on the hill, why the order, "Charge
bayonets," so eagerly looked for by the British
soldiers on the hill-top, was never given, General
Colley did not live to tell — no one else knew.
The Africanders scaled the hill, shooting as they
went up every man that showed on the sky line
— themselves protected by the steep declivities
above them, and carried the hill-top, routing and
almost annihilating the British force. General
Colley and ninety-two of his men were killed, and
fifty-nine were made prisoners.
In the meanwhile additional British troops
were hurrying to the scene of conflict, under
command of Sir Evelyn Wood. What the out
come would have been of further hostilities be
tween the Africanders and the greatly increased
British force no one can tell. The sudden and
surprising action of the British government, that
put an end to the war, was not based upon any
estimate of the probable issue of continued con
flict, but altogether upon the moral aspects of the
situation as seen by Mr. Gladstone and his asso
ciates in the British cabinet. Before Sir Evelyn
Wood could strike a single blow toward wiping

first war 175
out the disgrace of Majuba Hill, the home gov
ernment, on the 5th of March, 1881, ordered an
armistice, and on the 23d agreed to terms of
peace by which the Transvaal was restored to its
former political independence in all regards, save
that it was to be under the suzerainty of the
British crown.
In August, 1881, a more formal convention
was held at Pretoria, when it was agreed that the
Transvaal government should be independent in
the management of its internal affairs ; that the
Republic should respect the independence of the
Swazies, a tribe of natives on the eastern border
of the Transvaal; that British troops should be
allowed to pass through the territory of the Re
public in time of war ; and that the British sov
ereign should be acknowledged as suzerain of
the Republic and have a veto power over all
treaties between the government of the Transvaal
and foreign nations.
Several of the stipulations in this convention
were very distasteful to Paul Kruger and other
leading spirits in the Transvaal, and also to the/
volksraad. Negotiations for desired changes
were continued until 1884, when, on the 27th of
February, a revision called the London Conven-

First war 177
South African Republic," by which name it has
ever since been designated in all diplomatic
transactions and correspondence between it and
other states.

12

178 THE AFRICANDERS

CHAPTER XII.
THE AFRICANDER REPUBLICS AND BRITISH
POLICY.
The surprising policy pursued by the British
government in arbitrarily annexing the Trans
vaal in 1877, and in restoring its independence in
1 88 1, after a brief and indecisive conflict at arms,
and when strong re-enforcements had placed the
imperial troops in position to crush the African
der uprising, caused widespread dissatisfaction
and bitter controversy both in England and in
South Africa. Why had the country been an
nexed at all ? And seeing it had been annexed,
why was it so ignominiously yielded up imme
diately after the disgrace of Majuba Hill ? There
were many at home and in the South African
colonies who would have been satisfied to restore
the independence of the Transvaal — but only
after having inflicted on the Africander forces
at least one crushing defeat.
The only reply of the Liberal government

CONFLICTING POLICIES 179
was to the effect that the annexation, and the re
fusal to reverse it, had been due to misapprehen
sion of the facts ; that the officers of the crown in
South Africa, partly through ignorance and
partly through prejudice, had reported that there
was no such passionate desire for independence
among the Africanders as was pretended by their
leaders, and as was proved to exist by the upris
ing ; that as soon as the facts were known it be
came the duty of a liberty-loving people like the
English to honor their own princples by the im
mediate retrocession of the Transvaal without
waiting to first avenge defeats and vindicate the
military superiority of Great Britain ; and that a
great country better illustrated her greatness by
doing justice and showing mercy, even at great
cost to herself, than by taking a bloody revenge
for reverses suffered on the fields of war in trying
to enforce a policy now seen to be morally wrong.
Moreover, associated with these moral con
siderations were reasons of statecraft that made it
appear wise as well as right to let the Transvaal
go. The Africanders of the Orange Free State,
of Cape Colony, of Natal, were known to be in
warm sympathy with their brethren of the Trans
vaal. Of course, the power of Great Britain
could crush, in time, a rebellion as extensive as

r8o THE AFRICANDERS
the whole Dutch-speaking population of South
Africa, but at what cost of treasure and blood and
bitter disloyalty to the British crown ! In com
parison to the inevitable results of a general civil
war the loss of the Transvaal was as nothing.
How well grounded were these fears of a general
uprising in 1881 may be seen in the earlier events
of the second Africander War of Independence
in 1899. With no late grievance against Great
Britain to redress, the Orange Free State made
common cause with the South African Republic
from the first, and the Africanders of Cape Col
ony and Natal were more than suspected of aid
ing and abetting in a covert way the cause for
which the two republics had taken the field.
If the British ministers counted upon some
recognition of the magnanimity displayed in mak
ing the retrocession immediately after defeat — of
the humanity which renounced revenge for the
humiliation of Majuba Hill when it was within
easy reach — they were disappointed. The Afri
canders saw not generosity, not humanity, but
only fear as the motive for the sudden and easy
yielding of the British ; and to their natural ex
ultation they added contempt for their late an
tagonists, and so became and have continued
very unpleasant neighbors for so proud-spirited

CONFLICTING POLICIES l8l
a people as the English. And this is the princi
pal reason why the English in all South Africa
have always condemned the restoration of inde
pendence to the Transvaal — and, most of all, the
time and manner of the act. They have not been
able to forget the fact that the terms of peace
were, in a way, dictated by the Africanders as
victorious invaders and holders of British terri
tory in the colony of Natal.
In order to view intelligently the causes of
the second Africander War of Independence, it
is necessary to consider the general trend of
events in South Africa, and the conflicting pol
icies sought to be carried out there during the
few years following the restitution of independ
ence to the Transvaal.
The South African Republic emerged from
its brief and successful struggle for independence
impoverished and in a state of political chaos,
but rejoicing, nevertheless, in a sense of national
freedom, and more than ever confident that it
enjoyed the special favor of Heaven. The old
constitution, or Grondwet, was revived, the
volksraad was convoked, and an election was
held, resulting in the choice of Mr. Paul Kruger
to be president. Mr. Kruger immediately

1 82 THE AFRICANDERS
planned for bold and far-reaching movements on
three sides of the republic's territory.
A great trek to the north for the occupation
of Mashonaland was projected but never carried
out. To the south Zululand was now open, and
into it went a number of adventurers as trekkers,
followed, a little later, by others who took serv
ice under one of the warring native chiefs. When
these took steps to set up a government of their
own in the northern districts of Zululand the
British authorities interfered and restricted their
claim to a small teritory of about three thousand
square miles, which enjoyed an independent ex
istence as the New Republic from 1886 to 1888,
when it was annexed by the Transvaal.
Other bands of Africanders raided parts of
Bechuanaland, to the west, taking forcible pos
session of territory or obtaining grants of land
by devices not always honorable. These intimi
dated the native chiefs into an acknowledgment
of their authority and established two small re
publics, Stella and Goshen, to the north of Kim-
berley. These proceedings opened the eyes of the
British government to the policy upon which the
South African Republic had entered — to annex
Bechuanaland and close the way of British com-

CONFLICTING POLICIES 183
munication with regions still farther north in
which the nation had become interested. To
check these designs in time, a military expedi
tion under Sir Charles Warren entered Bechu
analand toward the end of 1884, expelled the
Africanders without bloodshed, and proclaimed
the whole region a crown colony under the name
of British Bechuanaland. This territory was an
nexed to Cape Colony in 1895. In 1885 a British
protectorate was established over a still more
northerly region, covering the whole country as
far as the borders of Matabeleland. In 1888 the
British hold was made yet more secure by a
treaty with the king of the Matabele, Lo Bengula,
by which he bound himself to cede no territory
to, and to make no treaty with, any foreign power
without the approval of the British High Com
missioner. The raising of the British flag at St. Lucia
Bay, on the Indian Ocean, in 1884, and a treaty
with the Tonga tribes, binding them to make no
treaties with any other power than the English,
completed the hold of the British crown on the
eastern coast line up to the southern border of
the Portuguese possessions.
The Africanders, denied expansion on the
north, sought compensation in the acquisition of

j84 THE AFRICANDERS
Swaziland, to the east of the Transvaal republic
—a small but fertile region and possessing con
siderable mineral wealth. It was inhabited by
some 70,000 Kaffirs, near of kin but hostile to the
Zulus. After long negotiations, in which the
South African Republic, Cetawayo of the Zulus,
and the British authorities took part, the Afri
canders secured a concession of right to build a
railway through the marshy region lying between
Swaziland and the sea to the coast at Kosi Bay ;
this concession was granted in 1890 and laid in
abeyance awaiting the acquisition of Swaziland
itself, through which the railway must run. In
1894 the whole territory of Swaziland was placed
under the control of the South African Republic,
subject to a formal guaranty of protection to the
natives. It is difficult to determine whether it was
Africander dullness or British sharpness, or
both, that omitted from the Swaziland conven
tion of 1894 the concession to the South African
Republic, granted in 1890, of a right to construct
a railway to the sea through the marshy district
of Tongaland lying next the coast line. But it
was omitted from that instrument, and it was
held that, as the later convention superseded and
voided the earlier one, the provision for access

CONFLICTING POLICIES 185
to the sea had lapsed. Whereupon the British
government promptly secured the consent of the
three Tonga chiefs concerned, and proclaimed a
protectorate over the whole strip of land lying
between Swaziland and the ocean, up to the
southern portion of the Portuguese territory.
Thus by a stroke of statecraft the access of the
Africanders to the sea by railway communication
entirely under their own control was effectually
stopped. Within nine years the British control estab
lished in Bechuanaland in 1885 was extended
over the whole unappropriated country as far
north as the Zambesi. By a new treaty made
with Lo Bengula in 1888 the sphere of British
influence was further expanded to embrace not
only Matabeleland, but Mashonaland also — a
partially explored territory to the eastward, over
which Lo Bengula claimed some authority.
The next step in working out the policy of
the British in South Africa was the granting of a
royal charter to a corporation known as the
British South African Company, formed to de
velop this eastern and undefined region of Lo
Bengula's territory. Mr. Cecil Rhodes was con
spicuous as the leader in this movement. The
purpose of the company was twofold: To de-

l86 THE AFRICANDERS
velop the gold fields supposed to exist there, and
to forestall the Transvaal Africanders in taking
possession of the country. The charter not only
invested the company with the rights of a trading
corporation, but also with administrative powers
as representative of the British crown. In 1890
the pioneer emigrants under this management
began to arrive in the chartered territory and
commenced to found settlements and build forts
along the eastern plateau.
With the conflicts which arose between the
British South African Company and the Portu
guese — complicated by alliances with the natives,
with the wars which arose therefrom, and with
the final adjustments and treaties that followed —
we have nothing to do in these pages. The one
fact that is of interest to us in closing this chap
ter of conflict in statecraft is that at last the Brit
ish succeeded in isolating the Africanders from
the sea, and in throwing around them a perfect
cordon of British territories and pre-emptions.
By chartering the British South African Com
pany to the north of the Transvaal the last link
in the chain that inclosed the two Africander re
publics was completed. For there had been left
no possibility of advance toward the sea eastward
on the part of the Transvaal Republic — in the Ar-

CONFLICTING POLICIES 187
bitration Treaty of 1872 Great Britain had ob
tained pre-emption rights over the Portuguese
colonial possessions.

THE AFRICANDERS

CHAPTER XIII.
CAUSES OF THE AFRICANDERS' SECOND WAR OF IN
DEPENDENCE.
In one sense the causes of the Second War
of Independence, like those of the first, were as
remote as the British seizure of Cape Colony in
1795, and as the years between 1814 and 1836,
which saw the accumulation of grievances that
led to the "Great Trek." Seeds of dislike to the
English were then sown in the Africander mind
which have never ceased to propagate themselves
—an ominous heredity — from father to son
through all the intervening generations.
The immediate causes of that war were of
a more recent date. Tracing backward, the war
was brought about by the alleged grievances of
a multitude of foreigners — vastly outnumbering
the citizens — who, for their own purposes, had
entered the territory of the South African Re
public within a single decade; these foreigners
went there in the pursuit of wealth ; the wealth

SECOND war: its causes 189
that enticed them there was in the rich gold de
posits of the Witwatersrand district of the Trans
vaal. If the gold had not been there, or had not
been discovered, the excess of foreigners would
not have pressed into the country ; if the foreign
ers had not flocked into it in great excess of num
bers over the citizens, there would have been no
alleged grievances to redress, and therefore no
war, unless one or both of the parties to it had
predetermined to bring about a conflict at this
time and found some other pretext.
Tracing from cause to effect up to the war,
we begin with unimportant discoveries of gold
near the eastern border of the Transvaal between
1867 and 1872. Though these were not rich in
themselves, they encouraged more vigorous and
extensive prospecting than had been practiced
theretofore. This led to the discovery, in 1885,
of the marvelously rich deposits of the precious
metal in beds of conglomerate in the Witwaters
rand district. The influx of strangers had been
considerable from 1882, but from 1885 to 1895
the foreign additions to the population of the
Transvaal threatened to submerge the native
Africander citizens, for the newcomers were
mostly men, and largely exceeded in number the

igO THE AFRICANDERS
entire Africander population, including the
women and the children.
The first result of the new mining industry
and the rapid growth of the towns was pleasant
enough — the revenues of the needy republic were
increased, and there was a promise of unprece
dented prosperity. Nevertheless, in the tidal
wave of incoming aliens from the British colo
nies in South Africa, from Europe and from
America — most of them British, and nearly all
speaking English — the far-seeing president, Paul
Kruger, and other leaders of political life in the
Transvaal, early recognized an element of peril
to their cherished domestic institutions.
As a defense against the passing of control
ling power into the hands of transient settlers,
the electoral franchise was somewhat restricted.
Up to the convention of 1881 the probation of an
alien seeking enfranchisement in the Transvaal
Republic was a residence in the country for two
years. At that time, with the arbitrary annexa
tion of 1877 fresh in their minds, and knowing
that the British authorities had been solicited to
take that step by English residents in the Trans
vaal, it is a matter of no surprise that the Afri
canders extended the probation for franchise to
five years — the period required in the United

SECOND WAR: ITS CAUSES 191
States of America. That provision was in force
when the London Convention was signed, in
1884; it passed unquestioned by the British gov
ernment, and was still in force in 1890. Up to
that date the franchise had kept the native Afri
cander element in a safe majority.
As a concession to demands on the part of
foreigners for a reduction of the period of resi
dence required for naturalization, Mr. Kruger
proposed, in 1890, to divide the volksraad, which
consisted of forty-eight members, into two cham
bers of twenty-four members each, the first to
retain supreme power, the second to be compe
tent to legislate in all matters local to the new in
dustrial population gathered, principally, in and
about Johannesburg, and its acts to be subject
always to the veto of the first volksraad. The
measure provided, also, that in electing members
of the second volksraad only two years' residence
and the ordinary process of naturalization should
be required of aliens, their franchise for the first
volksraad still being subject to an additional five
years' probation.
This measure was passed by the volksraad
after a good deal of opposition by the more con
servative members. It has been condemned as
clumsy and inadequate ; but it is worth while to

I92 THE AFRICANDERS
weigh Mr. Kruger's own words explanatory of
his purpose in it. "I intend this second volks
raad," he said, "to act as a bridge. I want my
burghers to see that the new population may
safely be trusted to take part in the government
of the country. When they see that this is done,
and that no harm happens, then the two volk-
raads may come together again, and the distinc
tion between the old and the new population can
be obliterated." It should be remembered, how
ever, that the two years' franchise gave the citi
zen no vote in the election of the president and
the executive council — for that privilege he had
to fill out the additional five years' probation —
and that no naturalized burgher could become a
member of the first volksraad.
Discontent continued to spread among the
new industrial population, who complained bit
terly of exclusion from important political rights,
and of grievances which they and the mining in
dustry suffered under the existing laws and ad
ministration. As a means of redress a reform as
sociation was formed in 1893. It is necessary to
a correct judgment of the situation at this time to
consider the statements of both sides as to the
causes of complaint.

THE RIGHT HON. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN.

second war: its causes 193
According to Canon Little, who cannot be
accused of favoring the Africanders —
"The grievances of the Uitlanders were these :
"1. That the customs tariff was excessive,
making food shamefully dear, and that the
charges for railway freights were unduly heavy.
"2. That the duties on machinery and chem
icals were extortionate.
"3. That these and the dynamite monopoly
made the expense of all mining operations ex
cessive. "4. The extreme unfairness as to the vexa
tious laws touching on education and the use of
language." Over against these allegations are the state
ments of Mr. F. Reginald Statham in his "South
Africa as It Is." Mr. Statham writes from the
Africander viewpoint, but gives some guaranty
of sincerity and of confidence in his own aver
ments by an appeal to figures — which can always
be verified. Speaking in a general way of the
conditions prevailing at this period, he says :
"The idea of the persecuted and oppressed
Uitlanders has become so fixed in the minds of
English people — thanks to the efforts of those
who were occupied in preparing and justifying a
revolt — that even the plainest statement of facts
13

ig4 THE AFRICANDERS
seems powerless to dispossess it. No one will
claim, no one ever has claimed, that the govern
ment of the South African Republic is perfect.
Having regard to the extraordinary changes that
have come over the country during the last ten
years, it is really a marvel that the government is
not much more imperfect than it is. The present
position of the Transvaal executive has been not
inaptly compared to the position of the crew of
a collier brig who might suddenly find them
selves in control of a first-class mail steamer.
However desirous they might be of doing their
best, they could hardly avoid making some mis
takes. If the foreign population had much more
to complain of than they have, it ought not to
cause either surprise or indignation.
"And what have they to complain of ? Really,
the life of the average foreigner in Johannesburg
is the freest imaginable. He can follow his trade,
he can follow his profession, no matter what it is,
without any question or hindrance from the gov
ernment. His position as an Uitlander in no way
hinders him from investing in property, from
practicing as a lawyer in the courts, from under
taking, in fact, as freely as he could undertake in
his own country, any lawful kind of business or
occupation. If he pays a high rent for his house,

SECOND WAR: ITS CAUSES I95
that is not the fault of the government, but of the
land speculators who have bought up building
stands. If his water supply is somewhat defect
ive, it is the fault of the big foreign capitalists,
who think more of the dividends they put in their
own pockets than of the water they put into the
people's mouths.
"A government which depends on the good
will of a strictly Sabbatarian population allows
the Uitlander to spend his Sunday exactly as he
pleases. He may play lawn tennis if he likes —
and, indeed, he generally does so; he may en
gage in cricket matches, he can attend so-called
sacred concerts, the programmes of which are
drawn from the music hall or the comic opera.
If he is in a gayer mood he may witness on a
Sunday evening displays of "living pictures"
which certainly would not be tolerated at the
Royal Aquarium. To put it shortly, allowing for
little drawbacks of climate and the expense of
living, the Uitlander can live more at his ease in
Johannesburg or Pretoria than in almost any
other city under the sun.
"But he is taxed.
"How is he taxed ? There is probably no one
in the Transvaal, rich or poor, whose personal
taxes amount to more than £5 a year. If it is

I96 THE AFRICANDERS
complained that he is taxed through his interest
in the gold industry it is easy to make an appeal
to published figures. In 1895 the Crown Reef
Gold Mining Company produced gold worth up
ward of £420,000, and distributed nearly £97,000
in profits. Its payment to the Government for
rents, licenses, and all other privileges and rights
amounted to £1,191 9s iod. In the same year
the Robinson Company, which had produced
£651,000 in gold and distributed £346,000 in div
idends, paid to the government £395 ns 8d. The
New Chimes Company, producing £93,000 in
gold and distributing £32,000 in profits, paid un
der the head of rates and licenses, together with
insurance premiums, £664 16s 5d. The Trans
vaal Coal Trust produced 266,945 tons of coal,
and paid the government £53 15s, while the Con
solidated Land and Exploration Company, in
which the Ecksteins are the largest shareholders,
and which owns more than 250 farms of 6,000
acres each, paid to the government in the shape
of taxes, including absentee tax, no more than
£722 2s 6d.
"These figures are sufficiently eloquent by
themselves. They become more eloquent when
they are placed beside the 50 per cent impost

SECOND WAR: ITS CAUSES I97
claimed by the Chartered Company on all gold-
mining enterprise in Rhodesia.
"But what about indirect taxation ? Here are
the facts :
"All machinery for mining purposes is sub
ject to only 1 y2 per cent impost dues, the term
machinery being stretched by the government
to its uttermost possibilities to meet the mining
industry, and it is made to include sheet lead,
cyanide, etc. All other articles not specially
rated are subject to an ad valorem duty of 7J^ per
cent, the Cape Colonist paying an ad valorem
duty of 12 per cent. Specially rated articles af
fecting the white miners, such as tea, coffee, but
ter, rice, soap, sugar, are in most cases subject to
lower, and only in one instance to higher, duties
than in Cape Colony.
"Here is a comparison:
Cape Colony. Transvaal.
Butter  3d per lb. 5s od per 100 lbs.
Cheese  3d per lb. 5s od per 100 lbs.
Coffee  12s 6d per 100 lbs. 2s 6d per 100 lbs.
Rice  3s 6d per 100 lbs. is 6d per 100 lbs.
Soap  4s 2d per 100 lbs. 5s od per 100 lbs.
Sugar  6s 3d per 100 lbs. 3s 6d per 100 lbs.
Tea  8d per lb. 2s 6d per 100 lbs.
Guns  £1 per barrel. 10s od per barrel.
"As regards monopolies and concessions, the
dynamite monopoly is often quoted as an in-

IQ8 THE AFRICANDERS
stance of the manner in which monopolies are
granted, to the detriment of the mining interest.
It has been complained that the government re
tains a right to charge 90s a case for what can be
produced for 30s a case. These figures, however,
are exaggerated both ways. The government
charge is 85s a case, and as the dynamite used by
De Beers, at Kimberley, costs more than 60s a
case laid down there, it can hardly be held that
85 s is a high charge in Johannesburg, having re
gard to the much greater distance of Johannes
burg from the sea. In this matter of the dyna
mite concession, moreover, it was a choice be
tween a foreign monopoly and a local monopoly,
while in the reports of mining companies in
which explosives are separately accounted for it
is shown that while total working expenses run
up to over 30s per ton, the cost of explosives is
less than is 3d per ton.
"As regards the railway concessions, the truth
of the matter is that the Transvaal Railway Com
pany — the Netherlands South African Railway
Company, that is — by providing competing
routes to Johannesburg from Natal and Dela
goa Bay, keeps in check the monopoly which
would certainly be taken great advantage of by

SECOND WAR: ITS CAUSES I99
the Cape Colony if the only route to Johannes
burg was from Cape ports."
It may be allowed — it must be — that the old
saw, "figures will not lie," is unsound. In the
hands of capable and unscrupulous persons they
will lie like Ananias and Sapphira. But, like that
of Ananias and Sapphira, the lie in figures brings
swift detection and punishment. It ought to be
easy, therefore, for those who have filled the ears
of the world with charges of Africander oppres
sion practiced upon the foreigners in the way of
"excessive customs tariff," "extortionate duties
on machinery," and the "dynamite monopoly that
made the expense of all mining operations ex
cessive," to convince the world-jury to which
they have appealed that they have a case. They
ought at least to be able to show that in British
Rhodesia the impost on the profits of gold min
ing was not 50 per cent, while in the Transvaal it
was about 8 per cent thereof; that in British
Cape Colony the ad valorem duty on articles not
specially rated was not 12 per cent, while in the
Transvaal it was 71'2 per cent; that in British
Cape Colony specially rated articles affecting the
white miner as to expense of living were not
taxed all the way from 100 to 500 per cent higher
than in the Transvaal, with the single exception

200 THE AFRICANDERS
of soap; that an import duty of \]/2 per cent on
mining machinery was extortionate as compared
with the tariff of other nations, or that a higher
duty than ij4 per cent was collected in the Trans
vaal ; and that a profit of 25s a case on dynamite,
less the cost of transportation from Kimberley to
Johannesburg, and only causing the expense for
explosives used in mining to be is 3d per ton of
ore out of a total cost of 30s per ton, was an op
pressive monopoly causing the cost of mining to
be excessive. Concerning the other grounds of complaint
Mr. Statham writes :
"There are, besides the material grievances
alluded to above, what may be called the polit
ical grievances, such as (1) the alleged govern
ment of the country by a small faction of Hol
landers, (2) the language grievance, (3) the edu
cational grievance, and (4) the franchise griev
ance. "As regards the first mentioned of these, an
honest and impartial person would search for evi
dence of it in vain. All the members of the ex
ecutive, with one exception, are South African
born; so are the majority of heads and sub
heads of departments. * * * The only
Hollander of any distinction in the government

SECOND WAR: ITS CAUSES 201
is the state secretary, Dr. Leyds, a man of excep
tional ability and integrity, who, in spite of enor
mous difficulties and constant attacks, has de
served and retained the confidence both of the
president and the volksraad. To say that he is
the ablest and most cultured official in South
Africa is to say what is simply true, and if his
ability has excited jealousy and resentment, it is
only what a general study of human nature would
lead one to expect.
"As regards the language question and the
education question, consideration has to be paid
to the language most usually spoken in the coun
try. Entirely misleading ideas are liable to be
formed on this point, owing to the erroneous im
pression as to the relative strength of the Dutch
and the foreign population. A habit has arisen
of speaking as if the foreign population greatly
outnumbered the burgher population. The case
is quite the opposite of this. The census of Jo
hannesburg taken in 1896 by the Johannesburg
Sanitary Commission showed that the population
of the place had been greatly overestimated, the
male European population of all ages amounting
to 31,000. As there are 25,000 burghers on the
military register of the republic, it seems fair to
assume that the burgher population is at least

202 THE AFRICANDERS
150,000, while the foreign population is probably
not more than half of that. Of the 150,000 bur
ghers and their families fully two-thirds do not
understand English. Is it, then, unreasonable
to claim that the official language, the language
of official documents, shall be the language
spoken by two-thirds of the people, or do the
women and children count for nothing? But al
though the official language by law is Dutch,
there is not a single government office in which
there is not English or German spoken to those
who cannot speak Dutch. In the higher courts
the judges frequently shut their eyes to the use of
the English language in the witness-box, and in
the lower courts English is invariably spoken by
English litigants.
"As regards the education question, there is
not now much need to discuss it. The volksraad
during the session of 1896 passed a law in further
expansion of the principles laid down in the law
of 1892, and under the regulations drawn up in
accordance with the law, as now expanded, state
schools, in which English-speaking children will
be taught in English, and which are placed under
the control of representative school boards, have
been established in the gold-mining districts.
"The franchise question has been made the

second war: its causes 203
subject of special complaint. Here, however,
there are several difficulties in the way. In the
first place, the majority of the foreign population
do not want the franchise, because they are quite
content with their position as it is and do not
want to become — as they would have to do if
they exercised the franchise — burghers of the
South African Republic. The very agitation
over the question has increased the difficulty,
for the more there seems to be a possibility of a
serious misunderstanding between the Transvaal
and Great Britain, the less disposed British sub
jects become to place themselves in a position
which might compel them to fight against their
own countrymen. Meantime the government
and the volksraad have been compelled to the
conclusion that the agitation for the franchise is
not genuine — that it has not been encouraged
with the view to obtaining a concession, but with
the object of establishing a grievance. They
have seen, too, that to grant wholesale political
privileges to the foreign residents in Johannes
burg, even if those foreign residents were willing
to become naturalized, would be to a great extent
to deliver up the interests of all the dependent
classes — the shopkeepers, the miners, the pro
fessional men — into the hands of a small group of

204 THE AFRICANDERS
capitalists, who would use their influence, as they
have used it elsewhere, to corrupt the political
atmosphere and to subject the interests of every
individual to their own. The political tyranny
that exists in Kimberley, where employes of De
Beers are compelled to vote to order on pain of
dismissal, supplies a sufficient illustration of what
would happen in Johannesburg if once the finan
cial conspirators secured political control. A
further and most significant illustration is sup
plied by a well-known incident in connection
with the revolutionary movement in Johannes
burg, when miners under the control of the lead
ing conspirators were ordered to take up arms
under penalty of forfeiting their wages. That in
the great majority of cases they preferred the lat
ter course is in itself a complete exposure of the
hollowness of the whole revolutionary move
ment. In all known cases of revolution arising
from discontent on the part of a mining popula
tion it has been the miners who have taken the
lead and dragged others in with them. In this
case the miners, who had never dreamed of dis
content, were ordered to take up arms and re
fused. "Out of the facts of the position actually ex
isting in Johannesburg and other gold-mining

second war: its causes 205
centers it was utterly impossible for any honest
man to manufacture a serious complaint, least of
all such a complaint as would in any respect jus
tify a revolution to secure redress. So far from
being treated with unfairness or hardship, the
foreign residents in the Transvaal have been
treated with marked consideration. The inter
ests of the gold industry have been consulted in
every possible way. If the government has not
in some instances been able to do all it might
have wished to do, it has been because the reck
less language of a portion of the press and the
overbearing attitude of the capitalist agitators
have aroused the suspicion and the resentment
of the volksraad.
"Yet out of this position of things a case had
to be got up against the Transvaal government
in order to justify the revolutionary movement
that had been planned in the interest of the small
groups of capitalists who had determined to
make themselves as supreme over the gold in
dustry in Johannesburg as they had become over
the diamond industry in Kimberley."
It has seemed necessary to quote Mr. Stat
ham thus at length in order that the alleged
grievances of the foreigners in the Transvaal, and
the Africander answer thereto may be considered

206 THE AFRICANDERS
side by side. To say the least, Mr. Statham has
not dealt in vague generalities. His assertions
are specific and his figures can easily be investi
gated. It is for those who sympathize with the
complaints which led to prolonged agitation and
finally to war, to show that Mr. Statham was in
error. Until they shall have done so charges of
"oppressive" and "extortionate" imposts, taxes
and tariffs will lie, not against the South African
Republic, but against the British administra
tion in Cape Colony, Natal and Rhodesia.
Mr. Statham's contention that the Dutch
ought to be the official language of the Trans
vaal seems well founded. The account he gives
of a somewhat tardy provision — made after the
raid of December, 1895 — for the instruction of
English children in the English language evinces
a disposition to meet the reasonable demands of
the foreigners in that regard; but the delay in
doing so is to be regretted. The matter of fran
chise became the subject of acrimonious diplo
matic negotiation and the immediate cause of
war, which will be treated of more fully in a later
chapter.

second war: its causes 207

CHAPTER XIV.
CAUSES OF THE AFRICANDERS' SECOND WAR OF IN
DEPENDENCE. — CONTINUED.
The foreigners' Reform Association, some
times called the National Union, was organized at
Johannesburg in 1893. Its professed object was
to secure redress of grievances. This is always
allowable in a free country; but it is matter of
record that the spirit and methods of this partic
ular association were not calculated to propitiate
the people to whom they must look for any relief
from the sufferings of which they complained.
Two incidents will sufficiently illustrate this.
In 1894 Lord Loch, the British High Commis
sioner for South Africa, visited the Transvaal to
conduct certain negotiations with the executive
concerning Swaziland. The presence of this dis
tinguished Crown Official in the Transvaal was
made the occasion by the association of offering
a public insult to President Kruger in Pretoria,
of promoting a violent outburst of pro-British

208 THE AFRICANDERS
and anti-Africander sentiment in Johannesburg,
and of a conference between Lord Loch and Mr.
Lionel Phillips, a member of one of the leading
financial houses in Johannesubrg, in which was
considered the propriety of assembling a body of
imperial troops on the borders of the Transvaal
for the support of any revolutionary movement
that might be made. These proceedings were
reminiscent to the Africanders of an earlier dem
onstration, prior to the forming of the National
Union. In 1890 President Kruger visited Johan
nesburg to confer with leading citizens on the
mitigation of the grievances complained of. The
foreigners celebrated his coming in that friendly
way by drinking to excess, by singing in his ears
"God Save the Queen" as a suitable song of wel
come to the President of the South African Re
public, and by tearing down the national flag of
the Transvaal which was floating in front of the
house in which the conference was being held.
With a moderation not to be expected from Paul
Kruger, the president charitably attributed the
offensive proceedings to "long drinks" ; but the
people in general and their representatives were
much embittered by them, and the effect was
unfavorable to the carrying of any measures for
the benefit of the foreigners.

BLOEMFONTEIN,

second war: its causes 209
Throughout 1894 and 1895, botn on the sur
face of things and beneath it, appearances were
ominous of coming disturbance. On the surface
there was, from Cape Town, an open advocacy of
violent measures in Johannesburg, should such
be found necessary to bring about the desired
changes in favor of the foreigners. Mr. Edmund
Garrett, editor of the "Cape Times," openly
stated at Bloemfontein, in 1895, that his presence
in South Africa was connected with a purpose
on the part of Mr. Cecil Rhodes, premier of Cape
Colony, and his associates, to "force the pace."
And it was at this time that, as before stated, the
British authorities suddenly annexed the Tonga-
land territory, through which the Africanders
had secured a concession and projected a rail
way to the sea— thus deepening the impression
to a painful and alarming certainty that the Im
perial Government was intentionally unfriendly
to that of the South African Republic.
Under the surface very momentous things
were going on. In Rhodesia a volunteer police
force was being enrolled by Sir John Willoughby.
This gentleman, speaking for his superior, Doc
tor Jameson, assured the men that they would
only be required to serve in a "camp of exercise"

14

2IO THE AFRICANDERS

once a year, and that they would not be taken
beyond the borders of Rhodesia.
Fitting in very significantly with this move
ment, the Bechuanaland Protectorate — lying
next neighbor to Rhodesia on the south and
to the Transvaal on the west — was transferred
to the Chartered Company controlling Rhodesia,
a measure that enabled Doctor Jameson to sta
tion his volunteer police force on the Transvaal
border without taking them out of the enlarged
Rhodesia. Meantime, rifles, ammunition and Maxim
guns were smuggled across the border from
Kimberley to Johannesburg, to be in readiness
for an armed uprising of the foreigners on a date
to be agreed upon. Over in the British terri
tory of Rhodesia, Doctor Jameson's force — os
tensibly for local police purposes — was armed
and near the border, ready to co-operate with the
revolt about to be initiated at Johannesburg. As
a provision for the sustenance of the invading
force, a number of so-called "canteens," said to
be for the convenience of a projected stage line,
but really stores of food for Jameson's troopers
and their horses, were established at convenient
distances along the road over which the force
was to advance upon Johannesburg.

second war: its CAUSES 211
At the same time, the official opening of the
new railway from Pretoria to Delagoa Bay was
made the occasion of such marked congratula
tion from the Imperial Government as implied
nothing but the most friendly relations. After
wards the Africanders held that the Imperial con
gratulations were sincere, and that the fact of
their being sent was evidence that the policy of
implacable hostility toward the South African
Republic being pursued by Mr. Cecil Rhodes was
in no sense the policy of the British government.
It is almost past belief, however, that so small
a matter as the closing of a ford, or "drift,"
across the Vaal River could be made the subject
of international dispute, and become the cause
of ill-will between two nations on terms of perfect
amity and good will; but so it was. In a rate
war between the Cape Government Railway sys
tem and the Transvaal Railway Company, in
order to force the hand of the Transvaal Com
pany, the Cape authorities adopted the practice
of unloading freight on the south side of the
Vaal, on Free State soil, and sending it on by
ox-wagons across the "drift" and so transporting
it over the more than fifty miles to Johannes
burg — this to deprive the Transvaal section of
the through railway of the carrying trade from

212 THE AFRICANDERS
the border to Johannesburg until it submitted to
a certain prescribed rate. In order to protect a
railway enterprise in which it was a partner, the
Transvaal government promptly proclaimed the
"drift" closed to traffic. The Cape government
then complained to the imperial authorities, and
obtained from the Colonial Office a decision that
the closing of the "drift" was a breach of the
London Convention, of 1884, and must be re
versed. To avoid trouble over so paltry a mat
ter the Transvaal government withdrew the proc
lamation, but there was bitter feeling occasioned
by this interference, naturally in inverse ratio to
the petty cause of it. The resentment was as
widespread as the two Africander Republics. It
was this incident, together with the Jameson raid
of a few months later, that decided the Free State
to dissolve all partnership with Cape Colony as
to railway interests, and to use its option of buy
ing the Free State section of this trunk line at
cost price. As this was the most profitable part
of the whole system, the Cape government was a
heavy loser — to the extent of 7 per cent out of
11 per cent profits previously derived from the
road ;— but if the ultimate object sought by those
who directed the movement was to create a

SECOND WAR: ITS CAUSES 213
strong prejudice in England against the Trans
vaal government, it was gained.
As time went on preparations for the contem
plated uprising were matured. Ostensibly to
participate in the taking over of the Bechuana
land Protectorate Doctor Jameson and his police
were brought down to the vicinity of the Trans
vaal frontier. Simultaneously, mutterings of
the coming earthquake — as it was intended to
be — began to be heard. At the meeting of the
Johannesburg Chamber of Mines, held on the
20th of November, 1895, Mr. Lionel Phillips, in
an incendiary speech, declared that "capital was
always on the side of order, but there was a limit
to endurance, though there was nothing further
from their desires than an upheaval which would
end in bloodshed." How this was understood,
even in Europe, may be seen from the following
reference to it in a letter from a gentleman in
Hamburg, written on the 6th of December, and
quoted by Mr. Statham in his "South Africa as
It Is": "Master Lionel's speech has been very fool
ish, and is likely to do a great deal of harm and
no good — unless his instructions are to incite to
bloodshed — and I can scarcely imagine such in
structions to have gone out while the boom is

214

THE AFRICANDERS

lasting. If there is anything that is likely to put
Paul Kruger's back up, it is threats ; and unless
Cecil Rhodes is prepared to back up with his
Matabele heroes those threats, you will find the
Volksraad of 1896 give an unmistakable answer
to what they will wrongly call 'British threats.' "
How the real state of things was compre
hended locally is evinced in the answer to that
letter, dated December the 10th :
"Your remark concerning Rhodes' Matabele
heroes is probably more prophetic than you your
self are aware of. South Africa is, as you say,
the land of surprises."
Among the parties privy to the conspiracy the
date of uprising was spoken of as the "day of
flotation." It was carefully discussed, as was the
use that could be made of the British crown of
ficials at the Cape. Arms and ammunition for
the use of the revolutionists continued to arrive
at Johannesburg, concealed in coal trucks and
oil tanks. It looked like an appointment when,
on the 2 1 st of December, Colonel Rhodes,
brother and representative of Cecil Rhodes at
Johannesburg, telegraphed to the Cape that a
high official, whom he called the "Chairman,"
should interfere at the earliest possible moment,
and that he and Mr. Cecil Rhodes should start

SECOND WAR: ITS CAUSES 215
from Cape Town for Johannesburg on the "day
of flotation." This telegram has been interpreted to mean
that the conspirators wanted to create just
enough of disturbance to justify alarming tele
grams and calls for help, but not so prolonged
and violent as to make it necessary for them to
lead a hand-to-hand fight against the burghers
in the streets of Johannesburg. They would have
the Jameson force near enough to take the brunt
of the fighting, and the High Commissioner to
come in opportunely to mediate a peace favor
ing the re-establishment of British control in the
Transvaal. Strangely enough, at the last moment divi
sions arose among the local conspirators at Jo
hannesburg; they hesitated, and were lost. To
some, the project which had been much talked
of — that of re-establishing British rule — became
suddenly distasteful, the principal reason being
that the desired control of capital over legislation
could not be as complete under British colonial
administration as it might be made under some
other regime. They had appealed to the senti
ment of British loyalty in persuading English re
cruits to enter their ranks, but they began to see
that this sentiment, carried to its legitimate frui-

2l6 THE AFRICANDERS
tion, would defeat the chief end of the capitalists
in seeking the overthrow of the Kruger govern
ment. Christmas day of 1895 found the Jo
hannesburg reformers so divided in feeling that
most of them were in favor of postponing all ac
tion until some definite assurance could be ob
tained as to what, and for whom, they were to
fight. To this end the President of the National
Union, Mr. Charles Leonard, was sent off to
Cape Town to confer with Mr. Cecil Rhodes.
In enlisting Doctor Jameson and his police
force in this movement an uncertain and danger
ous factor had been included. The situation be
came critical. Jameson, who had been warned
that he must on no account make any move un
til he received further orders, grew restive and
eager for the fray. In Johannesburg the con
spirators were in a state of indecision and alarm.
Mr. Cecil Rhodes himself was halting between
the two opinions, whether to abandon the enter
prise altogether or to precipitate the struggle re
gardless of the divided counsels at Johannesburg.
Then the factor of danger declared itself. On
the night of the 29th of December, 1895, Doctor
Jameson broke his tether and, presumably with
out orders, invaded the territory of the South
African Republic from the British territory of

SECOND WAR: ITS CAUSES 217
Bechuanaland, at the head of about six hundred
men. Just why Jameson moved at that time prob
ably never will be known. He has himself as
sumed the entire responsibility ; Mr. Rhodes and
Sir Hercules Robinson, the High Commissioner,
have disavowed it utterly. There are few who
believe that his invasion was intended to initiate
the revolution. A probable solution of the mys
tery is that the revolutionary programme in
cluded (i) a collision between the conspirators
in Johannesburg and the burgher police, (2) the
calling in of the High Commissioner, Sir Her
cules Robinson, as mediator, (3) the ordering up
of Jameson and his force to support the High
Commissioner in any course he might decide
upon, and that Jameson thought he could time
his arrival aright without waiting for further
orders. But the skillfully arranged programme was
spoiled by the shrewdness of President Kruger.
There was no initial conflict in the streets of Jo
hannesburg. Penetrating the design, the presi
dent withdrew all the Transvaal police from the
streets of the city ; there was no one to exchange
shots with, and therefore no reason to justify a
call for outside interference,

2l8 THE AFRICANDERS
By cutting the telegraph wires Jameson made
it impossible for friend or foe to know his where
abouts, but the report got abroad that he was
coming. In Johannesburg some desired, some
feared, his coming. A member of the committee
of the National Union assembled a hundred of the
malcontents and attempted to lead them out to
co-operate with the invaders, but they tamely sur
rendered to a burgher force without firing a shot.
As for Jameson, on Wednesday, the ist of Jan
uary, 1896, he was checked near Krugersdorp
by a few hundred burghers hastily collected, and
on the next day was surrounded near Doornkop
and forced to surrender. Thus ended the attempt
at revolution. During the few days which closed 1895 and
opened 1896, there was a state of social, political
and financial chaos in Johannesburg. All thatwas
left visible of the reform association was confined
within the walls of a single clubhouse — a resort
of the leading spirits in the conspiracy. The
European population at large seemed to be un
aware of anything connected with the affair but
the, to them., unaccountable situation — full of
peril to life and property — which had been cre
ated they knew not how. The state of panic was
sustained and intensified by the wildest rumors of

SECOND WAR: ITS CAUSES 219
what Jameson was to do, of thousands of burgh
ers assembling to lay siege to the town, of a pur
pose to bombard the city from the forts, of a
new government about to be proclaimed — in
deed, anything and everything might happen.
When it leaked out that the principal actors
in the revolutionary movement had secretly re
moved their families from the city — which was
to be the storm-center of the expected disturb
ance^ — there was a general stampede. Men and
women fought for place on the outgoing trains.
In one tragical instance an overladen train left
the track, and forty persons, mostly women and
children, perished. To exaggerate the misery
and disaster to innocent and peaceable people,
caused by this unfortunate and abortive uprising,
would be impossible.
The immediate effect of the raid was most
unfavorable to the return of anything like good
feeling between the British and the Africanders.
The historic cablegram of the German Emperor
to President Kruger, congratulating him on the
prompt and easy suppression of the rebellion,
was construed as evidence that the South African
Republic was secretly conniving at a German
rivalry to Great Britain as the paramount power
in South Africa. On the other hand, every

220 THE AFRICANDERS
burgher in the Transvaal saw in the conspiracy
a new indication of the inexorable hostility of
the British to their independence, and of a relent
less purpose to subvert it again by any means
necessary to accomplish their end, however un
just or violent. The effect on the burghers of
the raid was much the same as that of the blow
ing up of the Maine on the citizens of the United
States — a feeling that relations had been created
which nothing could finally adjust but war.
Notwithstanding the intensified bitterness be
tween the two peoples, no one was put to death,
nor was any one very seriously punished for tak
ing up arms against the Transvaal government.
This is to be credited not to any doubt or extenu
ation of their guilt, but to urgent intercession on
the part of the British authorities, and to the
wisdom of those who administered the govern
ment whose territory had been invaded from the
soil of a professedly friendly nation, whose very
existence had been conspired against by resident
aliens, and which had in its power both the in
vaders and the resident conspirators.

SECOND WAR: ITS CAUSES 221

CHAPTER XV.
CAUSES OF THE AFRICANDERS' SECOND WAR OF
INDEPENDENCE. — CONTINUED.
After the conspiracy and raid of 1895-1896
the peace of South Africa and the final para-
mountcy of Great Britain therein by the mere
force of a superior civilization and of prepon
derating financial and diplomatic resources, de
pended upon a policy which was not followed.
If the British authorities had eliminated Mr.
Cecil Rhodes and his schemes from the situation,
and had suffered matters in South Africa to re
turn to the state which prevailed in 1887, the end
would have been different, and better. At that
time the country was being allowed to move in
an unforced way toward a destiny of settled
peace between the two races. A genuine but
unaggressive loyalty in the British colonies was
beginning to develop a reciprocal good will on
the part of the two republics, giving promise of
a pleasant fellowship of nations in South Africa.

222 THE AFRICANDERS
The result would not have been a confeder
ated South Africa under the British crown ; that
was and is impossible, both for geographical and
political reasons. But there might have been
brought about acquaintanceship and mutual
esteem between Great Britain, the would-be
Paramount Power, and the Africander race
throughout the Transvaal, the Orange Free
State, and the British colonies of Natal and the
Cape — which race is and will long continue to
be the dominant factor in South Africa. Out
of that friendly relationship might have come a
paramount power to Great Britain well worth the
having, and in every way consistent with the
honor of the British crown and the continued in
dependence of the Africander republics.
But Mr. Rhodes and his projects were not
eliminated from the situation. By force of al
most unequaled genius for acquisition and in
trigue, and of great powers in no least degree
controlled by moral considerations, he continued
to dominate — both locally and in England — the
British policy in South Africa. His presence
and influence made final peace in the country
impossible on any condition other than the sub
jugation of the Africander Republics. Probably
two-thirds of the European population of South

SECOND WAR: ITS CAUSES 223
Africa believed that he was the chief criminal —
though unpunished — in connection with the con
spiracy and raid of 1895-1896. His influence,
therefore, had the effect of intensifying the race
enmities, already the too vigorous growth of a
century, and of warning every Africander in the
two republics to stand armed and ready to de
fend, the independence of his country. And
these men, to whom Mr. Rhodes' presence and
activities were a constant irritation and threat,
loved freedom after the fashion of their Nether-
land forefathers who worsted Spain in diplomacy
and war in the sixteenth century, and after the
fashion of their Huguenot forefathers who
counted no sacrifice too great to make for liberty.
During 1896 there was a temporary lull in
the agitation for reforms in the Transvaal. In
vestigations had become an international neces
sity, for appearance's sake if for no other reason ;
but they led to nothing except the rehabilitation
of the principal leaders in the conspiracy which
had miscarried. Of necessity Doctor Jameson,
and his immediate associates in conducting the
invasion, were condemned to death by the Trans
vaal authorities, for they were taken in the act,
and confessed themselves guilty of a capital

224 THE AFRICANDERS
crime. After a time the death sentences were
reversed, and the offenders were set free.
By the opening of 1897 a good degree of order
had replaced the state of chaos into which the
uprising had thrown the foreign population and
interests in the Transvaal. Then the agitation
for reforms was renewed, and the claims of the
foreigners were backed up and pressed diplo
matically by the British government, of which
the exponent in the long controversy was the
Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary of State for
the Colonies.
It is not necessary to trace, step by step, the
diplomatic correspondence on the subject of re
forms in the Transvaal during 1897, 1898 and
the first two months of 1899. The whole situa
tion — including every subject in dispute between
the two governments — will come into view in
the discussions and negotiations immediately
preceding the outbreak of the Africanders' Sec
ond War of Independence, in October, 1899.
On the 20th of March, 1899, in reply to a
question by Sir E. Ashmead Bartlett as to Great
Britain's right to interfere with the affairs of the
South African Republic, Mr. Chamberlain, from
his place in parliament, said :

GENERAL CRONJE.

SECOND WAR: ITS CAUSES 225
"There are certain cases where we can inter
vene, and rightly intervene, in Transvaal affairs.
"i. In the first place, we may intervene if
there is any breach of the convention.
"2. There is no doubt we should have the
usual right of interference if * * * the
treatment of British subjects in the Transvaal
was of such nature as would give us the right to
interfere as to the treatment of British subjects
in France or Germany.
"3. Then there is only one other case — the
third case. We can make friendly recommenda
tions to the Transvaal for the benefit of South
Africa generally and in the interests of peace."
In concluding Mr. Chamberlain said : "I do
not feel at the moment that any case has arisen
which would justify me in taking the strong ac
tion suggested" ; the reference being to the send
ing of an ultimatum.
The next important development was a pe
tition to the Imperial Government, signed by 21,-
684 British subjects in the Transvaal, praying for
interference in their behalf. This was forwarded
through Mr. Conyngham Greene, the British
agent at Pretoria, to Sir Alfred Milner, Governor
of Cape Colony, who transmitted it to London,

15

226 THE AFRICANDERS
where it was received by Mr. Chamberlain on the
14th of April.
Summarized, the complaints of the petition
ers were as follows :
1. The great majority of the uitlander popu
lation consists of British subjects who have no
share in the government.
2. Petitions of the uitlanders to the Trans
vaal government have either failed or have been
scornfully rejected.
3. Instead of redressing uitlander grievances,
the Transvaal government, after the Jameson
raid, passed laws making their position more irk
some — i. e., the immigration of aliens act, the
press law, the aliens expulsion law. The immi
gration act was suspended at the insistence of
the British government, but the others remain in
force. 4. The Transvaal government exercises the
power of suppressing publications devoted to the
interests of British uitlanders.
5. British subjects are expelled from the
Transvaal without the right of appeal to the high
court. 6. The promise of municipal government for
the city of Johannesburg has been kept in ap
pearance only. There are 1,039 burghers resi-

second war: its causes 227
dent of Johannesburg, and 23,503 uitlanders, but
the law giving each ward of the city two mem
bers of the council also requires that one of them
must be a burgher, and the Burgomaster, who
is appointed by the government, has the casting
vote. 7. The city of Johannesburg is menaced by
forts occupied by strong Boer garrisons.
8. The uitlanders of Johannesburg are de
nied the right to police their own city.
9. Trial by jury is a farce, as uitlanders can
be tried by burghers only.
10. The uitlanders are deprived of political
representation; are taxed beyond the require
ments of the Transvaal government.
11. The education of uitlander children is
made subject to impossible conditions.
12. The Boer police give no protection to
lives and property in the city of Johannesburg.
It will be noted that this petition, dealing with
political and other grievances, makes no men
tion of the dynamite monopoly, extortionate
railway charges, burdensome tariffs on imported
foodstuffs, and other industrial and commercial
grievances of which complaints had been made
at an earlier date. And in judging of this list of
complaints it should be considered that, with the

228 THE AFRICANDERS
exception of the eleventh, concerning the edu
cation of children — which is fatally indefinite in
expression — most of the conditions complained
of are exactly such as would be imposed on a
city lately in insurrection, and yet inhabited by
the same persons who had conspired to over
throw the government.
The dangerous tension already existing was
greatly heightened by a long telegraphic com
munication from Sir Alfred Milner, Governor of
Cape Colony, to Mr. Chamberlain, on the 5th
of May. After reviewing the situation, and re
iterating the grievances which British subjects
were said to be suffering, and declaring that the
spectacle presented "does steadily undermine the
influence and reputation of Great Britain," Sir
Alfred revealed the true inwardness of the strug
gle already begun between the Africanders and
the British by saying :
"A certain section of the press, not in the
Transvaal only, preaches openly and constantly
the doctrine of a republic embracing all South
Africa, and supports it by menacing references
to the armaments of the Transvaal, its alliance
with the Orange Free State, and the active sym
pathy which in case of war it would receive from
a section of her Majesty's subjects.

SECOND WAR: ITS CAUSES 229
"I can see nothing which will put a stop to
this mischievous propaganda but some striking
proof of the intention of her Majesty's govern
ment not to be ousted from its position in South
Africa." Sir Alfred's reference in the last two para
graphs is to the "Africander Bund," a society
whose ramifications were to be found throughout
Natal, Cape Colony, and, indeed, wherever mem
bers of the Africander race were to be found.
He that runneth may read and understand
these luminous words in Sir Alfred Milner's dis
patch. The coming struggle was not to be about
some foreigners in the Transvaal, but to defeat,
in time, the republican aspirations of the whole
Africander race, including those in the two re
publics already established and "a section of her
Majesty's subjects" in the British territories of
Natal and Cape Colony ; and the issue was under
stood to be either "a republic embracing all
South Africa" — involving the expulsion of the
British government "from its position in South
Africa" — or the defeat of those aspirations in the
establishing of a confederated South Africa un
der the British crown.
In the light of Sir Alfred's dispatch one ceases
to wonder that all negotiations about the uit-

23O THE AFRICANDERS
lander grievances, and that the repeated conces
sions as to the franchise offered by the Transvaal,
were without effect. It is evident that both par
ties saw inevitable war approaching on quite an
other and a much larger question.
The response of the British government to
the uitlanders' petition, and to Sir Alfred Milner's
appeal for intervention, was a suggestion that
President Kruger and Sir Alfred Milner should
meet at Pretoria and confer concerning the chief
matters in dispute between the two governments.
Afterward, upon the invitation of Mr. Steyn,
president of the Orange Free State, it was de
cided to hold the conference at Bloemfontein, the
capital of the Free State Republic. In accepting
the invitation to this conference in a telegram
dated the 17th of May, Mr. Kruger said :
"I remain disposed to come to Bloemfontein
and will gladly discuss every proposal in a
friendly way that can conduce to a good under
standing between the South African Republic
and England, and to the maintenance of peace
in South Africa, provided that the independence
of this republic is not impugned."
The date selected for the first meeting be
tween Mr. Kruger and Sir Alfred was the 31st of
May. On the 22d Sir Alfred telegraphed Mr.

second war: its causes 231
Chamberlain asking for final instructions to
guide him in the approaching conference, and
outlining his own views of the situation thus :
"It is my own inclination to put in the fore
ground the question of the uitlanders' grievances,
treating it as broadly as possible, and insisting
that it is necessary, in order to relieve the situa
tion, that uitlanders should obtain some substan
tial degree of representation by legislation to be
passed this session. Following would be the
general line :
"Franchise after six years, retroactive, and at
least seven members for the Rand" (the mining
district). "Present number of Volksraad of
South Africa being twenty-eight, this would
make one-fifth of it uitlander members.
"If President Kruger will not agree to any
thing like this, I should try municipal govern
ment for the whole Rand as an alternative, with
wide powers, including control of police.
"If he rejects this, too, I do not see much use
in discussing the various outstanding questions
between the two governments in detail, such
as dynamite, violations of Zululand boundary,
'Critic' case, Cape boys and Indians, though
it would be desirable to allude to them in course

232 THE AFRICANDERS
of discussion, and point out the gravity of having
so many subjects of dispute unsettled."
In a telegram, dated the 24th of May, Mr.
Chamberlain instructed Sir Alfred Milner, in
part, as follows:
"I think personally you should lay all stress
on the question of franchise in first instance.
Other reforms are less pressing and will come in
time if this can be arranged satisfactorily and
form of oath modified. Redistribution is rea
sonable, and you might accept a moderate con
cession. "If fair terms of franchise are refused by
President Kruger it is hardly worth while to
bring forward other matters, such as aliens, col
ored people, education, dynamite, etc., at the con
ference, and the whole situation must be recon
sidered." On the 31st of May, 1899, Sir Alfred Milner
and President Kruger met in conference at
Bloemfontein. Their negotiations form one of
the most interesting features of the controversy
between the two governments. The results of
the conference, in brief, were as follows. For
the uitlanders, Sir Alfred demanded that :
"Every foreigner who can prove satisfactorily
that he has been a resident in the country for five

second war: its causes 233
years ; that he desires to make it his permanent
place of residence; that he is prepared to take
the oath to obey the laws, to undertake all obli
gations of citizenship, and to defend the inde
pendence of the country; should be allowed to
become a citizen on taking that oath."
Sir Alfred Milner modified these proposals by
suggesting that the franchise be restricted to per
sons possessing a specific amount of property or
of yearly wages, and who have good characters.
He asked, further, that "in order to make that
proposal of any real use for the new citizens, who
mostly live in one district, * * * there
should be a certain number of new constituencies
created," and that "the number of these dis
tricts should not be so small as to leave the rep
resentatives of the new population in a con
temptible minority."
President Kruger did not accept Sir Alfred's
proposals, and submitted counter proposals as
follows :
"1. Every person who fixes his residence in
the South African Republic has to get himself
registered on the Field Cornet's books within
fourteen days after his arrival, according to the
existing law. He will be able after complying
with the conditions under 'A' and after the lapse

234 THE AFRICANDERS
of two years to get himself naturalized, and will,
five years after naturalization, on complying with
the conditions under 'B,' obtain the full franchise.
"A.
"i. Six months' notice of intention to apply
for naturalization. 2. Two years' continuous res
idence. 3. Residence in the South African Re
public during that time. 4. No dishonoring sen
tence. 5. Proof of obedience to laws; no act
against the government or independence. 6.
Proof of full state citizenship and franchise or
title thereto in former country. 7. Possession of
unmortgaged property to the value of £150; or
occupation of house to the rental of £50 per an
num ; or yearly income of at least £200. Noth
ing, however, shall prevent the government from
granting naturalization to persons who have not
satisfied this condition. 8. Taking of an oath
similar to that of the Orange Free State.
"B.
"1. Continuous registration for five years
after naturalization. 2. Continuous residence
during that period. 3. No dishonoring sentence.
4. Proof of obedience to laws. 5. Proof that ap
plicant still complies with the condition of A 7."
In a memorandum which is a part of the rec
ords of the conference Sir Alfred Milner admitted

second war: its causes 235
that President Kruger's proposals were "a con
siderable advance upon the existing provisions as
to franchise." But he intimated that they stopped
far short of the solution he had suggested, and
which, he said, "alone appeared to be adequate to
the needs of the case." He also declared it a
waste of time to discuss further details ; and so
the conference ended in failure.
Notwithstanding the failure of the confer
ence, the Volksraad of the South African Re
public passed a seven years' retroactive franchise
law on the 19th of July, 1899. This law was
somewhat modified from the proposals submitted
by President Kruger at the conference. It also
gave the uitlanders additional representation in
both raads, which President Kruger announced
on the 27th of July as follows :
"By virtue of the powers conferred upon them
the Executive Council yesterday decided to give
three new members in each Volksraad for the
Witwatersrand gold fields. That is to say, there
are at present two members for both raads ; the
number will be increased to eight, four to sit in
the first and four in the second raad. With the
De Kaap representative, there will now be five
members to represent the mining industry in a

236 THE AFRICANDERS
proposed enlarged legislature of thirty-one mem
bers. In London it was believed that the action of
the Volksraad was a long stride toward a peace
ful solution of the difficulties. In the House of
Commons Mr. Chamberlain, after reading a tele
gram from Sir Alfred Milner announcing the ac
tion of the Volksraad, said :
"I have no official information as to the re
distribution, but it has been stated that the gov
ernment of the South African Republic proposes
to give seven new seats to the district chiefly in
habited by aliens.
"If this report is confirmed this important
change in the proposals of President Kruger,
coupled with previous amendments, leads the
government to hope that the new law may prove
a basis of a settlement on the lines laid down by
Sir Alfred Milner at the Bloemfontein confer
ence." But somewhere in the counsels by which the
British authorities acted at this time there was an
element of suspicion and of yet unsatisfied ag
gression, which did not make for a peaceful set
tlement. After the Volksraad of the South Afri
can Republic had passed the seven years' fran
chise law, together with enlarged representation

second war: its causes 237
of the uitlanders in both raads, and after Mr.
Chamberlain had made his hopeful announce
ment in the House of Commons, the whole sub
ject was reopened by a new request. The Trans
vaal government was asked to agree that a joint
commission of inquiry, made up of expert dele
gates representing the Transvaal and the British
government, should be appointed to investigate
the exact effect of the new franchise law.
It is not surprising that this request fell as
a shock upon a government which had received
from the power making this and other extraordi
nary demands a guaranty, in the convention of
1884, that it should be in every sense independ
ent in the management of its internal affairs. On
the 2 1 st of August President Kruger formally
declined to accede to the request for a joint com
mittee to investigate the effect of the new fran
chise law, and submitted an alternative proposi
tion : The South African Republic would give a
five years' retroactive franchise, eight new seats
in the Volksraad and a vote for President and
Commandant-General, conditioned upon Great
Britain consenting :
"1. In the future not to interfere in the in
ternal affairs of the Transvaal Republic. 2. Not

238 THE AFRICANDERS
to insist further on its assertion of the existence
of suzerainty. 3. To agree to arbitration."
In a dispatch dated the 2d of September, 1899,
Mr. Chamberlain, having rejected President Kru
ger's alternative proposals, suggested another
conference, to be held at Cape Town, and ended
with the significant statement :
"Her Majesty's government also desires to
remind the government of the South African Re
public that there are other matters of difference
between the two governments which will not be
settled by the grant of political representation to
the uitlanders, and which are not proper subjects
for reference to arbitration."
In dispatches printed on the 7th of September
President Kruger signified a willingness to at
tend the Cape Town conference, and, while hold
ing that no good could come of a joint inquiry
into the effect of the new franchise law, he would
agree that British representatives should make
an independent inquiry, after which any sugges
tions they might make would be submitted to the
raad. Concerning suzerainty he announced the
unalterable purpose of his people to adhere abso
lutely to the convention of 1884.
On the 8th of September the British cabinet
formulated a note to the South African Republic

SECOND WAR-. ITS CAUSES 239
very much in the nature of an ultimatum, refus
ing point blank to entertain the proposal that
Great Britain should relinquish suzerainty over
the Transvaal and pointedly intimating that the
offer of a joint inquiry into the effect of the
seven years' franchise law would not remain
open indefinitely.
The Transvaal's rejoinder, printed unoffi
cially on the 16th of September, announced that
the South African Republic withdrew the pro
posal to give a five years' franchise, that it would
adhere to the original seven years' law already
passed by the Volksraad, and that it would, if
necessary, adopt any suggestions Great Britain
might make with reference to the practical work
ings of the law.
On the 25th of September, after three days'
consideration, the British cabinet gave out the
text of another note to the South African Repub
lic, which read as follows :
"The object Her Majesty's government had
in view in the recent negotiations has been stated
in a manner which cannot admit of misunder
standing — viz. : To obtain such substantial and
immediate representation for the outlanders as
will enable them to secure for themselves that fair
and just treatment which was formally promised

- :,,4Z>£MS,*

240

THE AFRICANDERS

them in 1881, and which Her Majesty intended
to secure for them when she granted privileges
of self-government to the Transvaal.
"No conditions less comprehensive than those
contained in the telegram of September 8 can be
relied on to effect this object.
"The refusal of the South African govern
ment to entertain the offer thus made — coming,
as it does, after four months of protracted nego
tiations, themselves the climax of five years of
extended agitation — makes it useless to further
pursue the discussion on the lines hitherto fol
lowed, and the imperial government is now com
pelled to consider the situation afresh and formu
late its own proposals for a final settlement of the
issues which have been created in South Africa
by the policy constantly followed by the govern
ment of South Africa.
"They will communicate the result of their
deliberations in a later dispatch."

PRITCHARD STREET, LOOKING EAST, JOHANNESBURG,

SecoNd war: iTs causes 241

CHAPTER XVI.
CAUSES OF THE AFRICANDERS' SECOND WAR OF IN
DEPENDENCE. — CONCLUDED.
The "later dispatch" promised by the British
cabinet was never sent. The answer to it of the
Transvaal government was, therefore, delayed for
several days, awaiting the new proposals that
were to come as the result of further deliberations
on the part of Her Majesty's government. At
last, on the eve of the outbreak of war, Mr.
Chamberlain gave out, on the 10th of October,
the text of the republic's rejoinder to the British
cabinet's note of the 25th of September. It was
transmitted by cable, through Sir Alfred Milner,
and read thus:
"Dear Sir: The government of the South
African Republic feels itself compelled to refer
the government of Her Majesty, Queen of Great
Britain and Ireland, once more to the convention
of London, 1884, concluded between this repub
lic and the United Kingdom, and which, in Ar
ia

242 THE AFRICANDERS
tide XIV., secures certain specific rights to the
white population of this republic — namely : That
all persons other than natives, on conforming
themselves to the laws of the South African Re
public —
"A— Will have full liberty, with their families,
to enter, travel or reside in any part of the South
African Republic.
"B — They will be entitled to hire or possess
houses, manufactories, warehouses, shops and
other premises.
"C — They may carry on their commerce
either in person or by any agents whom they
may think fit to employ.
"D — They shall not be subject, in respect of
their premises or property or in respect of their
commerce and industry, to any taxes other than
those which are or may be imposed upon the cit
izens of the said republic.
"This government wishes further to observe
that these are the only rights which Her Maj
esty's government has reserved in the above con
vention with regard to the outlander population
of this republic, and that a violation only of those
rights could give that government a right to
diplomatic representations or intervention ; while,
moreover, the Tegulation of all other questions

SECOND WAR: ITS CAUSES 243
affecting the position of the rights of the out
lander population under the above-mentioned
convention is handed over to the government and
representatives of the people of the South Afri
can Republic.
"Among the questions the regulation of which
falls exclusively within the competence of this
government and of the Volksraad are included
those of the franchise and the representation of
the people in this republic; and, although this
exclusive right of this government and of the
Volksraad for the regulation of the franchise and
the representation of the people is indisputable,
yet this government has found occasion to dis
cuss, in friendly fashion, the franchise and repre
sentation of the people with Her Majesty's gov
ernment — without, however, recognizing any
right thereto on the part of Her Majesty's gov
ernment. "This government has also, by the formula
tion of the now existing franchise law and by a
resolution with regard to the representation, con
stantly held these friendly discussions before its
eyes. On the part of Her Majesty's government,
however, the friendly nature of these discussions
has assumed more and more a threatening tone,
and the minds of the people of this republic and

244 THE AFRICANDERS
the whole of South Africa have been excited and
a condition of extreme tension has been created,
owing to the fact that Her Majesty's government
could no longer agree to the legislation respect
ing the franchise and the resolution respecting
representation in this republic, and, finally, by
your note of Sept. 25, 1899, which broke off all
friendly correspondence on the subject and inti
mated that Her Majesty's government must now
proceed to formulate its own proposals for the
final settlement.
"This government can only see in the above
intimation from Her Majesty's government a
new violation of the convention of London, 1884,
which does not reserve to Her Majesty's govern
ment the right to a unilateral settlement of a
question which is exclusively a domestic one for
this government, and which has been already reg
ulated by this government.
"On account of the strained situation and the
consequent serious loss in and interruption of
trade in general, which the correspondence re
specting franchise and the representation of the
people of this republic has carried in its train,
Her Majesty's government has recently pressed
for an early settlement, and finally pressed, by
your intervention, for an answer within forty-

Second war: its causes 245
eight hours, a demand subsequently somewhat
modified, to your note of September 12, replied
to by the note of this government of September
15, and to your note of September 25, 1899, and
thereafter further friendly negotiations were
broken off, this government receiving an intima
tion that a proposal for a final settlement would
shortly be made.
"Although this promise was once more re
peated, the proposal, up to now, has not reached
this government.
"Even while this friendly correspondence was
still going on the increase of troops on a large
scale was introduced by Her Majesty's govern
ment, the troops being stationed in the neigh
borhood of the borders of this republic.
"Having regard to occurrences in the history
of this republic, which it is unnecessary here to
call to mind, this republic felt obliged to regard
this military force in the neighborhood of its
borders as a threat against the independence of
the South African Republic, since it was aware
of no circumstances which could justify the pres
ence of such a military force in South Africa and
in the neighborhood of its borders.
"In answer to an inquiry with respect thereto,
addressed to His Excellency, the High Commis-

246 THE AFRICANDERS
sioner, this government received, to its great as
tonishment, in answer a veiled insinuation that
from the side of the republic an attack was being
made on Her Majesty's colonies, and, at the same
time, a mysterious reference to possibilities
whereby this government was strengthened in its
suspicion that the independence of this republic
was being threatened.
"As a defensive measure this government
was, therefore, obliged to send a portion of the
burghers of this republic in order to offer requi
site resistance to similar possibilities."
It will be seen from this correspondence that
the British government had failed to send the
formulation of "its own proposals for a final set
tlement" promised in the note of September 25,
and that active preparations for war, even to tiie
mobilization of troops, had been going on — on
both sides — for some weeks.
On the 7th of August, forty-nine days before
the British cabinet engaged to prolong friendly
diplomatic correspondence on the subjects at
issue by promising a later dispatch containing its
own proposals for a final settlement, Mr. Cham
berlain delivered a speech in the House of Com
mons which has become historic — a speech which
signified past all possibility of mistake that at

second war: its causes 247
that early date war was a foregone conclusion.
After deprecating the use of the word "war" un
less it were absolutely necessary, he went on to
say: "The government had stated that they recog
nized the grievances under which their subjects
in Africa were laboring. They had stated that
they found those grievances not only in them
selves a serious cause for interposition, but a
source of danger to the whole of South Africa.
"They (the government) said that their pre
dominance, which both sides of the House had
constantly asserted, was menaced by the action
of the Transvaal government in refusing the re
dress of grievances, and in refusing any consid
eration of the requests hitherto put in the most
moderate language of the suzerain power. They
said that that was a state of things which could
not be long tolerated. They had said : 'We have
put our hands to the plow and we will not turn
back,' and with that statement I propose to rest
content." Language could not be plainer. It was the
British government's demand that the South Af
rican Republic must accept British control of her
internal affairs — of affairs so purely domestic as
the franchise and the representation of her citj-

248 THE AFRICANDERS
zens — or fight. It is not a little remarkable in
this connection that Germany, France, the
United States of America and other powerful na
tions whose subjects were mingled with the Eng
lish in that vast foreign population in the Trans
vaal, heard of no grievances inflicted on their
subjects by the South African Republic sufficient
to call forth even a friendly diplomatic repre
sentation and request for redress.
On the morning of August the 8th, the day
after Mr. Chamberlain's warlike speech, the Lon
don papers announced that the Liverpool and
Manchester regiments, then at the Cape, had
been ordered to Natal ; that the Fifteenth Hus
sars were to embark on the 23d of August, and
that troops were to be massed along the Trans
vaal frontier. On the nth of August it was an
nounced that 12,000 British troops were to be
dispatched from India to South Africa, and on
the same day a large consignment of war stores,
including medical requisites, was given out from
the royal arsenal, Woolwich, for shipment to
Natal, and the sum of $2,000,000 in gold was sent
to South Africa for the War Office account.
British troops began to arrive in South Africa
from India and from England in the first week of
October. By the 10th some 15,000 had landed.

SECOND WAR: ITS CAUSES 249
These were hurried to the frontiers of the Orange
Free State — both west and east — most of them
being concentrated along the northern boundary
of Natal, convenient to the southern frontier of
the Transvaal.
The government of the South African Repub
lic made no mistake as to the meaning of Cham
berlain's belligerent speech in the House of Com
mons. On the 8th of August orders were given
for the purchase of 1,000 trek oxen, to be used in
the operations of the commissary department.
On the nth the German steamer Reichstag ar
rived at Lorenzo Marquez with 401 cases of am
munition. On the 1 2th it was decided to pro
ceed at once with the construction of fortified
camps at Laing's Nek and Majuba Hill, and or
ders were issued for the preparation of armored
trains. The mobilization of artillery was begun
on the 13th, and the next day that force went
into camps of instruction to learn the handling
of guns of the latest pattern. On the 14th of Au
gust the Field Cornets were ordered to distribute
Mauser rifles to the burghers, and the govern
ment began the purchase of mules, provisions
and general war supplies. Large quantities of
arms and ammunition were dispatched on the
15th of August to Oudtshoorn, Aliwal Bethany,

25O THE AFRICANDERS
and other points in Cape Colony and the Orange
Free State for the use of any Africanders who
should rise against Great Britain when hostilities
began. On the 19th of August another German
steamer, the Koenig, arrived in Delagoa Bay with
2,000 cases of cartridges for the Transvaal gov
ernment. The same day fifty cases of ammuni
tion each were dispatched to Kimberley, Jagers-
fontein and Aliwal North for the arming of sym
pathizers in those districts of Cape Colony. On
the same day 300 Transvaal artillerists, with
guns, ammunition and camp equipage, left Jo
hannesburg for Komati Pass, in the Libombo
Mountains. And so it went on during the "friendly diplo
matic correspondence," which terminated on the
25th of September — awaiting the "later dispatch"
from the British cabinet, which never came ; both
sides arming and maneuvering for strategic ad
vantages in preparation for the struggle that was
seen to be inevitable.
Perceiving that all the days spent in waiting
for that "later dispatch" were being used by
Great Britain in massing her gigantic powers of
war in South Africa and along the Transvaal
frontier, and believing that no such dispatch
would now come until the points of war were all

SECOND WAR: ITS CAUSES 25 1
secured by his great antagonist, President Kru
ger at last astonished the world — and, most of all,
Great Britain — by issuing an ultimatum suffi
ciently bold and defiant to have come from any
of the first-rate powers of the earth.
The document was dated 5 o'clock, p. m., on
Monday, October the 9th, and read as follows :
"Her Majesty's unlawful intervention in the
internal affairs of this republic, in conflict with
the London convention of 1884, and by the ex
traordinary strengthening of her troops in the
neighborhood of the borders of this republic, has
caused an intolerable condition of things to arise,
to which this government feels itself obliged, in
the interest not only of this republic, but also of
all South Africa, to make an end as soon as
possible. "This government feels itself called upon and
obliged to press earnestly and with emphasis for
an immediate termination of this state of things,
and to request Her Majesty's government to give
assurances upon the following four demands :
"First — That all points of mutual difference
be regulated by friendly recourse to arbitration
or by whatever amicable way may be agreed
upon by this government and Her Majesty's
government.

252 THE AFRICANDERS
"Second — That all troops on the borders of
this republic shall be instantly withdrawn.
"Third — That all re-enforcements of troops
which have arrived in South Africa since June 1,
1899, shall be removed from South Africa within
a reasonable time, to be agreed upon with this
government, and with the mutual assurance and
guaranty on the part of this government that no
attack upon or hostilities against any portion of
the possessions of the British government shall
be made by this republic during the further ne
gotiations within a period of time to be subse
quently agreed upon between the governments ;
and this government will, on compliance there
with, be prepared to withdraw the burghers of
this republic from the borders.
"Fourth — That Her Majesty's troops which
are now on the high seas shall not be landed in
any part of South Africa.
"This government presses for an immediate
and an affirmative answer to these four questions
and earnestly requests Her Majesty's govern
ment to return an answer before or upon
Wednesday, October n, 1899, not later than 5
o'clock p. m.
"It desires further to add that in the unex
pected event of an answer not satisfactory being

second war: its causes 253
received by it within the interval, it will with
great regret be compelled to regard the action of
Her Majesty's government as a formal declara
tion of war and will not hold itself responsible for
the consequences thereof, and that, in the event
of any further movement of troops occurring
within the above-mentioned time in a nearer di
rection to our borders, this government will be
compelled to regard that also as a formal declara
tion of war."
This document was signed by F. W. Reitz,
State Secretary, and handed by him to Mr. Con-
yngham Greene, Her Majesty's agent at Pre
toria. On Wednesday afternoon, October the
nth, at 3 o'clock, Mr. Greene delivered the reply
of his government, which read thus :
"Her Majesty's government declines even to
consider the peremptory demands of the Trans
vaal government."
Within an hour the telegraphic wires had
flashed through all the South African Republic
the ominous word "Oorlog" — war !
Mr. Conyngham Greene at once asked for his
passport, and on the next day, October the 12th,
with his family, he was sent, attended by a guard
of honor, to the border of the Orange Free State,

254 THE AFRICANDERS
where a similar guard received and conducted
him to British territory in Cape Colony.
Thursday, the 12th of October, was a busy
and exciting day in both the Transvaal and the
Orange Free State — for the two republics stood
as one in the struggle. That night — twenty-four
hours after war had been declared — 30,000 bur
ghers were on the borders ready to do battle. Of
these 20,000 invaded Natal under General Jou
bert, and the vanguard under General Kock oc
cupied Newcastle on the 13th of October. The
other 10,000, under General Peit Cronje, crossed
the western border into British Bechuanaland
and marched on Mafeking.
Thus, and for the causes set forth, began the
Africanders' Second War of Independence. It
was not in the proposed scope of this book to
treat of its fortunes. The prospect is that it will
be a long and sanguinary war. The story of it
will afford abundant and interesting matter for a
later volume.
It only remains to show that in all the matters
in dispute between the government of the Trans
vaal and that of Great Britain, and in the war
which resulted therefrom, the two Africander re
publics acted in solidarity. Early in November,
1899, the President of the Orange Free State

second war: its causes 255
announced this to his people and to the world in
the following proclamation :
"Burghers of the Orange Free State:
The time which we had so much desired to avoid
— the moment when we as a nation are compelled
with arms to oppose injustice and shameless vio
lence^ — is at hand. Our sister republic to the
north of the Vaal river is about to be attacked by
an unscrupulous enemy, who for many years has
prepared herself and sought pretexts for the vio
lence of which he is now guilty, whose purpose is
to destroy the existence of the Africander race.
"With our sister republic we are not only
bound by ties of blood, of sympathy and of com
mon interests, but also by formal treaty which
has been necessitated by circumstances. This
treaty demands of us that we assist her if she
should be unjustly attacked, which we unfortu
nately for a long time have had too much reason
to expect. We therefore cannot passively look
on while injustice is done her, and while also our
own dearly bought freedom is endangered, but
are called as men to resist, trusting the Almighty,
firmly believing that He will never permit injus
tice and unrighteousness to triumph.
"Now that we thus resist a powerful enemy,
with whom it has always been Our highest de-,

256 THE AFRICANDERS
sire to live in friendship, notwithstanding injus
tice and wrong done by him to us in the past, we
solemnly declare in the presence of the Almighty
God that we are compelled thereto by the injus
tice done to our kinsmen and by the conscious
ness that the end of their independence will make
our existence as an independent state of no sig
nificance, and that their fate, should they be
obliged to bend under an overwhelming power,
will also soon after be our own fate.
"Solemn treaties have not protected our sis
ter republic against annexation, against conspir
acy, against the claim of an abolished suzerainty,
against continuous oppression and interference,
and now against a renewed attack which aims
only at her downfall.
"Our own unfortunate experiences in the past
have also made it sufficiently clear to us that we
cannot rely on the most solemn promises and
agreements of Great Britain, when she has at her
helm a government prepared to trample on
treaties, to look for feigned pretexts for every
violation of good faith by her committed. This
is proved among other things by the unjust and
unlawful British intervention, after we had over
come an armed and barbarous black tribe on our
eastern frontier, as also by the forcible appropria-

second war: its causes 257
tion of the dominion over part of our territory
where the discovery of diamonds had caused the
desire for this appropriation, although contrary
to existing treaties. The desire and intention to
trample on our rights as an independent and
sovereign nation, notwithstanding a solemn con
vention existing between this state and Great
Britain, have also been more than once and are
now again shown by the present government, by
giving expressions in public documents to an un
founded claim of paramountcy over the whole of
South Africa, and therefore also over this state.
"With regard to the South African Republic,
Great Britain has moreover refused until the
present to allow her to regain her original posi
tion in respect to foreign affairs, a position which
she had lost in no sense by her own faults. The
original intention of the conventions to which
the republic had consented under pressure and
circumstances has been perverted and contin
ually been used by the present British admin
istration as a means for the practice of tyranny
and of injustice, and, among other things, for the
support of a revolutionary propaganda within the
republic in favor of Great Britain.
"And while no redress has been offered, as
justice demands, for injustice done to the South
17

258 THE AFRICANDERS
African Republic on the part of the British gov
ernment ; and while no gratitude is exhibited for
the magnanimity shown at the request of the
British government to British subjects who had
forfeited under the laws of the republic their lives
and property, yet no feeling of shame has pre
vented the British government, now that the gold
mines of immense value have been discovered in
the country, to make claims of the republic, the
consequence of which, if allowed, will be that
those who — or whose forefathers — have saved
the country from barbarism and have won it for
civilization with their blood and their tears, will
lose their control over the interests of the coun
try to which they are justly entitled according to
divine and human laws. The consequence of
these claims would be, moreover, that the greater
part of the power will be placed in the hands of
those who, foreigners by birth, enjoy the priv
ilege of depriving the country of its chief treas
ure, while they have never shown any loyalty to
a foreign government. Besides, the inevitable
consequence of the acceptance of these claims
would be that the independence of the country as
a self-governing, independent sovereign republic
would be irreparably lost. For years past British
troops in great numbers have been placed on the

second war: its causes 259
frontiers of our sister republic in order to compel
her by fear to accede to the demands which would
be pressed upon her, and in order to encourage
revolutionary disturbances and the cunning plans
of those whose greed for gold is the cause of their
shameless undertakings.
"Those plans have now reached their climax
in the open violence to which the present British
government now resorts. While we readily ac
knowledge the honorable character of thousands
of Englishmen who loathe such deeds of robbery
and wrong, we cannot but abhor the shameless
breaking of treaties, the feigned pretexts for the
transgression of law, the violation of interna
tional law and of justice and the numerous right-
rending deeds of the British statesmen, who will
now force a war upon the South African Repub
lic. On their heads be the guilt of blood, and
may a just Providence reward all as they deserve.
"Burghers of the Orange Free State, rise as
one man against the oppressor and the violator
of right !
"In the strife to which we are now driven
have care to commit no deed unworthy of a
Christian and of a burgher of the Orange Free
State. Let us look forward with confidence to a
fortunate end of this conflict, trusting to the

260 THE AFRICANDERS
Higher Power without whose help human weap
ons are of no avail.
"May He bless our arms. Under His banner
we advance to battle for liberty and for father
land. M. T. Steyn, State President."

THEIR COUNTRY 26 1

CHAPTER XVII.
THE COUNTRY OF THE AFRICANDERS.
Some knowledge of the physical structure of
South Africa is necessary to an understanding of
its resources, economic conditions and the long
standing political problems which, to all appear
ance, are now nearing a final solution.
Nature has divided that part of Africa lying
south of the Zambesi River into three distinct
and well-defined regions. A strip of lowland
skirts the coast of the Indian Ocean all the way
from Cape Town around to Natal, Delagoa Bay
and still northeast to the mouths of the Zambesi.
Between Durban, the principal port of Natal, and
Cape Town this strip is very narrow in places —
the hills coming down almost to the margin of
the sea. Beyond Durban, to the northeast, the
low plain grows wider. This belt of lowland is
more or less swampy, and from Durban north
ward is exceedingly malarious and unhealthful.
This feature is a prime factor in the physical

262 THE AFRICANDERS
structure of the country and has had much to do
with shaping its history.
The second region is composed of the ele
vated and much broken surface presented by
the Drakensburg or Quathlamba range of moun
tains, reaching from Cape Town to the Zambesi
Valley — a distance of sixteen hundred miles. In
traveling inland, after leaving the level belt, at
from thirty to sixty miles from the sea the hills
rise higher and higher — from three thousand to
six thousand feet. These hills are only the spurs
of the principal range, some of whose peaks rise
to an elevation of eleven thousand feet.
Beyond the Quathlamba Mountains, to the
west and north, is the third natural division of
South Africa — a vast tableland or plateau, vary
ing from three thousand to five thousand feet
above the sea level. This region occupies about
seven-eighths of the area of South Africa.
To a bird's-eye view of the country the phys
ical scheme is exceedingly simple — a great pla
teau filling the interior, a belt of lowland border
ing the Indian Ocean and one principal moun
tain range between the two.
Geologically considered, the oldest formation
is found in the northern part of the-tableland and
toward the northeastern end of the Onathlamba

THEIR COUNTRY 263
Mountains. The principal formations in this re
gion are granite and gneiss, believed to be of
great antiquity — probably of the same age as the
Laurentian formations in America. The rocks
of the Karoo district are not so ancient. There
are no traces anywhere in South Africa of late
volcanic action, nor has any active volcano been
discovered there; but eruptive rocks of ancient
date — porphyries and greenstones — are found
overlying the sedimentary deposits in the Karoo
district and in the mountain systems of Basuto
land and the Orange Free State.
The African coast is notably poor in harbors.
There is no haven between Cape Town and Dur
ban. From Durban to the Zambesi there are but
two good ports — that of Delagoa Bay and Beira.
With the exception of Saldanha Bay, twenty
miles north of Cape Town, the western coast, for
a thousand miles, has no harbor.
The temperature in Southern Africa is much
lower than the latitude would lead one to expect.
This is accounted for by the fact that there is a
vast preponderance of water in the southern
hemisphere, which has the effect of giving a
cooler temperature than prevails in a correspond
ing northern latitude. The difference in both
heat and cold represents over two degrees of dif-

264 THE AFRICANDERS
ference in latitude. Thus, Cape Town, 340 S.,
has a lower temperature in both summer and
winter than Gibraltar and Aleppo, in 360 N.
Nevertheless, the thermometer registers high in
some parts of South Africa. Even at Durban,
in latitude 300 S., the heat is often severe, and the
northern part of the Transvaal and the British
territories to the north of it lie within the Tropic
of Capricorn. The mean temperature in South
Africa proper is 700 Fahrenheit in January and
8o° in July.
Over most of the country the climate is ex
ceptionally dry. In the region of Cape Colony
there are well-defined summer and winter; but
in the rest of South Africa for about two-thirds
of the year there is only a dry season, when the
weather is cooler, and a wet season of four or
five months, when the sun is the highest and the
heat is most intense. The rainy season is not so
continuous, nor is there so great a precipitation,
as in some other hot countries. In the parts
where the rainfall is heaviest, averaging over
thirty inches in the year, the moisture soon dis
appears by evaporation and absorption, and the
surface remains parched till the next wet season.
As a consequence of this the air is generally dry,
clear and stimulating.

CATTLE ON THE VAAL RIVER.

THEIR COUNTRY 265
It is interesting to note the effect upon cli
mate of the physical structure described above.
The prevailing and rain-bringing winds are from
the east and the southeast. They bring suffi
cient moisture to the low plain along the sea
coast, and passing inland the rain-bearing clouds
water the foothills of the Quathlamba Mountains
and precipitate snow on the loftier peaks beyond
them. A portion of the moisture is carried still
farther to the west and falls in showers on the
eastern part of the plateau — the Transvaal, the
Orange Free State, the eastern border of Bech
uanaland and the region northward toward the
Zambesi. Sections farther to the north and west
receive but little of the annual rainfall, ranging
from five to ten inches in the year. That little is
soon dissipated, the surface becomes dry and
hard, and such vegetation as springs up under
the brief showers soon dies. Much of this region
is a desert, and so must remain until more and
more continuous moisture is supplied, either by
artificial irrigation or by some favorable change
in natural conditions.
From these permanent physical features — the
lowlands along the coast, the elevated plateau in
the interior, the mountain range running be
tween them, a burning sun and a dry atmosphere

266 THE AFRICANDERS
— have developed many of the other natural
phenomena of South Africa.
The rivers of that country — laid down in
great numbers on the maps — are not rivers dur
ing much of the year. In the dry season they are
either without water altogether or consist of a
succession of little pools scarcely sufficient to
supply the cattle on their banks with drink. And
when they are rivers they are, most of the time,
such as can neither be forded nor navigated; the
violent rains — continuing for hours and some
times for many days — have converted them into
roaring torrents.
Now, if that country could have been entered
by waterways, as were North and South Amer
ica, it would not have remained an unknown
land so long. But there was no other means of
penetrating it than the lumbering ox-wagon,
making at best a dozen miles a day, with frequent
long halts in the neighborhood of good grass in
order to rest and recuperate the cattle. It is
this lack of navigable rivers that now compels the
people to depend exclusively on railways for in
ternal transportation and travel. With the ex
ception of tidal streams there is no internal water
communication of any value.
Another peculiarity of the east coast rivers

THEIR COUNTRY 267
arises out of the nearness of the Quathlamba
Mountains to the sea. Such rivers as take their
rise in the mountains have very short courses,
and the few that come from beyond, finding
channels through the mountain passes, are so
obstructed by rapids and cataracts at the point
of descent from the higher levels that no boat
can ascend them.
South Africa presents to the foreigner from
cooler climates no serious danger as to health.
The sun-heat would be trying were it not for the
dryness of the atmosphere and the invariable
coolness of the nights, which have the effect of a
refreshing tonic. With due care in providing
sufficient wraps for the occasional cold day in
the dry season, and the means of comfortable
sleep during the cool nights, there is nothing to
fear. The much-dreaded malarial fever has its hab
itat in the lowlands of both the east and the west
coast. Persons who are not immune to it can
choose their place of residence on the higher
lands, or take refuge in quinine.
The dryness and purity of the air in many
parts of South Africa — notably Ceres, Kimber
ley, Beauport West and other places in the in
terior plateau — make it peculiarly suitable for

268 THE AFRICANDERS
persons suffering from any form of chest disease
— always excepting tuberculosis, for which the
sure remedy has not yet been discovered. But
even the victims of that malady find atmospheric
and other conditions friendly to a prolongation
of life in the salubrious air and sunshine of the
South African tablelands.
On the whole, there can be no question as to
the general good effect upon health of the South
African climate. Europeans and Americans liv
ing therein pursue their athletic sports with all
the zest experienced in their native climates, and
the descendants of the original Dutch and Hu
guenot settlers — now in the sixth and seventh
generations — have lost nothing of the stature
nor of the physical energy that characterized
their forefathers.
South Africa used to be the habitat of an un
usually rich fauna. The lion, leopard, elephant,
giraffe, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, antelope in
thirty-one species, zebra, quagga, buffalo and
various other wild creatures — some of them sav
age, and all of them beautiful after their kind —
abounded. But of late years all this has been
changed. Since firearms have been greatly im
proved and cheapened and the country has been
opened to the Nimrods of the world and the

THEIR COUNTRY 269
swarming natives have procured guns and
learned to use them, the wild animals have been
thinned out. There are now but two regions in
South Africa where big game can be killed in any
great numbers — the Portuguese territory from
the Zambesi to Delagoa Bay, and the adjoining
eastern frontier of the Transvaal.
Snakes of various kinds and sizes, from the
poisonous black momba to the python that grows
to over twenty feet in length, used to infest many
parts of the country, but they have almost disap
peared from the temperate regions inhabited by
the whites.
The farmers' worst enemies are not now the
great beasts and reptiles of former years, but the
baboons, which gather in the more rocky dis
tricts and kill the lambs, and two species of in
sects — the white ants and the locusts — which
sometimes ravage the eastern coast.
Beyond that of most countries in the world
of equal extent the flora of South Africa is rich
in both genera and species. The neighborhood of
Cape Town and the warm, sub-tropical regions
of eastern Cape Colony and Natal are specially
affluent in beautiful flowers. In the Karoo dis
trict, and northeastward over the plateau into
Bechuanaland and the Transvaal, vegetation pre-

270 THE AFRICANDERS
sents but little variety of aspect, owing in part to
the general sameness of geological formations
and in part to the prevailing dryness of the sur
face. In general, South Africa is comparatively
bare of forests — a fact for which denudation by
man cannot account, for it is yet a country new
to civilization. Some primitive forests are to be
found on the south coast of Cape Colony and in
Natal. These have been put under the care of a
Forest Department of the government. In the
great Knysna forest wild elephants still roam
at large. The trees, however, even in the pre
served forests, are small, few of them being more
than fifty or sixty feet in height. The yellow-
wood grows the tallest, but the less lofty sneeze-
wood is the most useful to man. Up the hillsides
north of Graham's Town and King William's
Town are immense tracts of scrub from four to
eight feet high, with occasional patches of prickly
pear — a formidable invader from America,
through which both men and cattle make their
passage at the cost of much effort and many ir
ritating wounds from the sharp spines. A large
part of this region, being suitable for little else,
has been utilized for ostrich farming.
In the Karoo district and northward through

THEIR COUNTRY 27 1
Cape Colony, western Bechuanaland and the
German possessions in Namaqualand and Da-
maraland — a desert region — there are few trees
except small and thorny mimosas. Farther east,
where there is a greater rainfall, the trees are
more numerous and less thorny. The plain
around Kimberley, once well wooded, has been
stripped of its trees to furnish props for the dia
mond mines and fuel.
The lack of forests is one of the principal
drawbacks to the development of South Africa.
Timber is everywhere costly ; the rainfall is less
than it would be if the country were well wood
ed; and when rains do come the moisture is
more rapidly dissipated by absorption, evapora
tion and sudden freshets because of the absence
of shade. Of late energetic measures have been
taken to supply nature's lack by artificial for
estry. On the great veldt plateau in the vicinity
of Kimberley and of Pretoria and in other local
ities the people have planted the Australian
gum tree, the eucalyptus and several varieties of
European trees, including the oak, which, be
sides being useful, is very beautiful. If the prac
tice be continued the country will reap an incal
culable benefit, not only in appearance, but also
in climatic conditions.

272 THE AFRICANDERS
The largest political division of South Africa
is Cape Colony. The area is about 292,000
square miles and the population, white and na
tive, is 2,011,305. The whites number about 400,-
000. But little of it is suitable for agriculture,
and considerable portions of it are too arid for
stock raising. Including the natives the popu
lation is only about seven to the square mile.
On the lowlands skirting the sea on the south
and west are some fruitful regions that give a
profitable yield of grapes and corn. On the table
land of the interior there is a rainfall of only from
five to fifteen inches in the year. As a conse
quence the surface is dry and unfriendly to veg
etable life. In ah area of three hundred miles by
one hundred and fifty there is not a stream hav
ing a current throughout the year, nor is there
any moisture at all in the dry season except
some shallow pools which are soon dried up by
evaporation. Nevertheless, in this desert, bare
of trees and of herbage, there is abundance of
prickly shrubs, which are sufficiently succulent
when they sprout under the summer rains to af
ford good browsing for goats and sheep. In the
northwestern part of the interior and northward
to Kimberley and Mafeking, the country is bet
ter watered than the more westerly regions, and

THEIR COUNTRY 273
grazing animals find a generous growth of grass
as well as nutritious shrubs. In the southeastern
part the rainfall is still heavier. The foothills of
the Quathlamba Range toward the sea are cov
ered in places with forests, the grass is more
abundant and much of the land can be tilled to
profit without artificial irrigation. In 1899 there
were about 3,000 miles of railway and nearly
7,000 miles of telegraph open in the colony. The
number of vessels entering the ports of Cape
Colony in 1897 was 1,093, with a total tonnage of
2,694,370 tons; in addition to this there were
1,278 vessels engaged in the coastwise trade, with
a tonnage of 3,725,831 tons. The foreign com
merce of Cape Colony is large, including, as it
does, the bulk of the import and export trade of
all South Africa. The total importation of mer
chandise for 1897 was $80,127,495, and the ex
ports, including a large proportion of the gold
and diamond products of Kimberley and the
Transvaal, amounted, in 1898, to $123,213,458.
Natal, beyond any other part of South Africa,
is favored by natural advantages. It lies on the
seaward slope of the Quathlamba Mountains,
and its scenery is charmingly diversified by
some of the lesser peaks and the foothills of that
range. It is well watered by perennial streams

274 THE AFRICANDERS
fed by the snows and springs of the mountains.
While the higher altitudes to the west are bare,
there is abundance of grass lower down and
toward the coast there is plenty of wood. The
climate in general is much warmer than that of
Cape Colony ; in the low strip bordering the sea
it is almost tropical. This high temperature is
not caused so much by latitude as by the current
in the Mozambique Channel, which brings from
the tropical regions of the Indian Ocean a vast
stream of warm water, which acts on the climate
of Natal as does the Gulf Stream on that of
Georgia and the Carolinas. Nearly the whole of
Natal may be counted temperate; the soil is
rich, the scenery is beautiful, and, with the ex
ception of certain malarious districts at the north,
the climate is healthful. Foreigners from Eu
rope and America may reasonably hope to enjoy
long life and prosperity in it. The principal crop
for export is sugar, but cereals of all kinds, cof
fee, indigo, arrowroot, ginger, tobacco, rice, pep
per, cotton and tea are grown to profit. The
coal fields of the colony are large, the output in
1897 being 244,000 tons. There are 487 miles of
railway, built and operated by the government.
The imports in 1897 amounted to nearly $30,-
000,000. Pop. 828,500; whites, 61,000.

THEIR COUNTRY 275
The Orange Free State, in its entire area of
48,000 square miles, is on the great interior pla
teau at an altitude of from 4,000 to 5,000 feet
above the sea level. The surface is mostly level,
but there are occasional hills — some of them ris
ing to a height of 6,000 feet. The land is, for
the most part, bare of trees, but affords good
grazing for two-thirds of the year. The air is re
markably pure and bracing. There are no bliz
zards to encounter. There are, however, occa
sional violent thunderstorms, which precipitate
enormous hailstones — large enough to kill the
smaller animals, and even men. Notwithstand
ing the generally parched appearance of the
country, the larger streams do not dry up in
winter. The southeastern part of the Free State,
particularly the valley of the Caledon River, is
one of the best corn-growing regions in Africa.
In the main, however, with the exception of the
river valleys, the land is more suitable for pas
ture than for tillage. The grazing farms are
large and require the services of but few men;
as a consequence the population increases slow
ly. The Free State, corresponding in size to the
State of New York, has only about 80,000 white
inhabitants and 130,000 natives. The chief in
dustry is agriculture and stock-raising. A rail-

276 THE AFRICANDERS
way, constructed by the Cape Colony govern
ment, connects Bloemfontein, the capital of the
Orange Free State, with the ports of Cape Col
ony and Natal, and with Pretoria, the capital of
the South African Republic.
The South African Republic, commonly
called the Transvaal, is 119,139 square miles in
area. The white population, numbering 345,397.
is largely concentrated in the Witwatersrand
mining district. The native inhabitants number
748,759. All the Transvaal territory belongs to
the interior plateau, with the exception of a strip
of lower land on the eastern and northern bor
ders. This lower section is malarious. It is
thought, however, that drainage and cultivation
will correct this, as they have done in other fever
districts. Like the Free State, the Transvaal is
principally a grazing country. The few trees that
exist in the more sheltered parts are of little
value, except those in the lower valleys. The
winters are severely cold, and the burning sun of
summer soon dries up the moisture and bakes
the soil, causing the grass to be stunted and yel
low during most of the year. Until about six
teen years ago there was little in the surface ap
pearance and known resources of the Transvaal
to attract settlers, and nothing to make it a de-

THEIR COUNTRY 277
sirable possession to any other people than its
Africander inhabitants. In 1884 discoveries of
gold were made, the first of which that excited
the world being some rich auriferous veins on the
Sterkfontein farm. In a little time it became
known that probably the richest deposit of gold
in the world was in the Witwatersrand district
of the Transvaal. Later, in 1897, diamonds were
discovered in the Transvaal, the first stone hav
ing been picked up at Reitfontein, near the Vaal
River, in August of that year. Since then the
precious crystals have been found in the Pre
toria district, in Roodeplaats on the Pienaars
River, at Kameelfontein and at Buffelsduff. The
output of gold in 1898 was $68,154,000, and of
diamonds $212,812.01. The total output of gold
since if was first discovered amounts to over
$300,000,000, with $3,500,000,000 "in sight," as
valued by experts. The commerce of the South
African Republic, while necessarily great be
cause of the large number of people employed by
the mining industries, cannot be as accurately
stated as that of states whose imports are all re
ceived through a given port or ports. Foreign
goods reach it through several ports in Cape
Colony, Natal, Portuguese East Africa, and in
smaller quantities from other ports on the coast.

278 THE AFRICANDERS
The total imports for 1897 are estimated at $107,-
575>°°°- Griqualand West, a British possession bor
dering on Cape Colony on the south and on the
Free State on the east, owes its chief importance
to the Kimberley diamond mines, near the west
ern boundary of the Free State and 600 miles
from Cape Town. These mines were opened in
1868 and 1869. It is estimated that since that
time $350,000,000 worth of diamonds in the
rough — worth" double that sum after cutting —
have been taken out. This enormous produc
tion would have been greatly exceeded had not
the owners of the various mines in the group
formed an agreement by which the annual out
put was limited to a small excess over the annual
demand in the world's diamond markets. So
plentiful is the supply, and so inexpensive, com
paratively, is the cost of mining that other dia
mond-producing works have almost entirely
withdrawn from the industry since the South Af
rican mines were opened. It has been estimated
that ninety-eight per cent of the diamonds of
commerce are now supplied by these mines.
The British protectorate of Bechuanaland,
lying to the north of Cape Colony and Griqua
land and to the west of the Transvaal, has an

THEIR COUNTRY 279
area of about 213,000 square miles, with a popu
lation of 200,000 — mostly natives. A railway
and telegraph line connect it with Cape Colony
on the south and Rhodesia on the north.
Rhodesia includes the territory formerly
known as British South Africa and a large part
of that known as British East Africa. The area
is about 750,000 square miles — equal to about
one-fourth of the area of the United States of
America, excluding Alaska. No exact statement
of population can be made ; estimates range from
1,000,000 to 2,000,000, of which only about 6,000
are whites. The entire territory is under the ad
ministration of the Brtish South African Com
pany, organized and incorporated in 1889, sub
ject to the British High Commissioner at Cape
Town. Rhodesia lies chiefly within the table
lands of South Africa and has large but yet un
developed resources, including grazing and agri
cultural lands and important mining districts.
Owing to the newness of the country to civili
zation no definite statement can be made relative
to its commerce. In all probability Rhodesia
will open a field wherein enterprise along the
lines favored by its natural resources and condi
tions will be richly rewarded.
The End.

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Handsomely illustrated; 8vo; 373 pages. Cloth cover, $2.50;
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WOMAN AND THE SHADOW. By Arabella Kenealy.
i2mo, cloth. $1.00.
WORLD'S RELIGIONS IN A NUTSHELL. By Rev.
L. P. Mercer. Price, bound in cloth, $1.00; paper, 25 cents.
YANKEE FROM THE WEST, A. A new novel by Opie
Read. 121110, cloth. $1.00.
YOUNG GREER OF KENTUCKY. By Eleanor Talbot
Kinkead. i2mo, cloth. $1.25.

YALE UNIVERSITY

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