How winsomely Sir George made the Queen a living personality as well as a mighty name to the native races! 'Ha-ha!' cried Maori; African, Australian, 'the Queen is indeed our mother, for Governor Grey shows it by his acts. But the eloquent word on that, came from an old Kaffir woman, whom nobody owned, Lot Hrayi. This was her epistle, through the Governor to the Queen:
'I am very thankful to you, dearest Queen Victoria, that you have sent, for me, a good doctor, a clever man. I was sixteen years blind, Mother and Queen, but now I see perfectly. I see everything. I can see the stars, and the moon and the sun. I used to be led before; but now, Mother, O Queen, I am able to walk myself. Let God bless you as long as you live on earth; let God bless Mother! Thou must not be tired to bear our infirmities, O Queen Victoria.'
To Sir George, Lot Hrayi's despatch was a State paper. 'Native races,' he laid down, 'understood personal rule, and the great thing was to make the Queen vivid, a reality, to them. England? Yes, it was a place far distant, where there were no dark-skinned peoples. The Queen of England? Ah, yes, they could comprehend her! She sat on a throne, so beautiful that its place must be where all was beautiful and good. Her heart beat for her folk, irrespective of their colour; she would minister to their happiness. Nothing could more delight her, than to secure the well-being of those who claimed her powerful protection. That was intelligible!
'Thus, when I had a measure of mercy, of justice, or of guidance to announce, I did it directly, in the Queen's name, and in the native languages. It was the Queen's utterance, though spoken by me, and it would be difficult to indicate how well the charm worked. Go into a cottage, in almost any part of England, and you will, I judge, find a portrait of the Queen hanging on the whitewashed walls. There were no portraits in the Kaffir kraals, yet the Queen entered them, a beneficent influence in many a crisis.'
Striving to attach the Kaffirs, Sir George granted them written titles to their lands. They could not at first perceive the object of the parchment, and he would express it thus: 'If you have any trouble with your lands, it is only necessary for you to go to a judge with this document. He will read it, and if there is a real grievance, he will have it put right. Even the Queen's army might be ordered away from a place, by a few policemen, if a judge so directed.'
The chiefs would often say afterwards: 'Oh, Sir George Grey explained to us, all about the advantages under which we held the land. He told us that the Queen, herself, could not turn us off the ground, without going to the supreme courts which dispensed justice in her name. If a claimant were found not entitled to a piece of land, he would be removed by the Queen's officers. But if he had right behind his claim, why, he would be maintained in it by those officers.'
'Some people,' Sir George made comment, 'declared it absurd that I should instil those ideas into the minds of the natives, but, in reality, it resulted in their having far more respect and regard for the Queen.' Assuredly, his policy made the Kaffirs eager to get land titles, and these were always another link binding them to good behaviour. It was the contrivance of the silken thread, wound here, there, everywhere, as against the other method, of a horse-hair halter.
Should some swashbuckler have contrary views on native administration, he could relieve his fierceness by tracing the word 'Hottentot' to its origin. Sir George had an amusing story of Cape Town in controversy on this term, which the Hottentots had always insisted did not belong to their forefathers.
'With a desire to solve the problem,' he related, 'I suggested that people in Cape Town should be asked to write papers on the name. This proposal was carried out, and a small sheaf of essays came in response. Well, I was looking over an old Dutch dictionary, and there I found "Hottentot" described as meaning "Not speaking well; a stammerer." The name, apparently, had been conferred by the early Dutch settlers, in South Africa, upon the natives first met, on account of the stuttering noise these caused in speaking. All the competitors wanted to have their papers back, in order, as they pleaded, to make a few corrections.'
Again, that was a process which Sir George was ever willing to apply to himself. Yet, being very human, he loved to make the corrections in his own fashion, like the essay-writers at Cape Town. There, at the foot of Africa, he sat, bold and cautious, leading the What-Was onward to the What-Ought-To-Be. He might be compared to a charioteer driving two horses, one white in two shades, jibbish at a corner, the other black as Satan, unbroken to the bit. But the chariot must move forward steadily, evenly, to its greater glory.