annas, Bergenaars, and Bushmen," whom his advance had found occupying the game-covered flats and hills outside and north of the British line. This great murderer himself commenced hostilities by attacking a small weak party of the fugitives from the Cape Colony. The main body of the emigrants succeeded, however, in 1838, in resisting successfully a raid made by the "Amandabele" upon one of their camps; but having lost in the encounter much cattle, their only means of subsistence, they sent forth a party to follow up the raiders and recover the booty. This little body succeeded so well in its mission, that Moselekatze, who had never before been checked in his career of bloodshed and extermination, fled hastily to the northwards. By this means, by breaking the power of this formidable warrior, the emigrant farmers became fairly possessed of vast territories which they had delivered from his murder

ous sway.

Subsequently another-a very large-portion of them penetrated into Natal, which was certainly not then British territory. At the period when the Boers succeeded, after wonderful labours and difficulties, in opening up pathways for themselves through the great Drakensberg down to the sea, there were not, on the millions of acres that lay below them, any population worthy of mention. A great conqueror had swept over the country before them, reducing its inhabitants to less than 3000 in number, who dwelt in holes, without cattle or means of subsistence, an unarmed, feeble, and disorganised fragment of the former resident. tribe. This had been done by Chaka, who is well described in the excellent though prejudiced work on "South Africa" published last year by John Noble, clerk of the House of Assembly of the Cape Colony, in the following words :

"He was a cruel, savage being, who steadily pursued one object,— to destroy all other native governments, and exterminate such of their subjects as did not choose to come under his rule. The fame of his troops spread far and wide; tribe after tribe was invaded, routed, and put to death by them, either by firing their huts or by the spear, and in a few years Chaka had paramount sway over nearly all SouthEastern Africa, from the Limpopo to Kaffraria, including the territories now known as Natal, Basuto Land, a large portion of the Orange Free

СНАКА.

State, and the Transvaal. It is estimated that not less than one million human beings were destroyed during the reign of this native Attila, between 1812 and 1828. His death was, as might be expected, a violent one."

Now it can hardly be said that to occupy a country which had no inhabitants and no government, and to snatch it from the power of such a wretch as Chaka, was an act which should properly arouse the anger of any civilised Government. The Boers were weak, and they say that therefore they were found to be in the wrong by the powerful Government from under whose sway they had thought to deliver themselves.

To Chaka succeeded Dingaan, also a Zulu, and of course, like other Zulus, a treacherous and murderous ruffian. Dingaan and the emigrants at first seemed to have been on friendly terms. Dingaan resembled modern monarchs in one noticeable particular: he was greatly in the habit of allocating to the use of friends and confederates, and giving away to applicants, what never belonged to him, and that to which he had no right. About the period of his accession to the sovereignty of the Zulus, a few white men lived at "The Bay," where Durban now stands. These were the means of introducing missionaries amongst the Zulus, and one of them obtained from the chief a recognition of the independence of the small white settlement on the sea. The chief also about the same time gave to the emigrant Boers permission to occupy the country, the desolation of which by Chaka I have just pictured. This is Natal, as distinguished from Port Natal, the small coast settlement referred to. But Dingaan's profession of friendship was hollow and insincere. His savage nature incited him to an act of wanton and unnecessary bloodshed. He attacked and killed, with circumstances of great barbarity, a large party of the farmers under Piet Retief, who were visiting at his chief town, and engaged in the peaceful enjoyment of his hospitality. Then, flushed with his easy triumph, and stimulated by the hope of plunder, he endeavoured to cut off all the Europeans, without respect of persons, in Natal and on the coast, and invaded a country to which he had no claim, and to whose occupation by strangers he had consented. The coast

English and the Boer countrymen both offered to this scheme a vigorous resistance, even the Boer women and children performing prodigies of valour and shedding blood that would have consecrated their freedom in the eyes of equitable men of any race. In the joint campaign, however, they were terribly unsuccessful, the British settlers not only quitting the country entirely, but even taking ship from the

coast.

The farmers in Natal, left in the hand of God and to their own resources, rallied around one Pretorius, invaded Zululand itself, and nearly entirely destroyed Dingaan's power in two expeditions; in the latter of which they were assisted by Panda, a revolted brother of the great Zulu warrior with whom they were contending. Then, and not till then, when they had conquered a peace, and purchased security at a vast outlay of blood-just when one would have thought they had sufficiently demonstrated their self-relianceBritish protection sought them out. They were again informed that they were guilty of unwarrantable conduct, and once more found themselves called upon to give ready obedience to the rule of the English governors of the Cape Colony.

Once more, however, for a short period the poor persecuted people were destined to be free. The commander of the English forces in Natal, Captain Jervis, withdrew his troops from the country in 1840, saying—

"It now only remains for me to wish you, one and all, as a community, every happiness, sincerely hoping that, aware of your strength, peace may be the object of your counsels; justice, prudence, and moderation be the law of your actions; that your proceedings may be actuated by motives worthy of you as men and Christians; that hereafter your arrival may be hailed as a benefit, having enlightened ignorance, dispelled superstition, and caused crime, bloodshed, and oppression to cease; and that you may cultivate those beautiful regions in quiet and prosperity, ever regardful of the rights of the inhabitants whose country you have adopted, and whose home you have made your own."

The Boers, although sadly reduced in numbers both in Natal and in the country west of the Drakensberg, now considering themselves free from further interference, proceeded, for the first time, to form "republics." On doing so, their territory was again invaded, by Captain Smith in

FOUNDING REPUBLICS.

1842, with a flying column sent forward for that purpose by Governor Napier. The Boers attacked and cooped Smith up on the coast, but not until he had first assumed the aggressive. When the weak fight against the strong, the result is not hard to foresee. More British troops arrived; the Boers were, of course, defeated; and Natal became again, and probably for ever, British territory. But, wonderful to relate, a number of the Boers were still dissatisfied, and again abandoned their lands in order to be free from all obligations of allegiance to England; and they went back still further from the Power they dreaded, reuniting themselves to their brethren in the vast plains of what are now known as the Free State and the Transvaal. These countries had, as I have said before, been desolated by Moselekatze, and were, so far as regarded human inhabitants, a desert. Mr Noble, an historian anything but favourable to the Dutch, says

"They found no difficulty in taking possession of the territory, for the greater part of it was lying waste, the haunt of wild game and beasts of prey: The dreaded chief Moselekatze had abandoned it, having fled north into the region between the Limpopo and the Zambesi rivers, where his tribe, the Matabele, under his successor Lobengulo, now dwell. Those remaining were 'weak and broken' people, ruined by Moselekatze. They welcomed the emigrants as their deliverers from that tyrant's cruel sway, acknowledging them as the governors of the country, and allowing them to appropriate whatever ground they required. As the emigrants found their strength increased by the accessions they received from Natal and the colonial boundary, they asserted more authority,establishing their own form of government, under commandants, landdrosts, and field-cornets, and dictating to the natives encompassing them the laws which should prevail. These laws were similar in character to the regulations which applied, under the old Dutch government, to the coloured class in servitude within the colony-namely, that they should, when required, give their services to the farmers for a reasonable sum; that they should be restricted from wandering about the country; and that no guns or ammunition were permitted to be in their possession or bartered to them. Potgieter and his followers, in declaring their new government-the 'Maatschappij '—claimed absolute independence; and when a proclamation issued by Governor Napier reached them, stating that the emigrant farmers were not released from their allegiance to the Crown, and that all offences committed by British subjects up to the 25° of south latitude were punishable in the courts of the colony, they resolved to abandon Potchefstrom, and moved further northwards, forming new settlements at Zoutpansberg, Ohrigstad, and finally at Lydenberg, whence they contemplated opening communication with the Portuguese port of Delagoa Bay. In these remote wilds, now forming the Transvaal,

they were left to work out their own destiny, without any interference or control."

Even here they were again called on to give allegiance to the British authorities. A Mr Menzies issued a proclamation declaring that, in the name of her Majesty, he claimed what may be briefly described as "all South Africa." Who was Mr Menzies? He was a Judge of the Supreme Court of the Cape Colony, and had apparently no business whatever to meddle with boundaries, or to set himself up as an extender of the empire. This act was subsequently disclaimed and disavowed by the Colonial Government; yet, in pursuance of it, or at least of some fixed plan based on a similar policy of monstrous usurpation, the flying people were again pursued, again fought with, and, of course, again defeated. A long series of troubles, quarrels, and vacillations on the part of the British authorities ended, in 1848, in her Majesty's Government eventually proclaiming its sovereign authority over "territories north of the Orange River, extending as far as the Vaal River on the north, the junction of Vaal and Orange rivers on the east, and that portion of the Drakensberg which forms the boundary of Natal on the west." The Natal Boers—that is, those who had remained there had by this time again got into a state of utter discontent with British government.

The real cause of this is not far to seek. When they (the Boers) first entered Natal, they had found it depopulated; and before the British had come into possession of the country, the Boers had not only conquered their fierce neighbours the Zulus, but had imposed a king of their own nomination upon the enemy. Under the English,

however, myriads of Kafirs were permitted to flock into Natal; and the country by 1848 showed visible symptoms. of becoming what it now is a colony under European government, but in which all the abominations of paganism flourish, to the disgust of European women and the moral corruption of Christian children, a land overrun by 400,000 Kafirs, speaking their own language, practising polygamy, holding females in the most debasing slavery, and constituting for the settlers a great and ever-increasing danger. It is needless to record here the attempts, no doubt well