South Africa - free ebook by Anthony Trollope

SOUTH AFRICA.

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CHAPTER I. THE TRANSVAAL.—NEWCASTLE TO PRETORIA.

The distance from Newcastle to Pretoria is 207 miles. About 20 miles north from Newcastle we crossed the borders of what used to be the Transvaal Republic, but which since the 12th August last,—1877,—forms a separate British Colony under the dominion of Her Majesty. The geographical configuration here is remarkable as at the point of contact between Natal and the Transvaal the boundary of the Orange Free State is not above two or three miles distant, and that of Zulu Land, which is at present bu

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CHAPTER II. THE TRANSVAAL.—ITS HISTORY.

The Transvaal as its name plainly indicates is the district lying north or beyond the Vaal river. The Orange river as it runs down to the sea from the Diamond Fields through the inhospitable and little known regions of Bushmansland and Namaqualand used to be called the Gariep and is made up of two large rivers which, above their junction, were known as the Gariep Kye and the Knu Gariep,—the tawny and the orange coloured. The former which is the larger of the two is now known as the Vaal, and the

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CHAPTER III. THE TRANSVAAL.—ANNEXATION.

I have endeavoured in the last chapter to tell very shortly the story of the South African Republic and to describe its condition at the moment when our Secretary of State at home took the unusual step of sending a British Commissioner,—not with orders to take possession of the land but with orders which have been held to justify the act when done. I doubt whether there is a precedent for so high-handed a deed in British history. It is as though the rulers of Germany were to say that in their op

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CHAPTER IV. THE TRANSVAAL.—PRETORIA.

Pretoria itself, the capital of our new country, is a little town, lying in a basin on a plateau 4,500 feet above the level of the sea,—lat. 25° 45´, S., long. 28° 49´, E. From its latitude it would be considered to be semitropical, but its altitude above the sea is so great as to make the climate temperate. In regard to heat and cold it is very peculiar,—the changes being more rapid and violent than I have experienced in any other place. I was there during the last days of September, which woul

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CHAPTER V. THE TRANSVAAL: ITS CONDITION AND PRODUCTS.

Among the products of the Transvaal gold must be reckoned first, because gold in itself is so precious and so important a commodity, that it will ever force itself into the first rank,—and because notice was first attracted to the Transvaal in Europe, or at any rate in England, by the discovery of gold in the country and by the establishment of gold fields. But I believe that the gold which has hitherto been extracted from the auriferous deposits of the country has been far from paying the expen

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CHAPTER VI. THE TRANSVAAL.—PRETORIA TO THE DIAMOND FIELDS.

On the 1st of October I and my friend started from Pretoria for the Diamond Fields, having spent a pleasant week at the capital of the Transvaal. There was, however, one regret. I had not seen Sir Theophilus Shepstone though I had been entertained at his house. He, during the time, had been absent on one of those pilgrimages which Colonial Governors make through their domains, and would be absent so long that I could not afford the time to wait his return. I should much have liked to discuss wit

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CHAPTER VII. GRIQUALAND WEST—WHY WE TOOK IT.

Griqualand West is the proper, or official, name for that part of South Africa which is generally known in England as the Diamond Fields, and which is at the period of my writing,—the latter part of 1877,—a separate Colony belonging to the British Crown, under the jurisdiction of the Governor of the Cape Colony, but in truth governed by a resident administrator. Major Lanyon is now the occupier of the Government House, and is “His Excellency of Griqualand” to all the Queen’s loyal British subjec

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CHAPTER VIII. THE STORY OF THE DIAMOND FIELDS.

The first known finding of a diamond in South Africa was as recent as 1867;—so that the entire business which has well nigh deluged the world of luxury with precious stones and has added so many difficulties to the task of British rule in South Africa is only now,—in 1877,—ten years old. Mr. Morton, an American gentleman who lectured on the subject before the American Geographical Society in the early part of 1877 tells us that “Across a mission map of this very tract printed in 1750 is written,

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CHAPTER IX. KIMBERLEY.

Having described the diamond mines in the Kimberley district I must say a word about the town of Kimberley to which the mines have given birth. The total population as given by a census taken in 1877 was 13,590, shewing the town to be the second largest in South Africa. By joining to this Du Toit’s Pan and Bultfontein which are in fact suburbs of Kimberley we get a total urban population of about 18,000. Of these nearly 10,000 are coloured, and something over 8,000 are Europeans. Among the Europ

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CHAPTER X. THE ORANGE FREE STATE.—ITS EARLY HISTORY.

The history of the origin of the Orange Free State, as a certain district of South Africa is called, is one which when really written will not I think redound to the credit of England. This I say not intending to accuse any British statesman of injustice,—much less of dishonesty. In all that has been done by the Colonial office in reference to the territory in question the attempt to do right has from first to last been only too anxious and painstaking. But as is generally the case when over anx

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CHAPTER XI. THE ORANGE FREE STATE.—PRESENT CONDITION.

Sir George Grey , who was at that time Governor of the Cape of Good Hope writing to Lord John Russell on 17th November 1855,—Lord John having then been Secretary of State for the Colonies,—expresses himself in the following glowing terms as to the region of which I am now writing. “The territory of the Orange Free State forms one of the finest pastoral countries I have ever seen. There is no district of country in Australia which I have visited which throughout so great an extent of territory af

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CHAPTER XII. BLOEMFONTEIN.

Bloemfontein , the capital of the Orange Republic, is a pleasant little town in the very centre of the country which we speak of as South Africa, about a hundred miles north of the Orange River, four hundred north of Port Elizabeth whence it draws the chief part of its supplies, and six hundred and eighty north east of Capetown. It is something above a hundred miles from Kimberley which is its nearest neighbour of any importance in point of size. It is about the same distance from Durban, the se

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CHAPTER XIII. THABA ’NCHO.

The name written above is to be pronounced Tabaancho and belongs to one of the most interesting places in South Africa. Thaba ’Ncho is a native town in which live about 6,000 persons of the Baralong tribe under a Chief of their own and in accordance with their own laws. There is nothing like this elsewhere on the continent of South Africa, or, as I believe, approaching it. Elsewhere it is not the custom of the South African Natives to live in towns. They congregate in kraals, more or less large,

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CHAPTER XIV. KRELI AND HIS KAFIRS.

At the time in which I am writing this chapter Kreli and his sons suppose themselves to be at war with the Queen of England. The Governor of the Gape Colony, who has been so far troubled in his serenity as to have felt it expedient to live away from his house for the last three or four months near to the scene of action, supposes probably that he has been called upon to put down a most unpleasant Kafir disturbance. He will hardly dignify the affair with the name of a war. When in Ireland the Fen

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CHAPTER XV. THE BASUTOS.

Of the Basutos I have said something in my attempt to tell the story of the Orange Free State; but the tribe still occupy so large a space in South Africa and has made itself so conspicuous in South African affairs as to require some further short mention for the elucidation of South African history. They are a people who have been moved, up and down, about South Africa and have thus travelled much, who have come to be located on the land they now hold partly as refugees and partly as conquerors

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CHAPTER XVI. NAMAQUALAND.

A glance at the map of South Africa will shew two regions on the Western side of the Continent to which the name of Namaqualand is given, north and south of the Orange River. The former is Great Namaqualand and cannot as yet be said to form a part of the British Empire. But as it at present belongs to nobody, and is tenanted,—as far as it is tenanted at all,—by a very sparse sprinkling of Hottentots, Bushmen, and Korannas, and as it is undoubtedly metalliferous, it is probable that it will be an

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CHAPTER XVII. CONCLUSION.

I have now finished my task and am writing my last chapter as I make my way home across the Bay of Biscay. It has been laborious enough but has been made very pleasant by the unvarying kindness of every one with whom I have come in contact. My thanks are specially due to those who have travelled with me or allowed me to travel with them. I have had the good fortune never to have been alone on the road,—and thus that which would otherwise have been inexpressibly tedious has been made pleasant. I

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SOUTH AFRICA.

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CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION.

I T was in April of last year, 1877, that I first formed a plan of paying an immediate visit to South Africa. The idea that I would one day do so had long loomed in the distance before me. Except the South African group I had seen all our great groups of Colonies,—among which in my own mind I always include the United States, for to my thinking, our Colonies are the lands in which our cousins, the descendants of our forefathers, are living and still speaking our language. I had become more or le

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CHAPTER II. EARLY DUTCH HISTORY.

Our possessions in South Africa, like many of our other Colonial territories, were taken by us from others who did the first rough work of discovering and occupying the land. As we got Canada from the French, Jamaica from the Spaniards, and Ceylon from the Dutch, so did we take the Cape of Good Hope from the latter people. In Australia and New Zealand we were the pioneers, and very hard work we found it. So also was it in Massachusetts and Virginia, which have now, happily, passed away from us.

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CHAPTER III. ENGLISH HISTORY.

I have to say that I feel almost ashamed of the headings given to these initiatory chapters of my book as I certainly am not qualified to write a history of South Africa. Nor, were I able to do so, could it be done in a few pages. And, again, it has already been done and that so recently that there is not as yet need for further work of the kind. But it is not possible to make intelligible the present condition of any land without some reference to its antecedents. And as it is my object to give

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CHAPTER IV. POPULATION AND FEDERATION.

In a former chapter I endeavoured to give a rough idea of the geographical districts into which has been divided that portion of South Africa which Europeans have as yet made their own. I will now attempt to explain how they are at present ruled and will indulge in some speculations as to their future condition. How the Cape Colony became a Colony I have already described. The Dutch came and gradually spread themselves, and then the English becoming owners of the Dutch possessions spread themsel

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CHAPTER V. CAPETOWN; THE CAPITAL.

I had always heard that the entrance into Capetown, which is the capital of the Cape Colony, was one of the most picturesque things to be seen on the face of the earth. It is a town lying close down on the seashore, within the circumference of Table Bay so that it has the advantage of an opposite shore which is always necessary to the beauty of a seashore town; and it is backed by the Table Mountain with its grand upright cliffs and the Lion with its head and rump, as a certain hill is called wh

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CHAPTER VI. THE LEGISLATURE AND EXECUTIVE.

It has come to be understood that the appropriate mode of governing a Colony is to have a King, Lords and Commons as we do at home. And if a Colony be a Colony in the fashion described by me when endeavouring to define the nature of a Colony proper, there cannot be a doubt that this is the best mode. Where Englishmen,—or white men whether they be of English or other descent,—have gone to labour and have thus raised a community in a distant land under the British flag, the old constitutional mode

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CHAPTER VII. WESTERN PROVINCE.—KNYSNA, GEORGE, AND THE CANGO CAVES.

When I had spent a few weeks in Capetown and the immediate neighbourhood I went into the Eastern Province of the Cape Colony, and thence on to Natal, the Transvaal, the Diamond Fields, and the Orange Free State Republic,—as I hope to tell my readers in this and the next volume; but as I afterwards came back to the Western Province,—of which I had as yet seen but little,—and used what remainder of time was at my command in visiting what was easiest reached, I will now go forwards so as to complet

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CHAPTER VIII. WESTERN PROVINCE, THE PAARL, CERES, AND WORCESTER.

My last little subsidiary tours in South Africa were made from Capetown to the country immediately across the Hottentot mountains after my return from Oudtshoorn and the Cango Caves. It had then become nearly midsummer and I made up my mind that it would be very hot. I prepared myself to keep watch and ward against musquitoes and comforted myself by thinking how cool it would be on my return journey, in the Bay of Biscay for instance on the first of January. I had heard, or perhaps had fancied,

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CHAPTER IX. ROBERTSON, SWELLENDAM, AND SOUTHEY’S PASS.

From Worcester we went on to a little town called Robertson, which is also the capital of an electoral division. The country here is altogether a country of mountains, varying from three to seven thousand feet high. The valleys between them are broad, so as to give ample space for agriculture,—if only agriculture can be made to pay. Having heard much of the continual plains of South Africa I had imagined that every thing beyond the hills immediately surrounding Capetown would be flat; but in lie

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CHAPTER X. PORT ELIZABETH AND GRAHAMSTOWN.

From Capetown I went on by sea to Port Elizabeth or Algoa Bay, thus travelling from the Western to the Eastern Province,—leaving the former when I had as yet seen but little of its resources because it was needful that I should make my tour through Natal and the Transvaal before the rainy season had commenced. [12] The run is one which generally occupies from thirty to forty hours, and was effected by us under the excellent auspices of Captain Travers in something but little in excess of the sho

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CHAPTER XI. BRITISH KAFRARIA.

It is not improbable that many Englishmen who have not been altogether inattentive to the course of public affairs as affecting Great Britain may be unaware that we once possessed in South Africa a separate colony called British Kafraria, with a governor of its own, and a form of government altogether distinct from that of its big brother the Cape Colony. Such however is the fact, though the territory did not, perhaps, attract much notice at the time of its annexation. Some years after the last

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CHAPTER XII. KAFIR SCHOOLS.

The question of Kafir education is perhaps the most important that has to be solved in South Africa,—and certainly it is the one as to which there exists the most violent difference of opinion among those who have lived in South Africa. A traveller in the land by associating exclusively with one set of persons would be taught to think that here was to be found a certain and quick panacea for all the ills and dangers to which the country is subjected. Here lies the way by which within an age or t

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CHAPTER XIII. CONDITION OF THE CAPE COLONY.

Later on in my journey, when I was returning to Capetown, I came back through some of the towns I have mentioned in the last chapter or two, and also through other places belonging to the Western Province. On that occasion I took my place by coach from Bloemfontein, the capital of the little Orange Free State or Republic to Port Elizabeth,—or to the railway station between Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth,—and in this way passed through the Stormberg and Catberg mountains. Any traveller visiting S

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CHAPTER XIV. NATAL.—HISTORY OF THE COLONY.

The little Colony of Natal has a special history of its own quite distinct from that of the Cape Colony which cannot be said to be its parent. In Australia, Queensland and Victoria were, in compliance with their own demands, separated from New South Wales. In South Africa the Transvaal Republic,—now again under British rule,—and the Orange Free State were sent into the world to shift for themselves by the Mother Country. In these cases there is something akin to the not unnatural severance of th

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CHAPTER XV. CONDITION OF THE COLONY.—NO. 1.

I reached Durban, the only seaport in the Colony of Natal, about the end of August,—that is, at the beginning of spring in that part of the world. It was just too warm to walk about pleasantly in the middle of the day and cool enough at night for a blanket. Durban has a reputation for heat, and I had heard so much of musquitoes on the coast that I feared them even at this time of the year. I did kill one in my bedroom at the club, but no more came to me. In winter, or at the season at which I vi

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CHAPTER XVI. CONDITION OF THE COLONY.—NO. 2.

On arriving at Pieter Maritzburg I put up for a day or two at the Royal Hotel which I found to be comfortable enough. I had been told that the Club was a good club but that it had not accommodation for sleeping. I arrived late on Saturday evening, and on the Sunday morning I went, of course, to hear Bishop Colonso preach. Whatever might be the Bishop’s doctrine, so much at any rate was due to his fame. The most innocent and the most trusting young believer in every letter of the Old Testament wo

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CHAPTER XVII. THE ZULUS.

Upon entering Natal we exchange the Kafir for the Zulu,—who conceives himself to be a very superior sort of man—not as being equal to the white man whom he reverences, but as being greatly above the other black races around him. And yet he is not a man of ancient blood, or of long established supremacy. In the early part of this century,—beyond which I take it Zulu history goeth not,—there was a certain chief of the Zulus whom we have spoken of as King Chaka. To spell the name aright there shoul

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CHAPTER XVIII. LANGALIBALELE.

The story of Langalibalele is one which I must decline to tell with any pretence of accuracy, and as to the fate of the old Zulu,—whether he has been treated wrongly or rightly I certainly am not competent to give an opinion with that decision which a printed statement should always convey. But in writing of the Colony of Natal it is impossible to pass Langalibalele without mention. It is not too much to say that the doings of Langalibalele have altered the Constitution of the Colony; and it is

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CHAPTER XIX. PIETER MARITZBURG TO NEWCASTLE.

When starting from Pieter Maritzburg to Pretoria I have to own that I was not quite at ease as to the work before me. From the moment in which I had first determined to visit the Transvaal, I had been warned as to the hard work of the task. Friends who had been there, one or two in number,—friends who had been in South Africa but not quite as far as the capital of the late Republic, perhaps half a dozen,—and friends very much more numerous who had only heard of the difficulties, combined either

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