I write this for the information of your honorable Society, in the hope that you will try and put a stop to proceedings which will, if carried out, be the cause of bloodshed in an unjust cause, as I can assure you nothing but the grossest act of encroachment and oppression will cause the Zulus to take up arms against the English race, who wish to live at peace with them, not being ripe enough for civilization or civilized laws.
The standard rule that is gone by against the black races in this part of South Africa is the Amaxosa, or Cape Frontier Kafir, who is not to be compared to the Zulu; nothing but forced Christianity or civilization will spoil the Zulus, and the class of foreign missionaries we have in the country does more injury than good to them. Let them say what they like in their reports to the societies, they make no converts to their faith, besides the pretended ones or vagabonds, who imagine that by being clothed and under the garb of Christianity they will be exempt from all king’s service and laws of the country, and be allowed to roam about and do as they please.
The Zulu nation, judiciously dealt with, would remain a firm ally and friend to the English, and it would be a shame for any false notions of power on the English side to take advantage of such power, and destroy the Zulu race, which would undoubtedly be the case if they were overthrown; they would then become a lot of bold rogues, and eventually give much trouble.
One of the most unfair features in the case is this, that the head of the Transvaal government (Sir T. Shepstone) has always advised Cetywayo to remain quiet, and not to go to war with the Boers in disputing the boundary, promising him to see him righted, when, if it had been left to the Zulus and Boers themselves, I am sure the Boers would have got the worst of it. He now turns round and is prepared to fight himself, when he knows he is only too well backed up by England for the Dutch, England not knowing the real facts.
The Zulus acknowledge no individual title to land, permission only being given to squat, the land being looked on as belonging to the squatter only so long as he occupies it.
But before sending the above letter, I thought I would consult Mr. H. Escombe, and he advised me not to send the letter, as he had no doubt it was the intention of the English government to disarm all the native tribes in South Africa, and that I would only be making a fool of myself, or words to that effect, but at the same time advising me to wait the arrival of Mr. I. Sanderson, who was editor of the Natal Colonist, a colonial newspaper, now defunct, and who was expected out from England shortly. I acted on Mr. Escombe’s advice, and on the arrival of Mr. Sanderson had a conversation with him, and gave him the letter. He pretended to think well of my proposal, but before he had time to carry it out, affairs, as regards Zulu matters, came to a crisis, and Mr. Sanderson died shortly afterwards, and so ended this matter.
Appendix to Gold Fields Chapter.
The following resumé of the opinions of Dr. Schenk, a geologist who has paid several professional visits and has lately made researches at the gold fields, an account of which, I believe, he purposes shortly to publish in Germany, is taken from the letter of a correspondent in the Pretoria Volkstem under date February, 1887, and will be perused with considerable interest by geologists.
The Barberton formation, the doctor said, consisted of very old and in most instances highly metamorphosed rocks, composed of slate and sandstone, with interposed eruptive rocks of greenstone (diorite, serpentine, etc.). These rocks are highly erected, dipping invariably at great angles, often perpendicular, and run from east to west. In this formation the gold-bearing veins or reefs are situated, and these with few exceptions run in the same direction (this is, for instance, the case with the reefs at Moodie’s and with the Sheba, etc.), nearly always accompanying the eruptive rocks. The gold, in the doctor’s opinion, came from the interior of the earth with the eruptive rocks to the surface, and was therefore concentrated in these reefs, which consist of quartz, and often contain iron along with the gold. This formation probably corresponds in age with the Silurian formation of Europe, and is found also in Swaziland, Zoutpansberg, and the recently discovered gold fields of the Tugela. There is no young formation overlying these rocks at Barberton, but in the Drakensberg and at Witwatersrand a younger formation lies unconformably over the older rocks. This the doctor concluded to be of Devonian age. It consists of large beds of sandstone, with here and there slate and greenstone. This younger formation had subsequently been folded in the same way as the Barberton rocks, though not so highly erected. The Barberton formation, he is inclined to think, proceeds beneath this formation in a westerly direction to Witwatersrand and thence to Bechuanaland. Regarding the presence of the before-mentioned younger formation, he considered it was due to the overflowing of this part of the country by the sea, which by wearing away the higher portions of the mountains, and destroying their rock, including the gold-bearing reefs, formed a more level plain and covered it with the destroyed masses of the old formation. This new formation, therefore, was simply a re-deposit of the old one under a different appearance. The sandstone schists abounding at Witwatersrand were no doubt formed of the softer rocks, while the conglomerate resulted from the destruction of the hard reefs before alluded to; these probably having been reduced, by the action of the water, to sand and pebbles, which afterwards became cemented into a solid mass. The conglomerate of Witwatersrand, Dr. Schenk further observed, is imbedded in the sandstone, to form a series of large belts, the extremities of which are at the surface. His reasons for coming to this conclusion were that at Witwatersrand the conglomerate dipped to the south, while between Heidelberg and the Vaal (southward of the Rand) it dipped to the north, or in an exactly opposite direction, and between these places it lay more horizontally, thus affording grounds for supposing that the conglomerate at one place is connected with that at the other. The doctor, in conclusion, remarked that the Witwatersrand conglomerate was a most peculiar formation, and that he had never before seen anything of the kind. It did not, in his opinion, run into a reef, as many old diggers and others seem to suppose; but the reefs from which it originated, and which he judged to be the continuation of the Barberton reefs running through this place, he considers to be somewhere in the vicinity of the conglomerate, but at a considerable depth from the surface.