KAFFIRLAND.
It is always with fresh interest that we address ourselves to the perusal of books relating to Great Britain's colonial possessions. The subject, daily increasing in importance, has the strongest claims upon our attention. In presence of a rapidly augmenting population, and of the prodigious progress of steam and machinery, the question naturally suggests itself—and more so in England than in any other country—how employment and support shall be found for the additional millions of human beings with which a few years (judging of the future from the past) will throng the surface of a country already densely and superabundantly populated? The problem, often discussed, has not yet been satisfactorily solved. Without broaching the complicated question of over-population and its antidotes, without attempting to decide when a country is to be deemed over-populated, we may assert, without fear of contradiction, that emigration is the simplest and most direct remedy for the state of plethora into which a nation must sooner or later be brought by a steady annual excess of births over deaths. It is a remedy to which more than one European state will ultimately be compelled to resort, however alleviation may previously be sought by temporising and theoretical nostrums, more palatable, perhaps, to the patient, but inadequate, if not wholly inefficacious and charlatanical. And, after all, emigration is no such insupportable prescription for a very ugly malady. Doubtless much may be said upon the cruelty of making exile a condition of existence; but sympathy on this score may also be carried too far, and degenerate into drivel. At first sight the decree appears cruel and tyrannical, until we investigate its source, and find it to proceed from no earthly potentate, but from that omniscient Being whose intention it never was that men should crowd together into nooks and corners, when vast continents and fruitful islands, untenanted save by beasts of the field, or by scanty bands of barbarians, woo to their shores the children of labour and civilisation. Love of country, admirable as an incentive to many virtues, may be pushed beyond reasonable limits. It is so, we apprehend, when it prompts men to pine in penury and idleness upon the soil that gave them birth, rather than seek new fields for their industry and enterprise in uncultivated and vacant lands. What choice of these is afforded by England's vast and magnificent colonies! The emigrant may select almost his degree of latitude. And where Britannia's banner waves, and her laws are paramount, and the honest, kindly Anglo-Saxon tongue is the language of the land, there surely needs no great effort of imagination for a Briton to think himself still at home, though a thousand leagues of ocean roll between him and his native isle.
Excepting that they all more or less refer to the British possessions at the Cape of Good Hope, it were difficult to find three books more distinct from each other in character than those whose titles we have assembled at the foot of last page. An ex-settler, an accomplished lady, and a shrewd sailor, have selected the same moment for the publication of their African experiences. As in gallantry bound, we give the precedence to the lady. Mrs Harriet Ward, wife of a captain of the 91st regiment of foot, is a keen-witted, high-spirited person; and, like most of her sex when they espouse a cause, a warm partisan of the feelings and opinions of those she loves and admires. She is an uncompromising assailant of the system pursued at the Cape, especially as regards our treaties with the Kaffirs, whom she very justly denounces as perfidious, bloody, and unclean savages, untameable, she fully believes, and with whom Whig officials and negotiators have been ridiculously lenient and confiding. Although some of her views are rather sweeping and severe, she is certainly right in the main. And we honour her for her heartiness in denouncing the nauseous humbug of the pseudo-philanthropists, whose manœuvres have had a most prejudicial effect upon our South African possessions, and have given to persons in this country notions completely erroneous concerning the rights and wrongs of the Kaffir question. But whilst blaming the administration of the colony, she finds the country itself fair and excellent and of great resource. Herein she differs from her contemporary, Mr George Nicholson, junior. This gentleman, lately a settler at the Cape, cannot be too highly lauded for the volume with which he has favoured the public. We are not quite sure, however, that the public will think as highly of it as we do. Our admiration is founded on the consistency of its tone; upon the steady, well-sustained grumble kept up throughout. The preface at once prepossessed us in favour of what was to follow. Intended, doubtless, as a dram of bitters to assist in the digestion of the subsequent sour repast, it consists of general depreciation of other works regarding the Cape, and especially of one by "a Mr Chase"—of sneers at "stay-at-home wiseacres" and hollow theorists—and of a vague accusation brought against certain colonial residents of "fomenting the warlike propensities of the neighbouring barbarians, to secure their own ends," grievously to the detriment and prejudice of their fellow-colonists. "The peculiar bent," says Mr Nicholson, "of each author's mind has, in general, been so far allowed to predominate as to exclude the hope of forming a correct estimate of the capabilities of the soil, climate, and other interesting features of this extensive country, by a perusal of their works." Could the author of "The Cape and its Colonists" read his book with somebody else's eyes, he would discover that his own "peculiar bent has been allowed to predominate," and that the consequences have been of the most gloomy description. Mr Nicholson is evidently a disappointed, man. Either by his fault or misfortune, by the force of circumstances or his own bad management, his attempt to establish himself thrivingly at the Cape resulted unsatisfactorily; and this sufficiently accounts for the general tint of blue so conspicuous in his retrospective sketch of the scene of his mishaps. The particular spot where these occurred was a considerable tract of land (called a farm) in the district of Graaf Reinet, to arrive at which he steamed from Cape Town, where he had landed from England, to Port Elizabeth in Algoa Bay. The dismal aspect of this bay painfully affected him. He "had read some of the glowing descriptions given of this part of the country, by persons whose interest it is to entice over settlers by any means, even the most dishonest, in order to have the benefit of plucking them afterwards. It is true that I had not believed the El Dorado stories so current of this and other colonies, but my expectations had been raised sufficiently high to make the disappointment at the really desolate appearance of the place, perfect." The apparent desolation is accompanied by substantial disadvantages, which Mr Nicholson complacently enumerates. Water is scarce and brackish; there are no vegetables or fruit within twenty miles; hardly forage for a team of oxen; the town is built on sand, of which unceasing clouds are hurled by prevalent strong winds in the face of all comers. No wonder that the new settler, evidently indisposed to be easily pleased, made his escape as quickly as possible from so dreary a neighbourhood. Shipping himself, family, and chattels in an ox-waggon, he joyfully quitted Port Elizabeth on a splendid morning of the African autumn—that is to say, about the end of March or beginning of April, and set out for his property, over a road which he describes as a fair sample of Cape causeways, "nothing more than a series of parallel tracks made by the passage of waggons, from time to time, through the sand and jungle." Finding little to notice on his way, he takes the opportunity of having a fling at the missionaries, whom he describes as doing much harm, although actuated, as he is willing to believe, by the best of intentions. The stations serve as the headquarters of the idlest and most vagabond portion of the coloured population, who have only to affect a Christian disposition to find ready acceptance and refuge. "No sooner is a Hottentot, or other coloured servant, discontented or hopelessly lazy, than off he flies to the nearest station, where he can indulge in the greatest luxury he knows of—that of sleeping either in the sun or shade as his inclination may lead him, with the occasional variation of participating in the singing and praying exercises of the regular inhabitants of the place." If the zealous propagators of Christianity, who thus encourage the natural idleness of the natives, were successful in their attempts at conversion, it might be accepted as some compensation for the temporal evils and inconvenience they aid to inflict on a colony where servants are scarce and bad. But this is far from being the case. Mr Nicholson assures us (and we readily believe him) that it is very rare to find an individual whose moral conduct has been improved by a residence at a missionary station, and that for his part he prefers the downright heathen to the imperfect convert. Few of these coloured Christians have any distinct idea of the creed they profess; when able, which is seldom, to answer questions concerning its first principles, their replies are parrot-like and unintelligent. Against the general character of the missionaries nothing can be said; but they are throwing away time, and their employers are wasting money which might be employed to far greater advantage in England, or in other countries whose inhabitants, equally in want of religious instruction, are more capable of receiving and comprehending it than are the stolid aborigines of the Cape of Good Hope. Mr Nicholson does not dwell upon the subject of missionary labours in Africa, but compresses at the close of a chapter his opinions, which are sound and to the purpose. Mrs Ward says nothing on the matter, and we ourselves are not disposed to dilate upon it, having already often taken occasion to expose the folly of the system that sends preachers and biblemongers to the remotest corners of the earth when such scope for their labours exists at home. Let us return to George Nicholson, his trials and tribulations.
These were manifold; and he makes the most of them. No encouraging signs or omens cheered his progress through the land, bidding his heart beat high with hope. At two days' journey from Port Elizabeth he halted for the night at a farm belonging to an Englishman of independent property, who received him hospitably, but assured him that sheep-breeding was a hopeless speculation, owing to the bad pasturage, to the bushy tangled nature of the country, and to the hyenas, there called wolves, who are most destructive. As he proceeded, pasturage improved, but other plagues were apparent. In some places water was as scarce as in an Arabian desert, and as much prized—collected in pits and husbanded with the utmost care. "The maps of the colony indicate rivers of the most encouraging description in this part of the country. But the district itself presents only a series of dry water-courses, leaving evident traces of their capability of containing water for some hours after storms." These sandy and deceitful gullies intersect "a frightful country, which can only be described as a succession of low undulations, covered with large shingles, between which the most debauched-looking stunted tufts of the poisonous and prickly euphorbia, with here and there a magnificent scarlet-headed aloe, forced their way." We are at a loss to know what the ex-colonist here means by the epithet "debauched-looking," unless he intends some obscure allusion to the thirsty and disreputable aspect of the brambles, remote as they were from the vicinity of any water except one spring of "Harrowgate, which, to judge from the nasty effluvium it produced, must have been possessed of rare healing qualities." The severe droughts are the destruction of the settlers, entailing terrible losses and often total ruin, and their pernicious effects are aggravated by flights of locusts. These the farmers do what they can to keep off by smoky fires and other means, sometimes with success; but even when the insect cloud pass over a field without ravaging it, they leave a memento of their transit in the shape of innumerable eggs. In due time the young generation come forth, and being wingless cannot be driven away, but hop about and ravage every thing till their wings grow, and a gale of wind takes them off to fresh pasturage. Mrs Ward's description of a flight of locusts is remarkably striking, and given with a vigour of phrase not often found in the productions of a female pen.
"The first two years of our sojourn here, the locusts devastated the land. The prophet Joel describes this dreadful visitation as 'like the noise of chariots on the tops of mountains,' 'like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble,' as 'a strong people set in battle array;' and any one who has ridden through a cloud of locusts must admit the description to be as true as it is sublime. On one occasion, at Fort Peddie, the cloud, flickering between us and the missionary station, half a mile distant, dazzled our eyes, and veiled the buildings from our sight; at last it rose, presenting its effects in some acres of barren stubble, which the sun had lit up in all the beauty of bright green a few hours before. Verily, the heavens seemed to tremble, and the sky was darkened by this 'great army,' which passed on, 'every one on his way,' neither 'breaking their ranks nor thrusting one another.' So they swept on, occupying a certain space between the heavens and the earth, and neither swerving from the path, extending the mighty phalanx, nor pausing in the course: the noise of their wings realising the idea of a 'flaming blast,' and their whole appearance typifying God's terrible threat of a 'besom of destruction.'
"'They shall walk every one in his path!' Nothing turns them from it. And if the traveller endeavours to force his way through them with unwonted rapidity, he is sure to suffer. I have ridden for miles at a sharp gallop through their legions, endeavouring to beat them of with my whip, but all to no purpose! Nothing turns them aside, and the poor horses bend down their heads as against an advancing storm, and make their way as best they can, snorting and writhing under the infliction of sharp blows on the face and eyes, which their riders endeavour to evade with as little success. You draw a long breath after escaping from a charge of locusts; and looking around you, you exclaim with the prophet, 'The land is as the Garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them!'"[9]
Mr Nicholson's location included a tolerable house with mud floors and reed ceilings, and thirty-five thousand acres of mountain and plain, having the reputation of one of the best farms in the district. The cost of this was about £2000; and the property was calculated to maintain five or six thousand sheep, four hundred oxen, besides horses. There were four small springs, allowing the cultivation of about sixteen acres of good soil. Mr Nicholson, not wishing to overburden the land, bought only three thousand sheep, with cattle in proportion, and began the life (described by him as most discouraging and unprofitable) of a Cape of Good Hope sheep-farmer. Melancholy indeed is the account he gives of the profits and losses of that occupation. In the first place, high wages and good keep are scarcely sufficient inducement to the lazy Hottentots to take service; and when they are prevailed upon, they are scarce worth having. They are sent to the hills with the flocks, which they have to protect from beasts of prey, always on the look-out for a bit of straggling mutton. They themselves, however, are conspicuous for their rapacity, and by no means remarkable for honesty; and doubtless many a stray sheep is debited to the hyenas, of whose disappearance the Hottentots could give a very good account. The wild animals, however—panthers, jackals, hyenas, and, in some districts, lions—are amongst the settler's worst foes. These prowling carnivora preclude the possibility of leaving sheep out of doors after dark; and, even when penned, the fleecy family can hardly be considered safe. "In stormy weather," saith Nicholson, "my walled pens, although well bushed at top, and above six feet high, did not sufficiently protect me from great losses by the hyenas, which, on such occasions, would often jump over and kill sheep, and often carry one off in their mouths." This latter feat is rather astounding; but no matter, let us pass on to the next grievances of the unfortunate settler and sheep-farmer, grievances not peculiar to himself, but shared by all whose evil star guides them to the land of locusts and hyena. The diseases of sheep are numerous and fatal—scab, consumptive wasting, inflammation of the lungs, violent inflammatory epidemics, poisonous bushes and hailstones, drought and thunderbolts. "I recollect one of my neighbours losing upwards of three hundred valuable sheep in a few minutes from the effects of a hailstorm. Another farmer, living at no great distance from me, lost fifteen hundred sheep in one season from drought; and on my own farm, shortly before I became possessed of it, four hundred sheep were destroyed by lightning in a moment." Doubtless such mishaps as these do occur, but there is something particularly painful in Mr Nicholson's lugubrious style of piling them up, without intermixture of the smallest crumb of comfort for any unhappy individuals planning emigration to the Cape. Did he but vaunt the tender haunches and juicy saddles, the fine and profitable wool yielded by the remnant of these afflicted flocks! But touching the mutton he is mute; and as regards the produce of the fleeces, he pledges himself that, under the most favourable circumstances, they never yield more than four per cent on the value of the flock—a small enough remuneration, as it appears to us, unlearned, we confess, in ways of woollen. But we have not yet got to the worst of the story. Supposing a farmer fortunate, and that his flocks escape the multifarious evils above enumerated—that they are spared by the lightning's blast, the big hailstones, the inflammatory epidemic, and all the rest of it. Not upon that account may he rub his hands in jubilation, and reckon upon a good clip and high prices. He gets up one morning and finds his sheep converted into goats, or something little better. "Woolled sheep have a natural tendency to deterioration in this climate; and in a few generations, notwithstanding the greatest care, the wool begins to show a tendency to assimilate itself to the hairy nature of the coat, which, is the natural covering of the indigenous animal." So that, upon the whole, Mr Nicholson inclines to prefer goats to sheep, as stock, if properly attended to, and the utmost possible numbers kept. The profit is made out of the skin, fat, and flesh, and "those carcasses not required for food, might be boiled down for tallow." He perhaps overlooks, in this calculation, "the scarcity and bad quality of the fuel, composed of the dung dug out of the sheep pens, and stacked for the purpose." The present system, however, evidently does not answer, judging from his statement that there is not "one sheep-farmer in the Eastern Province (depending on the profits of his farm) who is either contented with the results of his farming, or is not grievously indebted to his storekeeper, except among the old-established and primitive Dutch families, who spend no money in manufactures, and have but little to spend, had they the habit." Is it unfair to argue, from this paragraph, the absence, on the part of the English colonists, of that frugal simplicity of living essential in a new country? A man settling in a country like the Cape, should be prepared to resign not only luxuries, but many things which in Europe are deemed positive necessaries of life, but which, in the forest and prairie, may well be dispensed with. We infer, from certain passages in Mr Nicholson's book, that he and his fellow-colonists were rather above their position, too addicted to the comforts of England to submit to the privations of Africa, and that they augmented their expenses by procuring alleviations which their primitive Dutch neighbours cheerfully dispensed with. The Dutchmen, Mr Nicholson tells us, spend no money in manufactures. Then the English settlers' wives were evidently quite out of their element in the bush, or as occupants of houses mud-floored and roofed with reeds. "I have never," says Mr Nicholson, "seen an English woman in the colony, at all raised above the very poorest, who did not complain bitterly of the inconvenience she endured when living on a farm; and I really know nothing more affecting than the sight of the often elegant-minded and well-educated sheep-farmer's wife struggling with the drudgery of her situation, and repining fruitlessly at the deceptive accounts which had induced her husband to seek his fortune in South Africa." Here we, perhaps, have a clue to one cause of the jaundiced view the ex-settler takes of things at the Cape. The impossibility of obtaining the requisite domestic servants drove Mrs Nicholson from the sheep-farm in Graaf Reinet to the more agreeable residence of Cape Town, at a distance of eight hundred miles; and thenceforward her husband divided his time, as best he could, between domestic and farming duties. This seems an uncomfortable state of things. The want of the master's eye must have been sadly felt at the farm during his visits to Cape Town, and he must have lost much time and some patience in weary eight-hundred-mile journeys, performed, for the most part, on horseback.
The Kaffir war is, of course, a prominent subject in the three books before us. We find least of it in that of Lieutenant Barnard, whose narrative is chiefly of things at sea, and most in Mrs Ward's volumes, which consist principally of details of that unsatisfactory contest. Mrs Ward and Mr Nicholson concur in attributing to Whig mal-administration, and to the unwise treaties of Sir Andries Stockenstrom, the numerous disasters that of late years have afflicted the Cape, and the bloody and inglorious struggle that has cost this country upwards of three millions sterling. Here, again, is to be traced the hand and mischief-making tongue of the pseudo-philanthropists. By those tender-hearted gentry was the original impulse given to the series of changes which have done so much towards the ruin of a prosperous colony. First came a scream about the ill-treated Hottentots. These were certainly often ill-used by their Dutch masters, but that was surely no reason for emancipating them, by one summary ordinance, from every species of restraint. This, however, was the course adopted; and forthwith the Hottentot, by nature one of the most indolent of animals, spurned work, and took to idleness and dram-drinking. Since that fatal day, the race has degenerated and dwindled, and no doubt it will ultimately become extinct. Having thus, greatly to the detriment and inconvenience of the colonists, procured the Hottentots liberty, or rather license, the sympathisers extended their charitable exertions to Kaffirland. What pretext existed for this new crusade does not exactly appear, but its result was even more mischievous than their interference with the Hottentots. The Kaffirs were told of grievances they previously never had dreamed of, they were rendered unsettled and dissatisfied, (greedy and rapacious they already were,) and at last they poured into the colony, sweeping off the flocks and herds, murdering the peaceable settler, and setting the flaming brand to his roof-tree. This incursion, the ruin of thousands, at an end, the colonists set to work to repair damages, hoping for peace and a return of prosperity, when a new calamity came upon them. Mrs Ward shall describe it.
"Suddenly there was a voice, which went through all the countries of the known earth, crying aloud, 'Let the slave be free!' Societies sent forth their ragged regiments, with banners on which the negro was depicted as an interesting child of nature, chained and emaciated, whilst a ruffian beside him held the lash over his head. 'The people' really imagined that the sugar plantations were worked by lanky negroes, handcuffed one to another. Elderly ladies, who abused their neighbours over their bohea, rejoiced in the prospect of 'emancipation and cheap sugar,' and the people, the dear 'people,' expected to get it for nothing. The Dutch were quite ready to listen to the voice that cried 'shame' at the idea of seizing our fellow-creatures, packing them like herrings in slave-ships, and bartering them in the market. But how to set about the remedy should have been considered. The chain was broken, and the people of England hurraed to their hearts' content. Meanwhile, what became of the slave? If he was young and vicious, away he went—he was his own master. He was free—he had the world before him where to choose. Whether true or false, he was persuaded he had been ill used. So, whilst his portrait, with a broken chain, sleek limbs, eyes uplifted to heaven, and hands clasped in speechless gratitude, was carried about the streets of our manufacturing towns in England, (where there was more starvation in one street than among the whole of the South African slave population,) the original of the picture was squatted beside the Kaffir's fire, thinking his meal of parched corn but poor stuff after the palatable dishes he had been permitted to cook for himself in the boer's or tradesman's kitchen."[10]
And the frugal, hard-working Dutchmen, an excellent ingredient in the population of a young country, finding themselves deprived of their slaves, insufficiently compensated, and in fifty ways prejudiced and inconvenienced by the clumsy and injudicious manner in which the emancipation had been carried out, brooded over the injustice done them, and began to migrate across various branches of Orange river towards the north-east corner of the colony, and finally beyond its boundary, preferring constant warfare with the Kaffirs, entailed upon them by the change, to submission to the new and vexatious ordinances, and to the enactments of the Stockenstrom treaties. These were in the highest degree absurd, although their framer was rewarded by a pension and title, as if he had done the state some service, instead of having actually been the main cause of the last Kaffir war. A ridiculous report got abroad, credited largely by stay-at-home philanthropists, and heartily laughed at by all who had any real knowledge of the subject, that the Kaffirs were a mild, peaceable, and ill-used people—in Exeter-Hall phrase, "a pastoral and patriarchal race." "It was imagined," says Mr Nicholson, "that they possessed a strong sense of honour and probity, and only desired to be guaranteed from the tyranny of the colonists, (poor lambs!); and a determination was accordingly come to, to make treaties with the chiefs, the performance of which could only be secured by their honourable observance of what was detrimental to the interests of themselves and their people, as they understood it." Now the truth of the matter is, that a more vicious and treacherous race than the Kaffirs would be sought in vain upon the face of the inhabited earth. They unite every evil quality. "The stalwart Kaffir," says Mrs Ward, "with his powerful form and air of calm dignity, beneath which are concealed the deepest cunning and the meanest principles. Some call the Kaffir brave. He is a thief, a liar, and a beggar, ready only to fight in ambush; and although, to use the common expression, he 'dies game,' his calmness is the result of sullenness." Cunning is the most prominent characteristic of this pleasing savage. "It makes them," says Lieutenant Barnard, "fully aware of the humanity of the English character, which prevents us from killing an unarmed man; so, when they find themselves taken unawares, they throw their arms into the bush, pretend to be friendly Kaffirs, and, in all probability, fire on our troops when they get to a convenient distance." It also taught them, during the former war, that they had no chance against Europeans unless they could procure firearms; to have time to get these, they joyfully concluded a treaty, and would have done so on far less favourable terms, never intending to abide by them. But those made were not sufficiently stringent to keep even civilised borderers in check. Some were laughed at, others evaded, whilst a third class defeated their own object. Here is the twenty-fourth article, as a sample of the last-named sort:—"If any person being in pursuit of criminals or depredators, or property stolen by them, shall not overtake or recover the same before he shall reach the said line, (colonial boundary;) and provided he can make oath that he traced the said criminals, &c., across a particular spot on said line; that the property, when stolen, was properly guarded by an armed herdsman; that the pursuit was commenced immediately after such property was stolen; that, if the robbery was committed in the night, the property had been (when stolen) properly secured in kraals, (folds,) stables, or the like; and that the pursuit, in such case, was commenced (at latest) early next morning, such person shall be at liberty to proceed direct to the pakati, (Kaffir police!") and (we abridge the verbiage) to make his affidavit and continue his pursuit, "provided he do not go armed, or accompanied by armed British subjects." Was there ever any thing more absurd than the formalities here prescribed for the recovery of property from a set of cattle-lifters, in comparison with whom a Scottish borderer of the olden time was a man of truth and conscience, and a respecter of neighbours' rights? It explains, if it does not quite justify, the fierce personal attack made by Nicholson the sheep-farmer upon the negotiator of such foolish treaties, whom he designates pretty plainly, without positively naming him. Mrs Ward, too lady-like and well-bred to descend to personalities—save in the case of Kaffirs, whom at times she does most lustily vituperate—contents herself with blaming acts without attacking individuals. The wily Kaffirs, with whom theft is a virtue, were not slow to discover the facilities afforded them, and stole cattle to a greater extent than ever. Persuaded, moreover, that such regulations could be prompted only by the weakness of the framers, they looked forward with glee to overrunning the entire colony at their leisure. They only waited till they should have sufficient muskets and cartridges. These they easily obtained; there was no lack of unpatriotic white traders ready and willing to supply them. This done, the warwhoop was raised, and hostilities recommenced,—the Kaffirs confident of victory. There had been so much parleying and lawyers'-work with them, threats had so often been uttered and so seldom carried out, that the savages had formed an immense idea of their own consequence and power. Whilst the hollow peace lasted, their constant and imperious cry was "Bassila!" Give!—when the mask of friendship was thrown aside, they burst into the colony, desolating in their progress as a swarm of locusts; and if assailed by the scanty forces that could at first be brought against them, they plunged into the tangled bush, and, with levelled gun and assegai, shouted "Izapa!" Come on! From the evidence of Mrs Ward's own pages, we think she hardly does them justice in classing them with poltroons. They appear to have made good fight on many occasions. And if the white feather be so conspicuous an ornament in their savage head-dress, on what ground can she claim such great credit for the troops that overcame them, and talk of the war as one "not so noble in its details as those of the days of Napoleon, but far more glorious in its results." Here she evidently writes from the heat and impulse of the moment, as she does in some other parts of her book. To this we do not object, but rather prefer it to the cautious and circumspect manner in which most writers, especially male ones, would have extolled the deeds of the South African army, whose sole opportunities of distinction were in petty skirmishes with undisciplined and naked barbarians. Not that the Kaffirs could be considered as foes of the most contemptible class. With a monkey-like faculty of imitation, they caught up smatterings of European tactics. "Day by day," we quote Mr Barnard, "they get more expert in the use of fire-arms, and are observant of our least movements, that I have heard officers describe their throwing out skirmishers as quite equal to our own manœuvres." They also attempt stratagems, often with success. It is a common trick with them to ensnare small parties of the enemy by leaving a few cattle grazing at the edge of a thicket, in which they conceal themselves, and when their opponents approach, issue forth and assail them. In this manner were entrapped Captain Gibson and Dr Howell, of the Rifles, and the Honourable Mr Chetwynd, who, as new-comers to the colony, were not up to the hackneyed decoy. The Kaffirs, on the other hand, are too cunning to be often taken unawares, although we read of a few successful surprises in Mrs Ward's chronicle of the campaign. Colonel Somerset, the gallant commander of the Cape mounted Rifles, is the hero of one of these, upon which Mrs Ward dwells with peculiar complacency. A small division of troops had halted to bivouac, when an officer's horse ran away, and carried him over a hill, past a "clump of Kaffirs" six hundred strong. Reining in with great difficulty, he dashed back and made his report. What ensued is described in appropriate style by our martial and dashing authoress.
"Colonel Somerset lifted his cap from his head, gave three hearty cheers and shouted, 'Major Gibsone, (7th Dragoon Guards,) return carbines, draw swords, charge!' 'Hurrah!' was echoed back; and on they dashed, dragoons, Cape corps, burghers, Hottentots, and Fingos. They found the enemy up and in position. Such a mêlée! The cavalry dashed through the phalanx of Kaffirs, and for want of more cavalry to support them, dashed back again! A Hottentot soldier, one of the sturdy Cape corps, having two horses given him to take care of, charged unarmed, save his sword, and with a horse in each hand. There was great slaughter amongst the enemy.... Such Kaffirs as could not escape fell down exhausted and cried for mercy: there was a great deal of cunning in this,—they would have stabbed any one who approached near enough to them to offer a kind word. They had all had enough, however, of meeting a combined force of dragoons and Cape corps, and no doubt the latter tried to surpass themselves. Those gallant little Totties are an untiring and determined band. How little do we know in England of the courage and smartness of the Hottentot!"
A very wholesome lesson for the Kaffirs, two hundred of whom were killed, and a good many more wounded, but rather an inglorious victory for regular cavalry—so, at least, it strikes us, when we contemplate, in one of Mrs Ward's illustrations, a parcel of naked monsters, more like Mexican apes than men, howling and capering, and hurling javelins at an advancing party of infantry. Any "phalanx" formed by these uncouth barbarians, would be, we should think, of a very loose description, and not likely to oppose much resistance to the charge of her Majesty's 7th Dragoon Guards, backed by the mounted Rifles, who in spite of black skin, diminutive stature, and cucumber shanks, are admitted on all hands to be very efficient light cavalry—the best, probably, for warfare against savages. It were well, perhaps, to increase their numbers; or at any rate, if cavalry must be sent out from England, it were surely advisable to select it of the lightest description. Dragoon guards are excellent in their place, first-rate fellows to oppose to helmeted Frenchmen or Germans; but the Cape is by no means their place, and Kaffirs are not cuirassiers. It is like hunting weasels with wolf-hounds; the very size and power of the dogs impede them in the pursuit of their noxious and contemptible prey. There is one point of difference, however, and by no means in favour of the dragoons; weasels do not carry loaded muskets, which Kaffirs habitually do, firing them off whenever occasion offers, from behind bushes, out of wolf-holes, or from any other sequestered and sheltered position, where it is impossible for the heavy six-foot-long dragoon guardsmen to get at them. Red jackets, glittering accoutrements, and tall figures make up a capital mark for the bullet of a lurking foe; and the unfortunate warriors go perspiring through the bush, with the thermometer at 120° in the shade, cursing the Kaffirs, but rarely catching them, their clattering scabbards betraying their approach, and their lofty helmets visible, leagues off, to the keen-eyed savage. Local corps—the native article—are unquestionably the proper thing at the Cape; the patient Hottentot and plucky Fingo bear heat, hunger, and fatigue far better than the beef-fed Englishman. "The Hottentot will smile quietly when there is neither food nor water, and draw his girdle of famine[11] tighter round his waist, and travel on under the sun uncomplainingly." The Fingos, when hard run for rations, sometimes eat the bullock-hide shields that form part of their defensive equipment. These Fingos, by the way, are rather remarkable fellows. The word Fingo means slave, and for a long period the tribe that bore the name were in worse than Egyptian bondage. They were the serfs of the pitiless Kaffirs, until Sir Benjamin de Urban rescued them. "On the 7th May," says Sir James Alexander, in his sketches of Western Africa, "I witnessed a most interesting sight, and one which causes this day to be of immense importance in the annals of South Africa. It was no less than the flight of the Fingo nation, seventeen thousand in number, from Amakose bondage, guarded by British troops, and on their way across the Kei, to find a new country under British protection." Although an indolent race, fond of basking in the sun, and who will not even hunt until driven to it by hunger, they fought bravely during the last war, proving themselves, in many engagements, better men than their former taskmasters, who to this day never speak of them but as their "dogs." Fingo costume, as described by Mrs Ward, is rather original than civilised. They ornament their heads with jackals' tails, ostrich plumes, beads, wolves' teeth, &c. Across their shoulders is the skin of a beast, around their waist a kilt of monkey tails, and they bear enormous shields, on which they sometimes beat time as on a drum. "They will lie down on the watch for hours, and imitate the cries of animals to attract the attention of the Kaffirs, who find themselves encountered by creatures of their own mould, instead of the wolf or the jackal, as they expected. Sometimes, on the other hand, the Kaffirs will encircle the Fingos, and dance round them, yelling frightfully—now roaring like a lion, now hissing like a serpent; but it is seldom the Kaffirs conquer the Fingos, unless the latter are inferior in numbers." Notwithstanding their monkified manœuvres, the Fingos have been found very useful. Nay, the very Bushmen, (the real aborigines of South Africa,) of which diminutive and miserable race specimens were recently exhibited in England, were availed of as allies during the war—a detachment of them, armed with poisoned arrows, accompanying the British forces. This may appear rather derogatory to British humanity, but all is fair when Kaffirs are the foe. The cruelties of these savages exceed belief. Mrs Ward regales us with a few of their barbarous exploits, and details the tortures inflicted on the unhappy wretches who fell into their hands. A soldier of the 91st regiment, caught straggling, was flayed alive, the little children being permitted, by way of a treat, to assist in tormenting him. Another was burned to death. We find no account of quarter ever being given. And Kaffir impudence equals Kaffir cruelty. When they found themselves getting the worst of the fight, after sustaining a reverse of unusual severity, they would coolly send ambassadors to the British to know "why war was made upon them," and to request permission to "plant their corn" in peace.
"After the affair at Fort Peddie, Stock, a T'Slambie chief, sent messengers to complain of our attacks upon him, when he, too, was 'sitting still,' and only wished to be allowed to 'watch his father Eno's grave!' Very pathetic indeed! This would sound most pastoral and poetical in Exeter Hall. Stock was, no doubt, 'sitting still' beside 'his father's grave,' but his people were at work, plundering, burning, murdering, torturing, and mutilating the troops and colonists, whilst he 'sat still' and approved. He should have protected that sacred spot, and kept the neighbourhood of Fort Peddie clear of marauders."[12]
Mrs Ward writes like a man. We mean this in no uncomplimentary sense; on the contrary. Her clear, natural, and lively style has a masculine vigour and concision; her opinions are bold and decided. To those she emits upon the subject of the colony and its prospects, we are inclined to attach considerable weight. Women are keen observers, and Mrs Ward is evidently no ordinary woman, but a person of great energy and penetration. We more willingly rely on the observations made during her marches and countermarches, in her equestrian rambles and at outquarters, than on the croaking experiences of our friend the sheep-farmer. A soldier's daughter and wife—a life of change, hardship, and danger, has quickened her perceptions and ripened her judgment.
"When I read the miserable account from Ireland of its past year's woe, and the wretched prospect for the next, I long to hear of ships making their way to Algoa Bay, with emigrants from that country. Some have arrived within the last few weeks, and employment and provision have been met with at once. Under another system, affording protection to the settler, this country will afford a refuge to the starving population of Ireland. Well might Sir Henry Pottinger be struck with the capabilities and resources of this fine colony, as he travelled through it. Here is a vast and fertile space, comparatively free, at this moment, from the murderous heathen.... An industrious population, located in sections, would be the best protection for the country; and a well-organised militia, or police force, might be formed from those who are likely to die of cold and famine at home. Until such locations can be established, more troops will be required; the country we have added to our possessions must be held by might, and to do this, a living wall, bristling with arms, is necessary.
"The village of Bathurst, in the district of Lower Albany, may be said to defend itself to its best ability. This pretty settlement has risen and flourished under the patient labour of emigrants, sent thither in 1820, chiefly through the instrumentality of the Duke of Newcastle. The labourer, the mechanic, the unthriving tradesman, the servant without work, may not only find employment, but are absolutely wanted here. The former may plant his three, and sometimes four crops of potatoes in the year, to say nothing of other produce, and manifold resources of gain and comfort. It is singular that, whilst our fellow creatures in Great Britain, in 1847, were suffering from the failure of their crops, the gardens of corn, pumpkin, &c., in Kaffirland, were more than usually productive.
"The miserable mechanics from our crowded manufacturing districts may here earn six shillings a-day with ease; the ruined tradesman of England, with a jail staring him in the face, will meet a welcome here, where opposition in trade is required, to promote industry, honesty, and civility; and the youths of Ireland, instead of arming themselves for rebellious purposes, may, in this colony, serve their Queen honourably, by protecting their fellow creatures from the aggressions of the savage."[13]
Favourable and encouraging accounts, contrasting strongly with Mr Nicholson's melancholy reports! That gentleman's book, if read and credited, is of itself enough to stop emigration to the country whither Mrs Ward thus strongly advocates it. And we must bear in mind, moreover, that the colonial districts of the Cape include the least fertile and valuable portion of South Africa. The finest pastures and most healthy tracts are held by Hottentots, Kaffirs, and Fingos. Savages, experience teaches us, recede and dwindle on the advance of the white man. Increase the population of the Cape Colony, and in due time the colonists will push their way. But Mr Nicholson strongly objects to such increase, and holds it unwise and impracticable. We cannot repeat, even in a compressed form, all the gloomy statements of his eighth chapter, but will just glance at one or two of its points. In the first place, in the country which, as Mrs Ward maintains, would receive "the starving population of Ireland," and be the better for their arrival, so long as they were willing to work, Mr Nicholson can only make room for one thousand of the humbler classes of emigrants. This, he opines, "would be the greatest number who could obtain employment suited to the capacities and habits of decent labouring people." They are to be principally female house-servants, cooks, housemaids, and nurses; and with respect to the few out-door labourers he is disposed to admit, those, he tells us, "would succeed best who, without having previously followed any particular occupation so closely as to be almost unfitted for any other, can, as the term is, 'turn their hands to any thing.'" Married men, in his opinion, should not go out at all. These are certainly singular doctrines, rather contrary to received notions concerning emigration, as well as to Mrs Ward's opinions. As to persons of a superior class going out to take farms, expecting to live upon their produce, Mr Nicholson treats the idea as utterly visionary and chimerical. Such persons must possess an independent income, in addition to what it may be necessary to invest in a farm. The question then is, how do the Dutch manage? since the "late resident" admits the superior success and contentedness found amongst the Boërs, and which were far more evident before the wealthiest and most intelligent of them had left the colony, to seek at Port Natal refuge from foolish legislation, and from the slave-emancipating absurdities of the philanthropists. May not an answer be found in the following extract?—"It must be admitted that a British population is of more intrinsic value than a colonial Dutch one; but then the latter has, by long experience, been taught to moderate hopes and necessities within a compass little in accordance with the go-a-head notions of the present race of Englishmen of all classes of society." Of course if "fast men" go out to settle at the Cape, with Captain Harris's book of South African sports and a case of rifles and fowling-pieces for chief baggage, and with expectations of finding in the bush grand-pianos for their wives, and rocking-horses for their first-born, they are likely to be exceedingly discontented on discovering hard work and many privations to be the necessary conditions of life in a new country. But Mr Nicholson is evidently not one of those easily-pleased persons, who put up with present disagreeables in hopes of a more prosperous future. To be sure, he denies the possibility of any amount of energy, knowledge, and industry procuring the emigrant a settled and comfortable position. "When all this energy must be expended in an often vain effort to prevent loss, or to overcome difficulties, the control of which will only have a conservative, and not a progressive effect on the settler's circumstances, its constant exercise soon sickens, and the consequences will be despair and misery." We should put more faith in these deplorable accounts, were they supported by the evidence of other writers on the subject; but we know of none who partake Mr Nicholson's dismal views, at least to any thing like the same extent. And his whole book breathes a spirit of discontent and depreciation that makes us regard it with distrust, as the splenetic effusion of a man soured by ill success. With him, from Dan to Beersheba, all is barren; or, if exceptional fertility here and there prevails, it is neutralised by an accumulation of evils.
"The farmer is, in this country, always checkmated, as it were, by the natural order of things: luxuriant-looking pasturage is of poisonous quality, and the more wholesome kinds scanty in quantity, and liable to be fatally diminished by dry seasons. Crops of corn and all kinds of vegetables grow most abundantly, and are cultivated at but little expense, in most parts of Albany; frequent and heavy losses in wheat crops, however, may be expected from the 'rust,' and less frequent and more partial destruction from the attacks of locusts. When a large general yield of grain occurs, it must be sold at a very low figure, as there is great difficulty in preserving it for better prices, for want of granaries and barns, which would be too expensive to erect, and would, after all, but ineffectually guarantee it from the attacks of the numerous animals and insects which swarm in this climate. If sold for a good price in such a season, to persons inhabiting other districts where the crops may have failed, the expenses of transport would form a serious item of deduction from the general profit."[14]
May we be a breakfast for hippopotami, if there is a possibility of pleasing George Nicholson, junior, Esq.! Here is a catalogue of calamities! How he baffles the unfortunate settler at every turn with some fresh and inevitable disaster! When grass abounds, it is poisonous, and, when wholesome, there is none of it! The rust and the locust conspire to destroy the wheat: when it escapes both, it must be sold for next to nothing, because it is not worth while building barns to store it. And if a Cape farmer were extravagant enough to build a granary, insects and animals would empty it for him! Insects, animals, and reptiles certainly are the curse of the country—certain descriptions of them, at least. Snakes are very abundant, and nearly all deadly in their bite. In the fertile district of Zwellendam they abound, and frequently occasion severe loss by biting the sheep. Amongst the beasts of prey, lions are getting thinned by the guns of Boërs, settlers, and English officers; the jackals and hyenas are cowardly creatures, and fly from man, but play the mischief with the flocks. The rhinoceros is an ugly customer when provoked, but far less so than he would be were his sight better, and his difficulty in turning his stiff carcass less. The lumbering hippopotamus abounds in most of the rivers, and is shot from the banks by huntsmen hidden amongst the bushes; he is sometimes also taken in pitfalls, with a sharp stake at the bottom, which impales any unfortunate animal chancing to fall in. His teeth are more valuable than elephant ivory, and his flesh—especially the fat, which, when salted, eats like bacon—is greatly esteemed by both colonists and natives. The plains are in some places infested by colonies of small animals, rather larger than the squirrel, and obnoxious to the horseman, "who form a kind of warren in the softer and more sandy portions of the plain, which break in with the horse, and bury him up to his shoulders in the dust and rubbish, amongst which the rider is pretty sure of finding himself on his back." But if dangerous beasts and troublesome vermin are too plentiful in the colony, this annoyance is compensated by an extraordinary abundance of useful and profitable animals. Numerous varieties of the stag and antelope overrun the plains. Mr Nicholson, whom we suspect of a more decided predilection for the sportsman's double-barrel than for the crook and tar-barrel of the sheep-farmer, speaks in the highest terms of field-sports at the Cape, although, faithful to his system of flying off from a subject almost as soon as he touches upon it, he gives few details, hinting diffidence in approaching that subject after Harris's famous book. The little he does say impresses us with the idea of a glorious supply of venison and other choice meats. We read of twenty thousand antelopes in sight at one time; of a column of spring-bucks (a variety of the same family) fifteen miles in length, and so closely packed, that nine fell at one discharge from a large gun. The extensive forest of the Zitikama, which supplies the colony with timber, abounds in buffalo, boar, and antelope, in pheasants, partridges, and guinea-fowl. The keen sportsman, not wedded to the pleasures of a city, will find abundant pastime and recreation in so gamy a land as this; and, when wearied by the monotonous occupations of his farm, may, almost without losing sight of browsing herds and drowsy Hottentots, pleasantly beguile an hour by stalking a "blesbok" or circling a bustard—the latter process consisting in riding round the birds in large but decreasing circles, which evolution, if skilfully performed, causes them to lie close till the horse walks them up. Such is the manœuvre advocated and practised by Mr Nicholson, who, having at last left off grumbling, and begun to be amusing, prematurely closes his very brief volume, as if afraid of writing himself into good humour on his favourite subject of sporting, and of retracting some portion of his previous depreciation of a colony which, with due deference for his opinion and verdict, we persist in considering a land of great promise to frugal, hardy, and industrious emigrants.