[93] When Mr. Isaacs lived in Natal—October 1825 to June 1831—the Zulus occupied the territory between the Tugela and Tongati rivers, but from this tract of country they were withdrawn in 1834 by Dingan. In 1828 Tshaka was murdered at his residence there. At the port and near the Umzimkulu the Bantu under European chiefs were living. The remainder of the territory was uninhabited except by Bushmen on the uplands and a few cannibals. Mr. Isaacs says: “our settlement, which was somewhat circumscribed, contained upwards of two thousand persons.”—Travels and Adventures, &c., Volume II, page 326.
[94] The people under the chief Futu, some of whose kraals were found by Captain Gardiner on the head waters of the Umkomanz river, should not be included in the population of Natal at that time. They were refugees from the north, and frequently moved from one locality to another. Shortly after Captain Gardiner’s visit they retired to the Umtamvuna. Their chief, Futu, was the son of Nombewu, who was killed by Ncapayi, the ferocious leader of the Bacas. Captain Gardiner estimated the people under Futu at different places in Natal at from seven to eight thousand souls. See pages 312 et seq. of his volume.
[95] See The Annals of Natal, by John Bird, Pietermaritzburg, 1888, Vol. I, page 75.
[96] By a Proclamation of the 11th of September 1834 the removal of a slave beyond the border of the colony was punishable by the forfeiture of the slave, a fine of £100, transportation, or imprisonment with hard labour from three to five years. It was based upon an Imperial Act to amend and consolidate the Laws relating to the Abolition of the Slave Trade.
[97] Mr. Willem Hendrik Neethling, afterwards landdrost of Klerksdorp, who was living in Lydenburg in 1867 and was then twenty-three years of age, in a communication to President F. W. Reitz which has been kindly lent to me, says: “Wat betreft het verhaal re de twee Blanken die te Lijdenburg aanlandden, is dat eene dwaling. Ik ben in staat UEd. volkomen daarover in te lichten. Het waren geen Europeanen of Caukassiers, maar wel Albinos van het neger ras. Zij waren man en vrouw en twee kinderen. Het derde is te Lijdenburg geboren. De man heette Tjaka, de alombekende slangen tegen-vergift maker. De man was reeds op leeftijd, doch ik schatte de vrouw 27 of 28 jaren oud. Toen het gerucht verspreid werd van de teruggevonden blanken heb ik mij gehaast om ze zelven te zien, en vond uit dat zij Albinos waren, zeer blank, doch met neger type, met de on-ontwikkelde neusbeen, en kroeshaar. Zij kwamen van Kosi-baai, en zijn er weder heen vertrokken. Ik heb se persoonlijk gesproken. Zij waren van staatswege gehaald op geruchten.”
[98] Since the publication of my History of South Africa, a journal kept by Mr. Erasmus Smit from the 15th of November 1836 to the 31st of January 1839 has been brought to light and in 1897 was printed in Capetown. It forms an octavo pamphlet of one hundred and eight pages. Mr. Smit, a native of Amsterdam, had once been a lay missionary in the service of the London Society, later a schoolmaster at Oliphants Hoek, and was married to a sister of Mr. Gerrit Maritz. He was a man of fifty-eight years of age and infirm in health, but he joined his brother-in-law’s party, and left the colony with it, being engaged to perform religious services in the camp. During the stay of the emigrants at Thaba Ntshu he was exceedingly jealous of the reverend James Archbell, Wesleyan missionary there, whom he suspected of a design of wishing to supplant him. On the 21st of May 1837 Mr. Retief appointed him religious instructor of the emigrants, whereupon he ordained himself and thereafter administered the sacraments and performed all the duties of a clergyman. I have found nothing in his journal that enables me to add to the account of the emigration given in my History, but there are in it a few remarks that are of assistance to me in the preparation of this paper.
[99] The actual separation into two distinct communions, as we see them to-day, had not then taken place, but the principles underlying the movement were already at work, and had been for many years. There was not as much difference between the two parties as there is in the English episcopal church between the high and the low sections, but it was sufficient to cause those with common sympathies to keep together as much as they could.
[100] See pages 451 to 455 of Volume III Geslacht Register der Oude Kaapsche Familien, published at Capetown in 1894. The family Uys in 1836 was a very large one, and was widely spread over the Cape Colony.
[101] See page 302 of the printed volume of records entitled The Kaffir War of 1835.
[102] This refers to the following occurrence. During the war, while Uys was in the field, a complaint, afterwards proved to be frivolous, was made against his wife to the nearest special magistrate for the protection of apprentices, who issued a warrant, and she was taken to Port Elizabeth to be tried. Upon her innocence being clearly established she was liberated, and an action was then brought before the circuit court against the special magistrate for false imprisonment. The chief justice, who was the circuit judge, and before whom the case was tried, condemned the special magistrate to pay the costs, but these were defrayed for him out of the district treasury, on the ground that otherwise he would be deterred from doing his legal duty when complaints were made to him.—See Chase’s Natal Papers.