THE WAR IN KAFFIRLAND.

THE sentimentalism of the age is really sickening. After pursuing for years a continued system of plunder and extortion, accompanied by crimes innumerable and of the most savage hue; after a constant succession of invasions, sometimes, as in 1834 and 1846, of 10,000 Kaffirs at a time, of British territory, destroying farms and farm-houses, murdering unprotected colonists in cold blood, carrrying off the cattle, devastating the land, and committing all kinds of atrocities; we are told by the Government of this Country-no doubt in deference to the abovementioned sentimentalism-that "the more enlightened spirit of modern days has put an end to hostilities as of yore with barbarous tribes on the outskirts of settlements." "Warfare is now," Sir Charles Wood informs us, "of a more expensive character than formerly," and he, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, "believes it to be well worth the while of a civilised country to carry it on in this spirit!" This is carrying out the spirit of Free Trade into modern warfare with a vengeance. No reciprocity-but the loss once more all on one side. The Kaffirs are to invade, plunder, and exterminate; they are barbarians and savages; they must be fired at sparingly, and cut down tenderly. Double-barrelled rifles and Colt's revolvers, as used in the New World under similar circumstances, or razzias in Algeria-out upon the idea! The amiable Kaffir who roasts his living prisoners is to be taught, at every sacrifice of territory, wealth, honour, and life, to be reconciled to a more civilised state of things! We do not mean to say that the system adopted under the advice of such men as Sir B. Urban, Sir P. Maitland, Sir Henry Pottinger, and Sir Harry Smith, of establishing military posts within the territory of a frontier of turbulent, predatory, savage people, ignorant alike of laws and of restraint, and actuated by one common feeling of hatred of the white man, is not infinitely better than the commando system of the Dutch, who used to shoot down every Kaffir, whether actually engaged in robbing, or only on the way to seek for an opportunity for so doing; but we assert that this system even of military and missionary posts has now been tried, and has not been found efficient. The Kaffirs have not become reconciled to a more civilised state of life by either plan; and to take, in the face of an insurrection so general and so greatly diffused as to have paralysed every arm in the country, and led to defections even among our own subsidised allies, such milk-andwater measures, as an expensive and inefficient warfare, and the sending out two gentlemen to investigate at the last moment our relations with the native tribes, is as unworthy of the wisdom and foresight of the country, as it is indiscreet in regard to the security and prosperity of the colony. Our relations with the native tribes! Why, they are written in the blood of colonists, their wives, and children, and their servants; they are traced in the devastation of the land and the yet smouldering ashes of the peaceful homesteads; they are marked by the bleaching bones of the murdered wayfarers. But these are not the kind of evidences to be perused by a quasi-sentimental ministry, themselves supra-civilised by the pacific crowds of an Exhibition of all Nations-Kaffirs, Pawnees, Sioux, Kurds, Berbers, Borneo pirates, Thugs, and a few other of the less

exemplary tribes and castes of the world excepted. The evidences admitted in Downing-street are to the effect that the southern extremity of the continent of Africa is peopled by many tribes-as Hottentots, Bushmen, Kaffirs, Zulas, Fingoes and others, all more or less connected by language and by race. They are to the effect that the missionaries have adopted one form of language, by which all the dialects will be brought together, and civilisation thus most assuredly be ensured in a wholesale manner; that the Dutch are boors in all senses of the word, and must not be allowed to retard the progress of a benign civilisation; that they are retreating towards the rich plains and fertile vales of the newlydiscovered interior lakes and rivers, and that they must be anticipated by peace-loving philanthropists, who will kindly warn the innocent-minded Batouani of the approach of the rude boors, and prepare them to give to the emigrants or invaders not a hospitable but a hostile reception." They are to the effect that Sir Harry Smith having failed in nominating a subservient local legislative council, who would put off the question of a constitution while that of war was in abeyance-had remained governor of the colony without any representative assembly to assist him-and that two gentlemen should be sent out to act for the unwilling and laggard local assembly, and investigate the relations of the native tribes! What a farce is such a mode of proceeding in such an extremity? It is not surpassed by a vote of 300,000l.—which will last as long as the present ministry-and a regiment of unhorsed dragoons to be sent out to terrify the savages by shaking their brightcoloured pennons, Chinese fashionfor the war, it is expressly conceded, is to be one of courtly and chivalrous antecedents, as if enacted in the luxurious arena of a field of cloth of gold.†

"The Kaffirs," says Mrs. Ward, in her work on the Cape, "have

We gave in the New Monthly (Part III., 1850, p. 345 et seq.) a detailed account of the discovery of Lake Ngami and the River Zouga, and of the Batouani and other reputed tribes living in these fertile and central regions of South Africa. It appears that it was really time to do something, for Mrs. Ward notices, in the last edition of her work on the Cape, as the latest news from thence which had been received in time for publication, that "the Boers, far beyond Bloem Fontein, under Pretorius, are determined that no one shall pass through their territory to the newly-discovered lake (Lake Ngami), and have already fined some severely. The lake will be easy of access down the Limpopo, which runs through the Boer country into it, as it is believed. All other ways, as far as are known, are through deserts; and the ignorant people (Boers) will not suffer the missionaries to teach the natives about them. It would be unsafe to send any expedition under seven hundred men, as Pretorius is more than 256miles beyond any military station."

This is a pretty cool territorial assumption on the part of General Pretorius and his boors, who did not even discover the lake, or the Zouga, or the Limpopo, and it will sow the seeds of much future contention and strife. It is somewhat curious to hear that, to meet such threatening contingencies, Sir Harry Smith has sent off a messenger to warn the Batouani against the apprehended invasion of the Boers, while Lord Grey sends out instructions that the rights of the Batouani are to be supported by a British resident, who is to be a missionary, and a small armed force! Where is such force to be found at the present crisis? and, when found, are they to cross the Bakalihari Desert, or to make their way through the Boer territory? If so, what force will be requisite?

+Happily they do not appear to hold the same views of Kaffirland at the War Office as they do in Downing-street. The cavalry are to be supplied with doublebarrelled carbines, and reinforcements of artillery and other troops are also on their way, or preparing to leave for the Cape.

been painted as an aboriginal race, 'a pastoral and gentle people.' They are neither one nor the other; they are intruders on the lands that they occupy. Their habits are the most savage imaginable; their treachery is well known to all who have been unfortunate enough to come in contact with them; and the conversions effected among them, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, have no other existence than in the warm imaginations of the well-meaning but ill-informed members of missionary societies. What converts there are, are principally from the despised slaves of the haughty Kaffirs-the Fingoes." Dr. Knox also speaks from personal observation of the Kaffirs-Amakosas, as he more properly calls them and whom he considers as a totally distinct race from the Hottentot and Bosjeman races, and closely allied to the negro race, as "treacherous, bloody, and thoroughly savage." ("The Races of Men," p. 241.) Lieutenant-Colonel E. Napier has given frequent testimony to the same effect in the pages of the New Monthly. The late Sir John Barrow supposed the Amakosas to be descendants of a tribe of Badwin Arabs; but if so, how came they to be Kaffirs, or infidels? Certain it is that they are intruders who have expelled the aboriginal Hottentots from the Amatola into the bush (Bushmen), and enslaved whole tribes, under the infamous term of Fingoe-a person having no claim to justice, mercy, or life. Mrs. Ward says the restless desire for plunder among the Kaffirs speaks much in favour of their Arab origin; so do their tent-shaped huts, their riches consisting in herds of cattle, and their wandering habits. The Kaffirs' principal implement of war is also like the Badwin, the spear or assegai, unknown to the aborigines.

From 1842 or 3 till 1846, when war was proclaimed, the same authority informs us the colonists were engaged in perpetual warfare with the Kaffirs. The farmers could not stir without arms, murder stalked through the highway in open day, robberies were too common to be always recorded, and commandos (Mrs. Ward uses the word in the sense of an inroad in pursuit of stolen cattle, and not, as Lord John Russell does, as a desultory war of extermination) were marched through the country to punish recreant chiefs; but the latter invariably eluded the troops, and escaped with the cattle.

We need not now turn to the history of the last war, the records of which have already appeared in our pages.* Suffice it that, on the 23rd of December, 1847, Sir Harry Smith brought the said war to a temporary close with a grand meeting at King William's Town, at which the chiefs Sandilla, Stock, Pato, and others, were present, and at which Sir Harry Smith declared that the Queen of England had sent him to Africa to put a stop to violence, and to organise the country over which they had so ruthlessly stalked as destroyers. It mattered not to him; they might fight, but he would conquer them: he would be chief, or inkosi enkulu, as he designated himself. The chiefs present kissed the stave of submission and peace, and Kaffirland was partitioned out into York, under Sandilla; Lincolnshire, under Stock; Bedfordshire, under Pato; Cambridgeshire, under Umhala; Sussex, under Tois; and Yorkshire, under Mapassa

We must refer the reader to Mrs. Ward's excellent little work, "The Cape and the Kaffirs." Mrs. Ward says, "Although I have been sanguine in my hopes of peace, I have never for a moment swerved from my opinion of the Kaffir. From the first to last I have denounced him as incapable of honest feeling-as an irreclaimable savage!" These are "the pastoral and peaceful people” of the missionary agents.

and the Tambookies. The fickleness of the natives, their disinclination to abandon their predatory habits, and their natural aversion to foreign interference, may be considered as the remote and ever-returning cause of hostility; but the immediate cause of the present outbreak appears to have been the deposition of Sandilla from his high estate of paramount chief of the Gaikas, necessitated by his turbulent and disloyal proceedings.

On the 19th of December, 1850, Sir Harry Smith summoned Sandilla to a conference of the Gaika tribes, his adviser and supporter being, it is supposed, his brother and chief councillor, Anta; he was led to disregard the summons, whereupon he was deposed, and his mother, Sutu, "the great widow," was elected in her son's stead. Sandilla and his friends resented this dismissal from authority, the more especially as Sir Harry Smith also declared the chief's lands to be confiscated, and they refused obedience to the proclamation. On the 24th of December, Colonel Mackinnon was accordingly despatched, at the head of six hundred men, to capture Sandilla, but he was led into a defile of the Keiskama, apparently by the treachery of the Kaffir police, as they have subsequently deserted by hundreds, and, at a point where the men could only pass in a single file, a deadly fire was opened upon them, in which Assistant-Surgeon Stuart, a corporal, and nine privates of the 6th regiment, and a corporal of the 73rd regiment were killed, and several officers and men were more or less severely wounded. Colonel Mackinnon moved back by a different road, and on reaching the Debe flats, a horrible sight presented itself: fourteen soldiers of the 45th regiment lay dead upon the plain. Three of these men it appears had been sent out on escort duty, and the other eleven were afterwards despatched in search of them. They were all waylaid and brutally murdered.

This disastrous affair was the signal for a general rising of the Gaikas. They stalked, as usual, through the land with brand and assegai,and the poor settlers in the military villages, who were gathered together to make merry on Christmas-day, were surprised by the treacherous foe, and many were cut to pieces on their devastated homesteads. Woburn, Aukland, and Juanasburg were the first to feel the destroying stroke. At mid-day, while the peaceful inhabitants were seated at their Christmas dinners, the savages surrounded their dwellings, and, in a few minutes, nothing but smoking ruins, and corpses horribly mutilated, marked the sites where the villages had stood. The Kaffirs then poured across the boundary in marauding parties, devastating the open country along the frontier as far west as Graham's Town. The tribes engaged in these ravages were those of Stock, Botman, and Tois, chiefs who, a week before, had professed peaceful and amicable intentions

On the morning of December 29th, Colonel Somerset left Fort Hare, with a force of about 230 men, to open a communication with Fort Cox, where the governor was surrounded and cut off from all succour. But when only a few miles from the fort, Colonel Somerset's small band was attacked by an overwhelming body of Kaffirs, who charged upon the column, broke it, and killed, chiefly in close fighting, two officers (Lieutenants Melvin and Gordon) and twenty men, besides wounding many others. A reinforcement of 100 men from the fort relieved the party, which was obliged to retrace its steps. The loss of the enemy was, however, affirmed, in Colonel Somerset's despatch, to have been considerable, the

fire having been steady and well directed, and the ground contested with. the enemy for upwards of four hours.

In the mean time Sir Harry Smith escaped in a precisely opposite direction. Making a dash from Fort Cox, with 250 of the Cape Mounted Rifles, he forced a passage through the Debe Neck, though opposed by a large body of the enemy, who kept up a heavy fire, without occasioning much loss, and arrived at King William's Town, viâ Fort White, on the 30th of December. From thence the governor issued a proclamation, declaring that every post in British Kaffirland should be maintained. The abandonment of one of them would, he said, have been the signal for revolt to every T.'Slambie chief. The forts were well provisioned for six weeks, and would form a nucleus for an invading army of patriots. "The Gaikas," added the gallant general, “must be driven out of the Amatolas, and expelled for ever!"

Every effort was accordingly made to raise levies. Thirty-eight discharged soldiers and Hottentots, and also fifty Fingoes, well armed, were sent up from Port Elizabeth by the 4th of January. All the burghers were called out by Colonel Somerset, through the civil commissioners, but the call met with a very faint response. Levies, however, proceeded more actively in the country districts. Among the chief of these were the Cape Town, Albany, and Genadendal levies. By the beginning of February, Sir Harry Smith found himself still in King William's Town, and at the head of about 5000 troops of all sorts bearing arms, including Hottentot levies and the burgher force. Meanwhile, the Kaffirs, on the 21st of January, had made a fierce and prolonged attack upon the cattle and village of Alice, adjoining Fort Hare. The chief credit for the defence of the place has been given to the Fingoes, of whom six were killed and ten or twelve wounded; while, on the other hand, the loss of the Kaffirs was estimated at from 100 to 150 men. A still more brilliant result had attended upon an attempt made by the Kaffirs and rebel Hottentots on Fort Beaufort, on the 7th of the same month, when, owing to the gallantry of the Fort Beaufort garrison, chiefly despised Fingoes, under Colonel Sutton, and the bravery and patriotism of the Beaufort burghers, the enemy were repulsed at all points; the chief, Hermanus, and his son slain, the accumulated spoil of previous inroads, and from 1500 to 2000 head of cattle, retaken. The deceased Kaffir chief, Hermanus, had received a grant of territory on the Blinkwater from Sir Benjamin d'Urban; and, by this rebellious act, Sir Harry Smith declared the lands so granted had reverted to the crown, and he expelled at the same time the successors of Hermanus and all their rebellious people beyond the limits of the colony.

These successes—if holding the existing military strongholds against an enemy superior in numbers could be so called-were all that could be brought to balance the great fact, by this time manifest, that the Kaffirs had deliberately taken up arms to expel us from their settlements, if not from our own as well; that Umlanjeni's prophecies were dictated by Sandilla, and that even the forbearance which was at first reported as indicating the absence of determined hostility, was only part of a deep laid plan for forcing us to strike the first blow. Further, it was evident that, not content with rousing their own population, the Kaffirs had summoned every coloured tribe to take a share in the war; and that thus, not only the Kaffir police corps, instituted by Sir Henry Pottinger, 800 strong,