An Extraordinary Incident
For two years a large force of soldiers, farmers and auxiliaries of various kinds were employed in trying to end a war with enemies who had the fleetness of the antelope and powers of disappearance equal to that of a bird. When their food was exhausted, and not before, the Kosas gave in and asked for peace. As usual in such cases, the Governor was recalled, and Sir George Cathcart appointed his successor. The government of British Kaffraria was reorganized and the region subdivided amongst the Tembus, a section of the Kosa tribe under a chief named Kreli, the western clans of the Kosa and the loyal Fingos. Several regiments of regular troops were maintained in the Province and a body of local police formed from amongst the younger white colonists. In 1857 there took place one of those extraordinary incidents which can only occur in a region such as South Africa. The Kosas, prompted by some wizard who professed to wield unknown and vast powers and to hold communication with the unseen world, destroyed all their cattle and stores of grain in the belief that their ancestors would, as a reward for their faith, join them in driving the white man out of the country and in creating for them a boundless stock of new cattle and a limitless supply of fresh crops. Famine naturally followed, and some 30,000 natives perished of hunger or disease despite all that Sir George Grey, who, in 1854, had become Governor at Cape Town, could do for them in a hurried supply of provisions and work. Some good came out of the evil. Large tracts of depopulated land were taken possession of by European settlers, peace came to the exhausted region, and in 1865 it was annexed to Cape Colony. It may be added here that some small risings occurred in 1877, termed the ninth Kaffir war, and that in 1880 the region held by the Pondos was formally annexed to the Colony, and its borders thus became coterminous with those of Natal.
A GENERAL VIEW OF ESTCOURT, TWENTY-FIVE MILES SOUTH OF LADYSMITH.
GENERAL VIEW OF CITY OF LADYSMITH, NATAL (From Photo by Henry Kisch).
MAP SHOWING COUNTRY FROM DURBAN TO LADYSMITH
A Vexed Question
Meanwhile, the history of Cape Colony was by no means confined to conflicts with border natives or to the controversies with the Orange Free State, which have been detailed in preceding pages. In 1850 occurred one ol the most striking illustrations of what mistakes a fair-minded and well-meaning Home Government may at times be involved in when dealing with far-away regions. There seems to have been no perception in those days of the wrong which might be inflicted upon a Colony by the exportation of convicts undergoing various terms of penal servitude. Confinement in Australia or South Africa seemed to British statesmen, and especially to Earl Grey, who presided over the Colonial Office at this time, no more objectionable on principle than it would be if they were kept at home in the British Isles. They forgot that on being released these men—some punished for serious crimes, some for slight offenses—were let loose upon a community widely scattered and isolated and composed of many persons who, taken in this way, were easy victims to robbery or attack. And they entirely overlooked the danger of allowing hundreds, or in time thousands, of men without personal responsibility or character, to roam at will amongst a large and restless population of natives. They appear to have felt only that in the vast and vacant spaces of the Colonies there was room and verge for a released convict, or a ticket-of-leave man, to make for himself a new career untrammelled by the past, or by the danger of drifting again into the deeps of the great cities at home.