[109] “We are equal,” said the interpreter; but the expression used is more correctly translated as above.
[110] The natives of Natal, “peaceful subjects of Her Majesty,” were living in perfect security on one side of the border, and the Zulus on the other, the two populations intermarrying and mingling in the most friendly manner, without the smallest apprehension of injury to life or property, when Sir B. Frere landed at Durban.
[111] Compare with 9 and 10 the distinct instructions on this point given by Lord Carnarvon during the previous year (1961, p. 60): “I request, therefore, that you will cause the missionaries to understand distinctly that Her Majesty’s Government cannot undertake to compel the king to permit the maintenance of the mission stations in Zululand.” Yet here the clause is made one of the conditions of an ultimatum, the alternative of which is war.
[112] Sir T. Shepstone’s incontrovertible, overwhelming, and clear evidence, sifted and proved worthless by the Commissioners.
[113] Sir Bartle Frere declares (Correspondence, p. 57) that Cetshwayo “could have known nothing of the memorandum,” although (ibid. p. 6) he himself asserts that “it was intended to explain for Cetshwayo’s benefit what was the nature of the cession to him,” and it was plainly very generally known, and therefore naturally by the king.
[114] Correspondence, p. 3.
[115] Ibid. p. 6.
[116] Compare with Sir Bartle Frere’s suggestion to Sir Henry Bulwer that the latter should persuade the Zulu king that the Active and her fellows were mostly merchant vessels, but that the English war-vessels would be sufficient to protect his coast!
[117] Our own troops’ experience showed that this was no idle excuse.
[118] One of Colonel Durnford’s officers writes, January 26th, “that he (the Colonel) had worked so hard at equipping this Native Contingent, against much opposition, and took special pride in his mounted men, three hundred men, that he called ‘The Natal Native Horse.’”