Of the subsequent advance through the former country of the Khalifa a correspondent gives a vivid picture. “If ever there were any who entertained a thought of pity for the Khalifa and his following when they considered the crushing force which is advancing to their annihilation, if they could have been with us upon the road during the last few days, all thought of sentiment and pity would have vanished, and even the most philanthropical would have longed, as do we, to volunteer our aid in ridding the world of a tyrant so brutal and a butcher so ferocious.
All along the line of march there are evidences that the country was once a flourishing, populous province, well cultivated where occasion offered. Yet to us it was a wilderness of desolation, every mile with its evidences of the tragic means by which it had been depopulated, and every landmark showing the handiwork of the ruthless destroyer. From end to end it has been swept with fire and sword. The very crops have grown, withered, and died without a hand to gather them. Mile after mile of earthen village lies deserted, ruined and destroyed, and now in the courtyards where the women were wont to grind corn and card cotton, with their children playing at their skirts, jackal and hyena disport amongst the broken distaffs and the bones of the murdered women and butchered infants. Well may we cry, ‘Retribution and Khartoum!’”
CHAPTER LXIV.
THE ADVANCE OF ROBERTS.
1900.
The war of 1899-1901 in South Africa is of too recent date to call for a very minute exposition of the causes which led up to it.
The first appearance of the Dutch in South Africa took place in 1652. On the invitation of the Netherlands Government, Britain seized Cape Colony in 1795, holding it for a period of seven years, when it was restored to the Netherlands. Five years later Britain again seized it, and it was finally ceded to them upon a payment of £6,000,000. From this time forward strife commenced between the Boers and the British immigrants. English was the language chosen for the law courts of Cape Colony, and all slaves of whom the Boers held many thousands, were freed under British rule. Both these happenings gave great offence, and in 1836 the Boers made their “Great Trek” into new territory.
Says Mr. Julian Ralph in his history of the late war:—“Great Britain never ceased to regard the Boers as her subjects, and yet did nothing to interfere with their course or the government which they set up.”
In 1852, after many bickerings, the famous Sand River Convention established the Transvaal Republic, over which Great Britain “held the right to impose conditions, upon which she granted the Boers what rights they held, and this British overlordship was acknowledged by them without protest.” The Orange Free State was set up under somewhat similar conditions, with, however, somewhat more extended privileges than those enjoyed by the Transvaal. The Transvaal government went from bad to worse. Frequent friction with the natives, marked by savage cruelties on both sides, and the virtual enslaving of many natives, brought the Government of the Transvaal into disrepute, and in 1877 the British Commissioner, Sir Theophilus Shepstone, formally annexed the Transvaal, reporting that the majority of people desired annexation. Protests were, however, numerous, and shortly after order had been apparently restored the newly-annexed territory revolted, defeating the British forces at Laing’s Nek and Majuba Hill, in what has become known to posterity as the First Boer War.
An armistice was ordered by Mr. Gladstone’s Government in March, 1881, and the Boers were granted self-government under British suzerainty. Further independence was granted to them in 1884.
The discovery of gold in the Transvaal Republic had by this time led to a great rush of new settlers, called by the Boers, the “Uitlanders,” to whose energy the present prosperity of the country was now largely due. These European settlers, the Uitlanders, were of course subject to the laws of the Transvaal, and very soon they found that instead of possessing equal rights with Transvaal burghers, though forming nearly three-fourths of the white population, they were at disadvantages in every way. Dutch was the only language of government, and was taught in the public schools. British citizens were assaulted, and even murdered by agents of the Transvaal with impunity, and right of franchise was refused.