In a later speech, replying to the toast of “Lady Smith,” Sir Harry returned thanks for the honour to his wife—a wife who had participated in the hardships of almost every one of the gallant actions recorded on their colours; who had been three times besieged in her native city, and after being finally rescued, had followed him through the four quarters of the globe; a wife who had been not only honoured by all his comrades, but respected by those of her own sex.
On the 24th September Sir Harry embarked on the Vernon amid a great demonstration, by which he seemed much moved.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
(Supplementary.)
SOUTH AFRICA IN 1847—SIR HARRY’S RECEPTION AT CAPE TOWN AND ON THE FRONTIER—END OF THE KAFIR WAR—EXTENSION OF THE BOUNDARIES OF THE COLONY AND ESTABLISHMENT OF THE PROVINCE OF “BRITISH KAFFRARIA”—VISIT TO THE COUNTRY BEYOND THE ORANGE AND TO NATAL—PROCLAMATION OF THE “ORANGE RIVER SOVEREIGNTY”—TRIUMPHANT RETURN TO CAPE TOWN—DISAFFECTION AMONG THE BOERS IN THE SOVEREIGNTY—EXPEDITION THITHER AND BATTLE OF BOOMPLAATS—RETURN TO CAPE TOWN.
Much had happened in South Africa since the period 1835-6 of which Sir Harry’s autobiography has given us so full an account, and it was his fortune as Governor to encounter difficulties traceable to the policy of Lord Glenelg of which he had himself seen the short-sighted fatuity at the time when it was adopted.
By Sir Benjamin D’Urban’s treaty with the Kafir chiefs of September, 1835, the country between the Fish River and the Keiskamma was to be occupied by those settlers who had suffered most severely in the war, while in that between the Keiskamma and the Kei (to be called the “Province of Queen Adelaide”) a number of loyal Kafirs were to be established under military protection. All this was upset by Lord Glenelg’s dispatch of 26th December, 1835. No settlers were to be permitted beyond the Fish River, and the Kafirs were to be reinstated in the districts from which they had consented in their treaty with Sir Benjamin D’Urban to retire; while the compensation which was to have been paid to sufferers from the war was sharply refused. Well may Cloete write, “A communication more cruel, unjust, and insulting to the feelings both of Sir Benjamin D’Urban and of the colonists could hardly have been penned by a declared enemy of the country and its Governor.” The immediate consequence was the emigration from the Colony of numbers of Dutch farmers (described by Sir B. D’Urban as “a brave, patient, industrious, orderly, and religious people”). In another dispatch of Lord Glenelg’s dated 1st May, 1837, Sir Benjamin D’Urban, perhaps the best Governor the Colony ever had, was recalled. He was succeeded by Sir George Napier. The policy entrusted to the new Governor was that of entering into alliances with the Kafir chiefs. But experience soon taught him that this was futile, and the only possible course was that which had been pursued by his predecessor and Harry Smith. “My own experience and what I saw with my own eyes,” he declared to a Parliamentary Committee in 1851, “have confirmed me that I was wrong and Sir Benjamin D’Urban perfectly right; that if he meant to keep Kafirland under British rule, the only way of doing so was by having a line of forts and maintaining troops in them.”
The Boers or emigrant farmers of Dutch descent who in 1835 and subsequent years, to the number of 10,000, left the Cape Colony as men shamefully abandoned by the British Government, settled themselves, some north of the Orange River, some across the Vaal, some in Natal.