FOOTNOTES:
[1] Whatever may be thought as to the much controverted Edgar case, the fact that such special stress has been laid on it, and that few, if any, other cases have been instanced in which crimes against Uitlanders went unpunished, goes to show that life was exposed only to those dangers which threaten it in all new mining communities.
[2] The language of the English newspapers in Cape Colony, and of some in London, did as much to strengthen this belief as the language of the Transvaal papers did to inflame minds there. Seldom has the press done more to destroy the prospects of peace.
[3] In particular I will ask the reader to refer to the two maps showing the physical features of the country which have been inserted in this volume.
[4] I owe these names to the kindness of the authorities at the Royal Gardens at Kew, who have been good enough to look through fifty-four dried specimens which I collected and preserved as well as I could while travelling through Mashonaland and Basutoland. Eleven of these fifty-four were pronounced to be species new to science, a fact which shows how much remains to be done in the way of botanical exploration.
[5] It has been plausibly suggested that one reason why many English rivers which were navigable in the tenth century (because we know that the Northmen traversed them in vessels which had crossed the German Ocean) but are now too shallow to let a row-boat pass, is to be found in the destruction of the forests and the draining of the marshes which the forests sheltered.
[6] Mr. Neal, managing director of the Company, has been good enough to inform me that since my visit he satisfied himself that there had been occupations by different races and probably at widely distant dates. Many skeletons have been found, with a good deal of gold jewelry, and some bronze implements.
[7] This place is described by Mr. Selous in his interesting book, A Hunter's Wanderings in Africa, pp. 339-341. He thinks the wall as well built as those at the Great Zimbabwye. To me it seemed not so good, and a little rougher even than the work at Dhlodhlo. Hard by is a modern Kafir fort, Chitikete, with a plastered and loop-holed rough stone wall, quite unlike this wall at Chipadzi's grave. This place is further described in [Chapter XVI].
[8] Maspero (Histoire ancienne des Peuples d'Orient, p. 169) conjectures Somaliland
[9] See further as to this primary assembly the remarks on the Basuto Pitso in [Chapter XX].
[10] Those who are curious on this subject may consult Mr. Frazer's Golden Bough, and the late Mr. Robertson Smith's Religion of the Semites, where many interesting and profoundly suggestive facts regarding it are collected.
[11] As in Homer's day sudden deaths were attributed to the arrows of Apollo or Artemis.
[12] M. Junod, a Swiss missionary at Delagoa Bay, who made a careful study of the Tonga tribes, told me that they sometimes use the word shikimbo, which properly denotes the ghost of an ancestor, to denote a higher unseen power. And I was informed that the Basutos will pray to the "lesser Molimos," the ghost of their ancestors, to ask the great Molimo to send rain.
[13] This Mlimo—whether the name is properly applicable to the divinity, whatever it was, or to the prophet, seems doubtful—belonged to the Makalakas, but was revered by the Matabili, who conquered them.
[14] It need hardly be said that they have a full belief in the power of certain men to assume the forms of beasts. I was told that a leading British official was held to be in the habit, when travelling in the veldt, of changing himself, after his morning tub, into a rat, and creeping into his waggon, whence he presently re-emerged in human shape.
[15] Several collections have been made of these tales. The first is that of Bishop Callaway, the latest that of my friend Mr. Jacottet, a Swiss missionary in Basutoland, who has published a number of Basuto stories in his Contes Populaires des Bassoutos, and of Barotse stories in another book.
[16] The best recent account of the doings of the Portuguese is to be found in Dr. Theal's book, The Portuguese in South Africa, published in 1896.
[17] I have heard from Lord Wolseley that in his expedition against Sikukuni, a Kafir chief in the north-east of the Transvaal, he was told by a German trader who acted as guide that the natives had shown to him (the trader) fragments of ancient European armour which were preserved in a cave among the mountains. The natives said that this armour had been worn by white men who had come up from the sea many, many years ago, and whom their own ancestors had killed.
[18] Maceo, the well-known leader of the Cuban insurgents who was killed in 1896, was a half-breed, in whose band there were plenty of pure whites. In no Southern State of North America would white men have followed a mulatto.
[19] The word Boer means farmer or peasant (German Bauer).
[20] A clear and spirited account of these events may be found in Mr. R. Russell's book, Natal, the Land and its Story, published in 1894.
[21] Sir P. Maitland's proclamation of August 21, 1845, expressly reserved the rights of the crown to consider those who had gone beyond Natal as being still its subjects, notwithstanding the establishment of a settled government in that Colony. (See Bird's Annals of Natal, vol. ii., p. 468.)
[22] Some further account of the Orange Free State will be found in [Chapter XIX].
[23] It has been stated (see Mr. Molteno's Federal South Africa, p. 87) that Portugal was then prepared to sell her rights for a small sum—according to report, for £12,000.
[24] In 1891 the southern boundary of Portuguese territory was fixed by a treaty with Great Britain at a point on the coast named Kosi Bay, about seventy miles south of Lourenço Marques.
[25] See especially the case of Brown vs. Leyds, decided in January, 1897 by the High Court of the South African Republic. An English translation of the Grondwet has been published by Mr. W. A. Macfadyen of Pretoria, in a little volume entitled The Political Laws of the South African Republic.
[26] Some extracts from the narrative, vindicating his conduct, which he had prepared and which was published after his death (in 1882), may be found in Mr. John Nixon's Complete Story of the Transvaal, an interesting book, though written in a spirit far from judicial.
[27] Although there is some reason to think that if Sir T. Shepstone had waited a few weeks or months, the Boers would have been driven by their difficulties to ask to be annexed.
[29] A description of Majuba Hill will be found in [Chapter XVIII].
[30] The Convention of 1881 will be found in the Appendix to this volume.
[31] Sir B. Frere reported after meeting the leaders of the discontented Boers in April, 1879, that the agitation, though more serious than he supposed, was largely "sentimental," and that the quieter people were being coerced by the more violent into opposition.
[32] This Convention will be found in the Appendix to this volume.
[33] Arguments on this question may be found in a Parliamentary paper.
[34] See further as to this rising some remarks in [Chapter XV].
[35] See [Chapter XVIII.] for an account of these beds.
[36] The salient facts may be found in the evidence taken by the committee of inquiry appointed by the Cape Assembly in 1896. The much more copious evidence taken by a Select Committee of the British House of Commons in 1897 adds comparatively little of importance to what the Cape Committee had ascertained.
[37] Of the many accounts of the incidents that led to this rising which have appeared, the clearest I have met with is contained in the book of M. Mermeix, La Revolution de Johannesburg. A simple and graphic sketch has been given by an American lady (Mrs. J. H. Hammond), in her little book entitled A Woman's Part in a Revolution.
[38] At the time of my visit it went no further than Mafeking.
[39] There is also a line of railway from Port Elizabeth to Graaf-Reinet, some short branch lines near Cape Town, and a small line from Graham's Town to the coast at Port Alfred.
[40] "Already night saw all the stars of the other pole, and ours brought so low that it rose not from the surface of the sea."
[41] Called after Constance, wife of Governor Adrian van der Stel.
[42] Nimble climbers will do well to descend from the top down a grand cleft in the rocks, very narrow and extremely steep, which is called the Great Kloof. At its bottom, just behind Cape Town, one sees in a stream-bed the granite rock on which the horizontal strata of sandstone that form Table Mountain rest.
[43] Here, in December, 1896, the natives rose in revolt, exasperated by the slaughter of their cattle, though that slaughter was the only method of checking the progress of the cattle plague.
[44] There is also a weaker kind made, intoxicating only if consumed in very large quantity.
[45] For most of what is here stated regarding Khama I am indebted to an interesting little book by the late Bishop Knight-Bruce, entitled Khama, an African Chief.
[46] A singular story was told me regarding the death of Lo Bengula's sister. She had enjoyed great influence with him, but when he took to wife the two daughters of Gungunhana, the great chief (of Zulu stock) who lived to the eastward beyond the Sabi River, she resented so bitterly the precedence accorded to them as to give the king constant annoyance. At last, after several warnings, he told her that if she persisted in making herself disagreeable he would have her put to death. Having consulted the prophet of the Matoppo Hills, who told her she would be killed, she cheerfully accepted this way out of the difficulty, and was accordingly sent away and strangled.
[47] The original inhabitants of the country, belonging to the tribes which we, following the Portuguese, call Makalanga or Makalaka, are called by the Matabili (themselves Zulus) Masweni. The name Maholi, often also applied to them, is said to mean "outsiders," i.e., non-Zulus. Though many had been drafted as boys into the Matabili regiments, and others were used as slaves, many more dwelt in the country west and north-west of Bulawayo. Mashonaland, to the east, is peopled by cognate tribes.
[48] A hut is usually allotted to each wife, and thus this impost falls heavily on the polygamist chief, being, in fact, a tax upon luxuries. I was told that in the Transvaal some of the richer natives were trying to escape it by putting two wives in the same hut.
[49] See his book, published in the end of 1896, entitled Sunshine and Storm in Rhodesia. I do not gather from it how far, in his opinion, what went on was known to the higher officials.
In a Report presented to Parliament in 1897, Sir Richard Martin states that although there was no regulation allowing forced labour, force was, in fact, used to bring the natives from their kraals to work, and that the irritation thus caused did much to provoke the outbreak. The Company in a reply which they have published do not admit this. I have no data, other than the Report, for pronouncing an opinion on the responsibility of the officials; but there seems to be no doubt that, both in this and in other respects, many of the native police behaved badly, and that the experiment of employing them, which seemed to have much to recommend it, did in fact fail.
[50] The Shangani is here a very small stream. It was far away to the north, on the lower course of the same stream, that Major Wilson and his party perished later in the war.
[51] These ruins have been described in [Chapter IX].
[52] This chief was the restive chief mentioned on the last preceding page. He joined in the rising of 1896, and was, I believe, taken prisoner and shot.
[53] It was here only, on the banks of a stream, that I observed the extremely handsome arboraceous St.-John's-wort (Hypericum Schimperi), mentioned in [Chapter IV].
[54] It is in the midst of this scenery that new Mtali has been built.
[55] Law Reports for 1893, A. C., p. 602.
[56] It is in these woods that the honey bird is found, whereof the tale is told that it hunts about for the nests of wild bees in the hollows of trees, and when it has found one, flies close to a man so as to attract his notice, then flutters in front of him to the nest, and waits for him to take the honey out of the hollow (which it cannot itself reach), expecting and receiving a share of the spoil.
[57] The above was written in 1897. The subsequent extension of the railway from Mafeking to Bulawayo stimulated production, and in July, 1899, there were 115 stamps at work on the gold reefs, and the total value of the gold produced in Matabililand and Mashonaland (including the Tati concessions) was given by the Bulawayo Chamber of Mines as £192,679 for the preceding ten months. The average wages paid to natives were £2 a month. Some reefs are stated to have been worked to a depth of 500 feet.
[58] This very isolation and independence of the small native communities in Mashonaland retarded the pacification of the country during 1896-97. There were hardly any influential chiefs with whom to treat. But since 1897 it has been perfectly quiet.
[59] Mr. J. Hays Hammond, the eminent mining engineer, in North American Review for February, 1897.
[60] The total output of the Californian gold deposits up to the end of 1896 was £256,000,000. The total gold output of the Transvaal was in 1898 $78,070,761 (about £16,000,000), that of the United States $65,082,430. I take these and the other recent figures from a report by Mr. Hammond to the Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa Company.
[61] A little French book (L'Industrie Minière au Transvaal, published in 1897), which presents a careful examination of these questions, calculated at about thirty per cent. of the expenditure the savings in production which better legislation and administration might render possible.
[62] There are towns in England where the rate is only 13 per thousand.
[63] There are some mines of gold and coal in other parts, mostly on the east side of the country, with a small industrial population consisting chiefly of recent immigrants.
[64] Mr. Brand was chosen President when practising law in Cape Colony; and afterwards accepted, with the full assent of his citizens, a British order of knighthood.
[65] Revising this book in October, 1899, I leave the above passage as it was written in 1897, grieving to think that it describes what has now become a past, and that the future is likely to have far other things in store.
[66] I leave this as written in 1897. The invasion of the Transvaal in December, 1895, led to the conclusion of an alliance between the Free State and that Republic, whereby each bound itself to defend the other if attacked. The Free State has accordingly now (October, 1899), when hostilities have broken out between Britain and the Transvaal, thrown in its lot with its sister Republic. This is what every one who knew its history and the character of its people must have expected.
[67] The word "Ba Sot'ho" is in strictness used for the people, "Se Sot'ho" for the language, "Le Sot'ho" for the country: but in English it is more convenient to apply "Basuto" to all three.
[68] Gungunhana however had a sort of council of chiefs and confidential advisers which he called together at intervals, and which bore some resemblance to the Homeric Boule and to the earliest form of our own Curia Regis.
[69] The Boers are a genuinely religious people, but they have forgotten 1 Cor. xii. 13, Gal. iii. 28, and Col. iii. 11. Many nations have been inspired by the Old Testament, but few indeed are the instances in which any has paid regard to the New.
[70] After listening to their arguments, I did not venture to doubt that they were right.
[71] Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London and Durban.
[72] In Cape Colony 28.82 of the male and 28.02 of the female population could not (census of 1891) read or write.
[73] Five colleges receive Government grants.
[74] The small grant for religious purposes made in Cape Colony was in 1895 being reduced, and was to expire shortly.
[75] The census of 1891 gives the numbers as follows: Dutch Reformed Church, 306,000; Church of England, 139,000; Wesleyans, 106,000; Congregationalists, 69,000; Presbyterians, 37,000; Roman Catholics, 17,000; Mohammedans, 15,000.
[76] There are for the Council seven electoral provinces, each of which returns three members to the Council, besides one for Griqualand West and one for British Bechuanaland.
A Redistribution Act of 1898 altered the areas of some of the electoral divisions, and the number of members returned by some, so as to adjust representation more accurately to population.
[77] Some friction has, however, arisen from the right claimed by the Council of amending money bills, especially for the purpose (one is told) of securing grants to the electoral provinces they represent.
[78] Since the first edition of this book appeared, Mr. Selous has told me—and no one's authority is higher, for he has lived much amongst them—that this statement is exaggerated, and that, great as has been and is the dislike of the Boers to the British Government, the average Boer is friendly to the individual Englishman.
[79] I was told that their frequent term (when they talk among themselves) for an Englishman is "rotten egg," but some persons who had opportunities of knowing have informed me, since this book was first published, that this is not so. Another common Boer name for an Englishman is "red-neck," drawn from the fact that the back of an Englishman's neck is often burnt red by the sun. This does not happen to the Boer, who always wears a broad-brimmed hat.
[80] Their laws at one time forbade the working of gold mines altogether, for they held with the Roman poet (aurum inrepertum et sic melius situm) that it does least harm when undiscovered.
[81] I have elsewhere analysed (in the Forum for April, 1896) this constitution, and discussed the question whether it is to be regarded as a true Rigid constitution, like that of the United States, of the Swiss Confederation, and of the Orange Free State, or as a Flexible constitution, alterable by the ordinary legislative machinery. Further examination of the matter has confirmed me in the view there suggested, that the constitution belongs to the latter category.
[82] Copies of the letters written by Mr. Lionel Phillips were seized after the rising and published by the Boer Government.
[83] There were some 700,000 Kafirs in the Transvaal, but no one reckoned them as possible factors in a contest, any more than sheep or oxen.
[84] This operatic element appeared in the rising itself, when a fire-escape, skilfully disguised to resemble a Maxim gun, was moved backward and forward across the stage at Johannesburg for the purpose of frightening the Boers at a distance.
[85] It is hardly necessary to point out the absurdity of the suggestion that the Company intended to seize the Transvaal for itself. The Company could no more have taken the Transvaal than it could have taken Natal. It was for self-government that the insurgent-Uitlanders were to rise, and they would have objected to be governed by the Company at least as much as they objected to be governed by the Boers. Such individual members of the Company as held Rand mining shares would have profited by the better administration of the country under a reformed Government, but they would have profited in exactly the same way as shareholders in Paris or Amsterdam. This point, obvious enough to any one who knows South Africa, is clearly put by M. Mermeix, in his interesting little book, La Révolution de Johannesburg. Other fanciful hypotheses have been put forward, which it seems needless to notice.
[86] Much controversy has arisen as to the promise which the Boer commandant made, when the police force surrendered, that the lives of its leaders should be spared. Whatever might have happened immediately after the surrender, they would in any case not have been put to death in cold blood at Pretoria, for that would have been a blunder, which a man so astute and so far from cruel as the President would not have committed.
[87] When a conspiracy succeeds, the chief conspirator is usually some one already wielding some civil or military power, as Louis Napoleon did when he overcame the French Assembly in 1851.
[88] It is still doubtful whether very large areas can be irrigated by means of artesian wells.
[89] The Transvaal coal-fields are said to extend over 56,000 square miles; there is also a coal-field in the eastern part of Cape Colony, near the borders of the Orange Free State.
[90] I leave the pages that follow as they were written in 1897 (reserving for another place a reference to events which have happened since), because I desire that the views therein expressed, which I hold quite as strongly now as in 1889, should be known to have been formed and stated before the deplorable events of the last few months (Oct. 1899).