Latterly, we have also observed, the British settlers had toiled hard and prospered. The comforts of life they had in abundance. Trade began to be developed, and missions were established in Kafirland. Among other things, the freedom of the press had been granted them after a hard struggle! The first Cape newspaper, the South African Commercial Advertiser, edited by Pringle the poet and Fairbairn, was published in 1824, and the Grahamstown Journal, the first Eastern Province newspaper, was issued by Mr Godlonton in 1831. Schools were also established. Wool-growing began to assume an importance which was a premonition of the future staple of the Eastern Provinces. Savings-banks were established, and, in short, everything gave promise of the colony—both east and west—becoming a vigorous, as it was obviously a healthy, chip of the old block.
But amongst all this wheat there had been springing up tares. With the growing prosperity there were growing evils. A generous and well-meant effort on the part of Christians and philanthropists to give full freedom and rights to the Hottentots resulted to a large extent in vagabondism, with its concomitant robbery. The Kafirs, emboldened by the weak, and exasperated by the incomprehensible, policy of the Colonial Government at that time, not only crossed the border to aid the Hottentot thieves in their work, and carry off sheep and cattle by the hundred, but secretly prepared for war. Behind the scenes were the paramount chief Hintza, the chief Macomo, and others. The first, forgetting the deliverance wrought for him by the settlers and British troops in 1828, secretly stirred up the Kafirs, whilst the second, brooding over supposed wrongs, fanned the flame of discontent raised among the Hottentots by the proposal of a Vagrancy Act.
When all is ready for war it takes but a spark to kindle the torch. The Kafirs were ready; the British, however, were not. The settlers had been peacefully following their vocations, many of the troops, which ought to have been there to guard them, had been unwisely withdrawn, and only a few hundred men remained in scattered groups along the frontier. The armed Hottentots of the Kat River—sent there as a defence—became a point of weakness, and required the presence of a small force to overawe them and prevent their joining the Kafirs. At last the electric spark went forth. A farmer (Nell) was robbed of seven horses, which were traced to the kraal of a chief on the neutral territory. Restoration was refused. A military patrol was sent to enforce restitution. Opposition was offered, and the officer in command wounded with an assagai. Hintza began to retreat and plunder British traders who were residing in his territory under his pledged protection, and at length a trader named Purcell was murdered near the chief’s kraal and his store robbed. Then Macomo began hostilities by robbing and murdering some farmers on the lower part of the Kat River, and two days afterwards the Kafir hordes, variously estimated at from eight to fifteen thousand men, burst across the whole frontier, wrapped the eastern colony in the smoke and flames of burning homesteads, scattered the unprepared settlers, demolished the works of fourteen years’ labour, penetrated to within twenty miles of Algoa Bay, and drove thousands of sheep and cattle back in triumph to Kafirland.
Chapter Twenty Three.
War.
It was at this juncture—the Christmas-tide of 1834, and the summer-time in South Africa—that a merry party was assembled under the shade of umbrageous trees that crowned a little knoll from which could be seen the blue smoke curling from a prosperous-looking homestead in the vale below. It was a party of settlers enjoying their Christmas festivities in the open air. Hans Marais and Charlie Considine were among them, but, feeling less inclined than was their wont to join in the hilarity of the young folks, they had sauntered into the shrubbery and conversed sadly about the departure of Conrad Marais and his family, and of the unsettled state of the frontier at that time.
While they talked, an armed band of savages had crept past them unperceived, and advanced stealthily towards the party of revellers on the knoll. Coming suddenly across the tracks of these savages, Hans cast an anxious look at his companion, and said quickly—
“Look here, Charlie—the spoor of Kafirs! Let’s go—”