Another grievance was, and is, the native question. Dutch and English ideas on the subject are diametrically opposed. The emancipation of the slaves in 1835 was undoubtedly the principal cause of the Great Trek; and the vacillating way in which the Government dealt with the independent and hostile tribes on the Eastern border, also disgusted many farmers with English rule. Those living in the Eastern districts of the Colony had little or no security against the inroads of the tribes across the border. In 1835 the country between the Kei and the Keiskamma was formed into a native protectorate under the title of the Province of Queen Adelaide. A year later, the then Colonial Secretary, Lord Glenelg, listening to the representations of well-meaning but ill-advised persons, caused the province to be abandoned, and the boundary was retracted to the Fish River, thus leaving the natives once more to their own devices. Simultaneously with these events the Great Trek began.

For all checks on their liberty, the colonists had always had one remedy. The whole continent lay before them, and at the last resort they could 'trek,' span in their great oxwaggons and strike into the wilderness, and where they could or where they chose, find a new resting place, beyond the reach of any authority but their own. From the earliest times they had done this, and so seriously was it regarded by those in power, that in 1737 the Company fixed the Gamtoos River as a boundary over which any one passed at his peril. The tendency, however, could not be restrained, and in course of time it grew into a veritable passion for a wandering or a solitary life. One has only to live on the veld to understand this. The great dusky green plain stretches for miles with never a fence, seldom a house, to break it. Far in the distance the mountains rise out of the mirage to a sky unbroken by even a handsbreadth of cloud. For the greater part of the year the weather is perfect for an open-air life. Rain comes seldom, fog is unknown. No wonder that men felt the wanderdrop' in their blood, and became enamoured of the free life, where they could lead their flocks and herds whither they chose, and acknowledged no authority save what their

own right hand could enforce. To this day the north-west corner of the colony, south of the Orange River, is known as the Trek-veld. The country is too barren to admit of settlement, but the flocks are driven from place to place as the pasture is exhausted, and the farmer and his family follow in their waggons like Horace's Scythians. In the Transvaal, on the approach of winter the stock is driven down from the high to the low veld. On the dry table lands in the West of Cape Colony, sheep farms of 30,000 acres are common; and on one of them the writer has stood on a mountain, and as far as the eye could reach, seen not a house except the farm steading itself.

The trekkers of sixty years ago made their way north amid perils of the wilderness and perils of robbers and savages; and settling, some north of the Orange River, some in Natal, fancied they were safe from interference. But they were wrong. The ruler of Britain is as longhanded as Artaxerxes of old. In one way and another the British Government found cause to intervene, not in a consistent and intelligible manner, but now advancing, now withdrawing, in a way calculated to irritate rather than reassure and conciliate the somewhat cross-grained and suspicious men of the veld. At the cost of terrible suffering and bloodshed, the voor trekkers who had crossed the Drakensberg founded the republic of Natalia, only after a few years to find the British Government stepping in to avert threatened disorder in the east of the Colony, and successfully asserting its claim to Natal as British territory (1842). Halfa-dozen years later, British sovereignty was proclaimed over the country between the Orange and the Vaal rivers. The Dutch who resisted were defeated at Boomplats, and trekked once more across the Vaal. Half-a-dozen years more, and the Orange River Sovereignty was left to itself as not worth the trouble and expense it occasioned, and became the Orange Free State. In the early seventies the rush to the diamond fields began, and a dispute as to the ownership of the district was settled by Great Britain holding it and giving £90,000 as compensation for possible rights of the Free State. North of the Vaal, the same groping and uncertain policy marked the

intervention of Great Britain. When the farmers who left the Orange Sovereignty had settled beyond the Vaal, it was agreed by the Sand River Convention that they should not be interfered with by the British Government. In 1877 the desperate situation of the country moved a large portion of the inhabitants to seek British protection. The British flag was hoisted, only to be hauled down four years later in spite of the most solemn assurances, no doubt because the powers that were, were moved partly by sentimental reasons, partly because they considered the game not worth the candle.

Such in broad outline was the course of South African affairs until recent times; on the one hand the British element creeping timidly forward, or as timidly withdrawing, yet on the whole advancing in spite of weakness and mistakes; on the other hand, the Dutch element originally independent, and by the circumstances of its life becoming every generation more intractable, and less disposed to come to terms. In 1881 it seemed as if things were finally settled. The Free State had long been on excellent terms with Britain, and was more English than some parts of the Colony. Natal had been freed from the dread of the Zulus. The Transvaal had gained all it desired, and had assumed the rank of a friendly protected State. But in the 80's far-reaching movements made themselves felt. Africa was partitioned among the European powers. Year by year the British occupation of South Africa became effective, until her territory skirting the Western and Northern borders of the Free State and the Transvaal stretched from Agulhas to the Great Lakes. While to the Transvaal thus hemmed in the discovery of gold brought an overwhelming influx of outsiders.

By the conventions between the British Government and the South African Republic, it was agreed that British subjects coming into the Transvaal should have the same rights as the original inhabitants. The new-comers found that this expectation could not be realized. Obstacles were placed in their way. The franchise laws were altered in an arbitrary manner, and they found themselves bearing all the burdens and exercising none of the rights of citizens. Nor was this

all, the government of these simple and God-fearing farmers -as their admirers style them-began to develop features commonly supposed peculiar to a corrupt tyranny. The outlander population found the necessities of life and industry heavily taxed. The great bulk of the public revenue was derived from them, while a mere fraction came back in the form of expenditure. Public education for their children could only be had in Dutch, their mother-tongue being grudgingly placed on the curriculum as a foreign language. Life and property were insecure in spite of, or because of, a meddlesome and brutal police. Even the few rights allowed them could only be obtained at a price. Bribery and corruption were prevalent. Every person who has taken an interest in South African affairs knows how all the Transvaal officials from the President downwards were amenable to pecuniary influence. The writer need not recall the more notorious instances. One he will give as he had it from his informant, a gentleman who was in business not a score of miles from Johannesburg. 'Yes,' he said,' when I was there I had to do with a mine. You took documents to the Mines Office, and they put them at the bottom of a pile so high'—holding his hands some three feet apart-to wait their turn, and you would hear no more about them. But go down some morning and slip a ten pound note into an official's hand, and you got them back in no time.'

Into the attempts of the outlanders to obtain some hand in the government for which they had to pay so heavily, it is impossible to go at present. The inner history of the last ten or a dozen years has only now begun to be written. Suffice it to say, that every form of terrorism and evasion was used to defeat them, and the Transvaal kept in a state of continual unrest.

A more disquieting feature was that the ferment was felt to be only a symptom of a more serious danger which threatened not one city or territory but the whole of South Africa. It was not, perhaps, proved, but it certainly was known as surely as anything human can be, that the South African Republic was regarded by a large section of the Dutch population of

South Africa as the head and front of a movement to get rid of British domination and convert South Africa into a Dutch Federation. More recent occurrences have placed this beyond question. It is impossible in this connection to avoid referring to the Afrikander Bond, although the writer does so with the greatest diffidence. Any imputation of disloyalty to it and its members is always hotly denied. What official information with regard to it may exist is not yet known; but this much is certain that there are both English and Dutch Colonists who say plainly that they were unable to continue members of that body because of the seditious rubbish' talked at its local gatherings. Bond or no Bond, one could not live a month in South Africa without noticing that some malign influence was at work, undermining and belittling British supremacy. Straws show how the wind blows. Before the war broke out, Colonists were loudly talking of taking their guns and going to the assistance of the Transvaal. We were told that in the event of war, the British troops would have no more chance against the Boers than in 1881; and that in addition the Transvaal artillery had been declared by experts to be the finest in the world. At Burghersdorp there is a theological Seminary for candidates for the Dutch Reformed Church. Last June, the Cape Times pilloried some amusing extracts from the seminary magazine. A budding predikant had so far forgotten the gravity befitting a student of theology as to go a-gazing at the Queen's Birthday celebrations in the village, and was punished by finding that he had strayed into the enemy's camp. He confided to the pages of the magazine how he was filled with shame when the salute was fired, how his tongue clave to his palate when three cheers were called for, and how finally he fled in confusion when the band began to play God Save the Queen' and the loyalists present uncovered. It was asserted that in Paarl and Stellenbosch when the news came of the capture of a British column at Nicholson's Nek, newsboys went shouting through the streets, 'Good news to-night.' In the schools of that district it was acknowledged to the writer it was, and no doubt is, the correct thing for children of Dutch sympathies or descent to

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