“It’s like sending them ruffles when wanting a shirt.”
“It’s like sending them ruffles when wanting a shirt.”
It was certainly a shirt, and other of the simplest of garments, which the people of the Transvaal then wanted;—the ordinary calico shirt of taxation and the knee-breeches of security for property;—while Mr. Burgers was bestowing ruffles upon them in the shape of a national flag and a national gold coinage with his own portrait. Education is certainly one of the first wants of a people, but education will not be assisted at all by a law declaring that all schoolmasters shall have ample incomes, unless there be funds from which such incomes may be paid. What is so excellent as a good code of laws;—unless indeed it be some means of enforcing them, without which the best code in the world must be ineffective? A code of laws is to be had with comparatively little difficulty,—almost as easily as the flag. There are so many that an aspiring President need onlychoose. But that regular system of obedience to the laws which has to found itself on a well-collected Revenue, and which is the very essence of government, should come first, and in such a country as that which Mr. Burgers was called upon to govern, the establishment of this system should have been the care of the Governor before he had thought of a new code. Mr. Burgers rushed at once to the fruition of all the good things which a country can possess without stopping to see whether they were there, to be enjoyed. Such was his temperament. Nothing more plainly declares the excessive wealth of France and of England than the plenty of their gold coinage;—therefore certainly let us have some gold pieces in the Transvaal. How proud are the citizens of the United States of their Stars and Stripes! Therefore let us have a flag. How grand is the education of Prussia! Therefore let us have schools every where!
I myself think that the measure most essential for the development of the resources of the Transvaal is a railway to Delagoa Bay. I cannot therefore quarrel with Mr. Burgers for holding the same opinion. But it was characteristic of the enthusiasm of the man that he, leaving his country in uttermost confusion, should himself rush off to Europe for a loan,—characteristic of his energy that he should be able to raise, if not a large sum of money, railway plant representing a large sum—and characteristic of his imprudence that all this should have been done without any good result whatever. A railway to a country is a great luxury, the most comfortable perhaps that it can enjoy; but Mr. Burgers does not seem to have understood that a nation like a man,should be able to provide for itself the necessaries of life before it looks for luxuries.
As in this I am accusing Mr. Burgers, so also am I defending him from many of the charges which have been brought against him. His fault hitherto has been an ambition to make his country great before it had been made secure; but in what he so did there is no trace of any undue desire for personal aggrandizement. As a nation rises in the world, so will its rulers rise. That a President of a young Republic should be aware of this and feel that as honour and wealth come to his people so will they come to him, is fair enough. It is but human. I believe that Mr. Burgers thought more of his country than of himself. That he was sanguine, unsteady, and utterly deficient in patience and prudence was the fault of those who elected him rather than of himself.
All these follies, if they were follies, could have been nothing to us but for our close proximity to the borders of the Transvaal. While the gold was being coined and the flag was being stitched, there were never-ending troubles with the Natives. The question of the right to territory in a country which was inhabited by native races when it was invaded by Europeans is one so complex that nothing but superior force has as yet been able to decide it. The white races have gradually obtained possession of whatever land they have wanted because they have been the braver and the stronger people. Philanthropy must put up with the fact, and justice must reconcile herself to it as best she may. I venture to express an opinion that to the minds of all justmen, who have turned this matter in their thoughts with painful anxiety, there has come a solution,—which has by no means satisfied them, but which has been the only solution possible,—that God Almighty has intended that it should be as it is. The increasing populations of the civilized world have been compelled to find for themselves new homes; and that they should make these homes in the lands occupied by people whose power of enjoying them has been very limited, seems to have been arranged——by Destiny. That is the excuse which we make for ourselves; and if we do not find verbal authority for it in Deuteronomy as do the Boers, we think that we collect a general authority from the manifested intention of the Creator.
But in the midst of all this the attempts to deal justly with the original occupants of the soil have of late years been incessant. If we buy the land then it will be ours of right. Or if we surrender and secure to the Native as much as the Native wants, then are we not a benefactor rather than a robber? If we succour the weak against the strong then shall we not justify our position? If in fact we do them more good than harm may we not have quiet consciences? So we have dealt with them intending to be just, but our dealings have always ended in coercion, annexation, dominion and masterdom.
In these dealings who has been able to fix a price or to decide where has been the right to sell? A few cattle have been given for a large territory or even a few beads; and then it has turned out that the recipient of the cattle or beads has had no title to dispose of the land. But the purchaser ifhe be strong-handed will stick to his purchase. And then come complications as to property which no judge can unravel. Shall the law of the Native prevail or European, laws? and if the former who shall interpret it,—a Native or a European? Some years ago a Zulu king conquered a native tribe which lived on lands which are now claimed as part of the Transvaal and then sold them for a herd of cattle to the Dutch Republic. Time went by and the conquered people were still allowed to live on the land, but the Dutch still claimed it as a part of their empire. Then there arose a warrior among the tribe which had been conquered; and the number of the tribe had increased with peace; and the warrior said that he was then on his own territory and not there by sufferance. And now that he was brave and strong he declared that all the land that had once belonged to his tribe should be his. And so there came war. The warrior was Secocoeni, the son of Sequani who had been conquered by Dingaan the King of the Zulus, and the war came up in the time of Mr. Burgers and has been the cause of our annexation of the Republic. It should have been the first duty of Mr. Burgers to have settled this affair with Secocoeni. His title to the land in question was not very good, but he should have held it or yielded it. If not all he might have yielded some. Or he might have shown himself able to conquer the Native, as Dutchmen and Englishmen have done before,—and have consoled himself with such justification as that I have mentioned. But with his coins and his flags and his railway he seems to have lost that power of inducing his Dutchmen to fight which the Dutch leaders before histime have always possessed. There was fighting and the Dutch had certain native allies, who assisted them well. The use of such allies has become quite customary in South Africa. At the very moment in which I am writing we are employing the Fingos against Kreli and the Galekas in Kafraria. But Mr. Burgers with his allies could not conquer Secocoeni although he was again and again rebuked by our Secretary of State at home for the barbarity with which he carried on the war. It is thus that Lord Carnarvon wrote to our Governor at the Cape on the 25th January 1877. “I have to instruct you once more to express to him”—President Burgers,—“the deep regret and indignation with which H.M. Government view the proceedings of the armed force which is acting in the name and under the authority of the Transvaal Government, and that he is rapidly making impossible the continuance either of those sentiments of respect and confidence towards him, or of those friendly relations with him as the Chief of a neighbouring Government, which it was the earnest hope of H.M. Government to preserve.” This was a nice message for a President to receive, not when he had quelled the Natives by the “armed force which is acting in the name and under the authority of the Transvaal Government,”—and which was undoubtedly the Transvaal army fighting for the just or unjust claims of the country,—but when that armed force had run away after an ineffective effort to drive the enemy from his stronghold!
Whether Mr. Burgers ever received that message I do not know. It was not written till a day or two after the arrival of Sir Theophilus Shepstone at Pretoria,—to which place hehad then gone up as British Commissioner, and could hardly have been handed to the President much before the final overthrow of his authority. Under these circumstances we may hope that he was spared the annoyance of reading it. But other annoyances, some from the same source, must surely have been enough to crush any man, even one so sanguine as Mr. Burgers. During all the latter period of his office he was subjected to a continued hail-storm of reproaches as to slavery from British authorities and British newspapers. These reached him generally from the Cape Colony, and Mr. Burgers, who had come from the Cape, must have known his own old Colony well enough himself to have been sure that if not refuted they would certainly lead to disaster. I do not believe that Mr. Burgers had any leaning towards slavery. He was by no means a Boer among Boers, but has come rather of a younger class of men and from a newer school. But he could only exist in the Transvaal by means of the Boers, and in his existing condition could not exert himself for the fulfilment of the clause of the treaty which forbad slavery.
Then he had against him a tribe of natives whom he could not conquer, and at the same time the British Government and British feeling. And he had not a shilling in the Treasury. Nominal taxes there were;—but no one would pay them. As they were all direct taxes, it was open to the people to pay them or to decline to do so. And they declined. As no one had any confidence in anything, why should any one pay five or ten pounds to a tax gatherer who had no constable at his back to enforce payment? No onedid do so, and there was not a shilling in the Treasury. This was the condition of the South African Republic when Sir Theophilus Shepstone arrived at Pretoria on January 22nd, 1877, with six or seven other gentlemen from Natal and a guard of 25 mounted policemen.
I haveendeavoured 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 opinion the existence of a Switzerland in Europe was deleterious and dangerous, and that therefore they would abolish Switzerland as a Republic, and annex its territory. It will be said that the case would be different because Switzerland is well governed and prosperous. But the Germans in such a case would say that they thought otherwise,—which is what we say here,—and that they therefore took it. It was we who found fault with the management of that other Republic and we who have taken possession of the land. It is well that the whole truth as to the matter should be understood. If we had done this act in compliance with the expressed wish of the inhabitants generally, that would be a justification. But itcannot fairly be said that such was the case here. A nation with a popular parliament can only be held to express its opinion to another nation by the voice of its parliament;—and the Volksraad of the Transvaal was altogether opposed to the interference of Great Britain. I will touch upon this matter again presently when alluding to the words of the Commission given to the British Commissioner by the Secretary of State at home;—but I think it must be acknowledged that no other expression of opinion, unless it be a general rising of a people, can be taken as national. In nine cases out of ten petitions ought to be held to mean nothing. They cannot be verified. They show the energy of the instigators of the petition and not of the petitioners. They can be signed by those who have and by those who have not an interest in the matter. The signatures to them can be readily forged. At home in England the right of petitioning is so dear to us from tradition that we still cling to it as one of the bulwarks of our freedom; but there cannot be a statesman, hardly a Member of Parliament among us, who does not feel that pen and ink and agitating management have become so common that petitions are seldom now entitled to much respect.
It may perhaps be said that we have repeatedly done the same thing in India. But a little thinking will show that our Indian annexations have been quite of a different nature. There we have gone on annexing in opposition to the barbarism and weakness of native rule against which our presence in India has, from the first, been a protest. Each annexation has been the result of previous conquest and hasbeen caused by non-compliance with the demands of the conquerors. In the Transvaal we have annexed a dominion which was established by ourselves in express obedience to our own requisitions, which was in the possession of European rulers, which was altogether independent, and as to the expediency of annexing which we have had nothing to guide us but our own judgment and our own will. It is as though a strong boy should say to a weak one, “It is better that I should have that cricket bat than you,” and should therefore take it.
The case will seem to be still stronger if it shall appear, as I think it will, that Sir Theophilus Shepstone, the Commissioner appointed to this work, did what he did do without complete authority. It is evident that there was doubt in the Colonial Office at home. The condition of the Transvaal was very bad. Slavery was rampant. The Natives were being encouraged to rebellion. The President was impotent. The Volksraad was stiff-necked and ignorant. There was no revenue, no order, no obedience. The Dutch seemed to have forgotten even the way to fight. What were we to do with such neighbours,—for whose inefficiency we were in a measure responsible, having ourselves established the Republic? That we must interfere for our own protection in regard to the Natives seemed to be necessary. As has been said so often, there was a house on fire next door to us, in the flames of which we might ourselves be enveloped. Remonstrances had been frequent and had been altogether ineffectual. The Republic was drifting,—nay, had drifted into Chaos. If any other people could have assisted us in putting out thefire, French, Germans, or Italians,—so that we might not seem to tyrannise,—it would have been so comfortable! But in South Africa we had none to help us. And then though this Republic was more than half Dutch it was also only less than half English.
Something must be done; and therefore an order was sent out directing Sir Theophilus Shepstone to go to Pretoria and see what he could do. Sir Theophilus was and for many years had been Minister for Native Affairs in the Colony of Natal, and was credited,—no doubt correctly,—with knowing more about the Natives than any other European in South Africa. He was a man held in special respect by the King of the Zulus, and the King of the Zulus was in truth the great power whom both Dutch and English would dread should the natives be encouraged to rebel. When men have talked of our South African house being in danger of fire, Cetywayo the King of the Zulus has been the fire to whom they have alluded. So Sir Theophilus started on his journey taking his Commission in his pocket. He took a small body of policemen with him as an escort, but advisedly not a body that might seem by its number to intimidate even so weak a Government as that of the South African Republic.
The writing of the Commission must have been a work of labour, requiring much thought, and a great weighing of words. It had to be imperative and yet hemmed in by all precautions; giving clear instruction, and yet leaving very much to the Commissioner on the spot who would have his work to do in a distant country not connected with the world by telegraph wires. The Commission is long and I will notquote it all; but it goes on to say that “if the emergency should seem to you to be such as to render it necessary, in order to secure the peace and safety of Our said Colonies and of Our subjects elsewhere that the said territories, or any portion or portions of the same, shouldprovisionally and pending the announcement of Our pleasure,[4]be administered in Our name and on Our behalf, thenand in such case only[4]We—” authorize you to annex so much of any such territories as aforesaid.
But the caution against such annexing was continued much further. “Provided first—that”—no such annexation shall be made—“unless you shall be satisfied that the inhabitants thereof,or a sufficient number of them, or the Legislature thereof[4]desire to become Our subjects, nor if any conditions unduly limiting Our power and authority are sought to be imposed. And secondly, that, unless the circumstances are such as in your opinion to make it necessary to issue a Proclamation forthwith, no such Proclamation shall be issued by you until the same has been submitted to and approved by——” the Governor of the Cape Colony, all whose titles are given at great length.
Could anything be more guarded, or less likely one would say on the mere perusal of the document, to lead to an immediate and permanent annexation of the whole country. The annexation if made at all was to be provisional only and pending the Queen’s pleasure, and then it was only to be made if the inhabitants, or a sufficient number of them, or the Legislature should wish it. What the sufficient numbermight be was left to the discretion of the Commissioner. But he was only to do this in compliance with the wishes of the people themselves. He was to take temporary possession,—only temporary possession,—of a part of the Transvaal should the people desire it, and in the event of such a measure being approved by a distant Governor,—unless the circumstances were such as to make him think it expedient to do it without such approval. Such was the nature of the Order, and I think that any one reading it before the event would have said that it was not intended to convey an authority for the immediate and permanent annexation of the whole country.
But Sir Theophilus, after a sojourn of ten weeks at Pretoria, in which the question of the annexation was submitted to the Volksraad and in which petitions and counter-petitions were signed, did annex the whole country permanently, without any question of provisional occupation, and without, as far as I have been able to learn, any sanction from the Governor of the Cape Colony. As to conditions limiting Her Majesty’s power, the mere allusion to such a condition of things seems to be absurd now that we know what has been done. “Now therefore I do ... proclaim and make known that from and after the publication hereof the territory heretofore known as the South African Republic ... shall be, and shall be taken to be, British territory.” These are the words which contain the real purport of the Proclamation issued by Sir Theophilus Shepstone at Pretoria on 12th April, 1877. Was ever anything so decided, so audacious, and apparently so opposed to the spiritof the instructions which the Commissioner had received? When the Secretary of State received a telegram from Madeira, the nearest telegraph station, saying that the Transvaal had been annexed, which he did in the following May, he surely must have been more surprised than any other man in England at what had been done.
Was the deed justifiable? Has it been justified by what has occurred since? And if so how had come about a state of things which had made necessary a proceeding apparently so outrageous? The only man I have met in all South Africa who has questioned the propriety of what has been done is Mr. Burgers, the ousted President. Though I have discussed the matter wherever I have been, taking generally something of a slant against Sir Theophilus,—as I must seem to have done in the remarks I have just made, and to which I always felt myself prompted by the high-handedness of the proceeding,—I have never encountered even a doubtful word on the subject, except in what Mr. Burgers said to me. And Mr. Burgers acknowledged to me, not once or twice only, that the step which had been taken was manifestly beneficial, to the Natives, to the English,—and to the Dutch. He thought that Sir Theophilus had done a great wrong,—but that the wrong done would be of great advantage to every one concerned. He made various complaints;—that the Natives around him had been encouraged to rebel in order that an assumed difficulty might be pleaded;—that no national petition, and indeed no trustworthy petition, had been sent forward praying for annexation;—that the deed was uncalled for and tyrannical;—and that the whole proceeding was one in which the courtesy due to a weaker nation was neglected and omitted. He then asserted that fresh emigrants would not flock into a land governed under a European crown as they would have done into a Republic. But he repeated his admission that for Dutchmen, Englishmen, and Natives as at present settled in the country, the British rule would be the best.
He alleged as to himself that when Sir Theophilus stated to him his intentions, three courses appeared to be open to him. He might use his influence and his words in assisting the transference of the country to the British. This as President of the Republic he could not do;—and the less so as he did not think that it should be done. Or he might cause Sir Theophilus and his twenty-five policemen to be marched back over the border, treating them on their way as unauthorized intruders. This he would not do, he said, because he knew it to be useless to wage war with Great Britain. Or he might yield and remonstrate;—yield to power while he remonstrated against injustice. This, he said, that he did do. The words and personal bearing of the man recommended themselves to me much. Whether he is to be regarded as a banished patriot or a willing placeman must depend on a delicate question which has not as far as I know yet been answered, though it has been broached,—to which, delicate as it is, I will refer again before I have ended my story.
I had not the pleasure of meeting Sir Theophilus and have the less repugnance therefore to surmise the condition of his mind when he received the order to go to Pretoria. Hadhe told me his mind I might have been unable to publish my own surmises. He knew that the native races of the Transvaal unless convinced of the superiority of their white neighbours would ever struggle to prove them inferior,—and that such inferiority if proved would at once be their death-warrant. The Natives had long learned to respect the English and to hate the Dutch;—but even that respect would not restrain them if once they had asserted their masterhood to a white race. And now this state of things was at hand. He was aware that though English troops could be supplied to maintain English authority, English troops would not be lent to fight the battles of the Dutch. There might, nay there probably would be, a native triumph just across our borders which he as a minister in Natal could not interfere to quell,—but which, when a rumour of it should spread among the Zulus on our border, might induce 300,000 coloured subjects to think that they could free themselves by a blow from 20,000 white masters. And he knew the condition which I have attempted to explain,—that these Dutch people in the Transvaal would not pay a stiver of tax, that there was in fact no government, that the gaols were unlocked in order that prisoners might find elsewhere the bread which their gaolers could not get for them, that the posts could not be continued because the Contractors were not paid, that no one would part with a coin which he possessed, that property was unsaleable, that industry was unprofitable, that life was insecure, that Chaos was come upon the land. I do not suppose that Sir Theophilus doubted much when he read the Commission which hadbeen sent to him, or that he thought very much of all the safeguards and provisions. He probably felt, as did everybody else, that the South African Republic had from the first been a failure,—almost a farce,—and that the sooner so expensive a failure could be brought to an end, the better. If indeed the Volksraad would have voted their own extermination that would have been very well; but he could hardly have expected it. As for petitions, and the wish of a “sufficient number” of the inhabitants,—I should imagine that he must have been a little indifferent to that. His mind probably was made up,—with a resolve to give the Volksraad what time might be needed for their deliberations. They did not deliberate,—only deliberated whether they would deliberate or not, and then declined even to deliberate. Whereupon Sir Theophilus said that then and from thenceforth the Transvaal should be British property. So he put up the Queen’s flag;—and the Transvaal is and probably will remain British property.
I have to acknowledge, with all my sympathies strongly opposed to what I call high-handed political operations, that I think Sir Theophilus was justified. A case of such a kind must in truth be governed by its own merits, and cannot be subjected to a fixed rule. To have annexed only a part of the Transvaal would have been not only useless, but absurd. Not only would the part which we had spared have been hostile to us, but the Dutch within our assumed borders would have envied the independence we had left to others. We shall have trouble enough now in settling our boundaries with the Natives. We should then have had the worsetrouble of settling them with the Dutch. To have waited for authority from the Governor of the Cape Colony would have shown a weakness in his own authority which might have been fatal to Sir Theophilus as he was then placed. No other Governor could know the condition of the matter as well as he did. To get the authority needed he must have wasted six weeks during which it would have been known to every member of the Volksraad that he was waiting. To carry him through it was needed that the Boers should understand that when he said that the land should be annexed, Great Britain was saying so. They did so believe. The President so believed. And therefore the surrender was made without a struggle.
So much for Sir Theophilus and his instructions. In the larger matter which regards Great Britain and her character, we have to enquire whether this arbitrary act has been justified by what has occurred since. In discussing this there are at least four parties concerned, if not more. Mr. Burgers spoke of three, and in South Africa it is natural that reference should be made to those three only. As regards the Natives there can be no question. No friend of theirs can wish it to be otherwise unless they have a friend so foolish as to desire for them an independence which can be obtained only by the extermination or banishment of the European races. That the Natives generally respect the English and do not respect the Dutch is certain. This had come to such a pitch in the Transvaal that it had produced war,—and that war if continued would have meant the destruction of the tribe which was waging it.Permanent success against white men is impossible for Natives in South Africa. Every war between a tribe and its white neighbours ends in the destruction of the tribe as an independent people. And here, if Secocoeni had been successful against the Dutch,—if the English could have allowed themselves to sit by and see the house all in flames,—Cetywayo, the King of the Zulus, would at once have been at war with Secocoeni. As far as the Natives were concerned, it would indeed have been to “let slip the dogs of war.” It has been one of our great objects in dealing with the Natives,—perhaps that in accomplishing which we should be most proud of what we have done,—to save the tribes from being hounded on to war among themselves by their Chiefs. The Dutch rule in the Transvaal was an incentive to war which was already operating. The house was on fire and could only have been put out by us.
As to the good done to the English of the Transvaal it is hardly necessary that any arguments should be used. We had abandoned the country to Dutch rule in 1852, and it was natural that the Dutch should consider only themselves—and the Natives. After what we had done we clearly had no right to take back the Transvaal by force in order that we might protect the interests of Englishmen who were living there. But it is matter of additional satisfaction that we have been enabled to re-establish a basis of trade in the country;—for the trade of the country has been in the hands of English, Germans, or newly arrived Hollanders, and not in those of the Boers to whom the country was given up. I do not remember to have found a shop oreven an hotel all through the Transvaal in the hands of a Dutch Boer.
But the man who has cause to rejoice the most,—and who as far as I could learn is wide awake to the fact,—is the Boer himself. He is an owner of land,—and on the first of January 1877 his land was hardly worth having. Now he can sell it, and such sales are already being made. He was all astray even as to what duty required of him. Ought he to pay his taxes when no one around him was paying? Of what use would be his little contribution? Therefore he did not pay. And yet he had sense enough to know that when there are no taxes, then there can be no government. Now he will pay his taxes. Ought he to have fought, when those wretched Natives, in their audacity, were trying to recover the land which he had taken from them? Of what use could fighting have been when he had no recognised leader,—when the next Boer to him was not fighting? Now he knows that he will have a leader. Why cultivate his land, or more of it than would feed himself? Why shear his sheep if he could not sell his wool? Now there are markets for him. It was to this condition of not paying, not fighting, and not working that he was coming when British annexation was suggested to him. He could not himself ask to be expatriated; but it may well be understood that he should thoroughly appreciate the advantage to himself of a measure for which as a Dutchman he could not ask. What was wanted was money and the credit which money gives. England had money and the Boer knew well enough that English money could procure for him that which a nationalflag, and a gold coinage, and a code of laws, and a promised railway could not achieve. It was almost cruel to ask him to consent to annexation, but it would have been more cruel not to annex him.
But the condition of the fourth party is to be considered. That fourth party is the annexing country. It may be very well for the Natives and for the Dutch, and for the English in the Transvaal, but how will it suit the English at home? It became immediately necessary for us to send a large military force up to the Transvaal, or to its neighbourhood. Something above two regiments have I believe been employed on the service, and money has been demanded from Parliament for the purpose of paying for them. Up to this time England has had to pay about £125,000 for the sake of procuring that security of which I have spoken. Why should she pay this for the Boers,—or even for the English who have settled themselves among the Boers? And then the sum I have named will be but a small part of what we must pay. Hitherto no violent objection has been made at home to the annexation. In Parliament it has been almost as well received by the Opposition as by the Government. No one has said a word against Lord Carnarvon; and hardly a word has been said against Sir Theophilus. But how will it be when other and larger sums are asked for the maintenance of the Transvaal? Surely some one will then arise and say that such payments are altogether antagonistic to our colonial policy,—by which our Colonies, as they are required to give nothing to us, are also required to support themselves.
The answer to this I think must be that we have been compelled thus to deviate from our practice and to put our hands deeply into our pockets by our folly in a former generation. It is because we came to a wrong judgment of our position in 1852,—when we first called upon the Dutch Boers to rule themselves,—that we are now, twenty-five years afterwards, called upon to pay for the mistake that has since occurred. We then endeavoured to limit our responsibility, saying to ourselves that there was a line in South Africa which we would not pass. We had already declined to say the same thing as to Natal and we ought to have seen and acknowledged that doctrine of the house on fire as clearly then as we do now. The Dutch who trekked across the Vaal were our subjects as much as though they were English. Their troubles must ultimately have become our troubles,—whereas their success, had they been successful, might have been as troublesome to us as their troubles. We repudiated two territories, and originated two Republics. The first has come back upon our hands and we must pay the bill. That is the Transvaal. The other, which can pay its own bill, will not come back to us even though we should want it. That is the Orange Free State. I have now answered the three questions. I think the annexation was justifiable. I think that it has been justified by the circumstances that have followed it. And I have given what in my opinion has been the cause for so disagreeable a necessity.
There is one other matter to be mentioned,—that delicate matter to which I have alluded. A report has been spreadall through South Africa that the late President of the South African Republic is to be gratified by a pension of £750 per annum out of the revenues of Great Britain. I trust for every one’s sake that that report may not be true. The late President was the chief officer of his country when the annexation was made, and I cannot think that it would be compatible with his honour to receive a pension from the Government of the country which has annihilated the Republic over which he had been called on to preside. When he says that he yielded and remonstrated he takes a highly honourable position and one which cannot be tarnished by any incapability for ruling which he may have shown. But were he to live after that as a pensioner on English bounty,—the bounty of the country which had annihilated his own,—then I think that he had better at least live far away from the Transvaal, and from the hearing of the sound of a Dutchman’s voice.
And why should we pay such a pension? Is it necessary that we should silence Mr. Burgers? Have we done him an injustice that we should pay him a compensation for the loss of his office? It is said that we pay dethroned Indian Princes. But we take the revenues of dethroned Indian Princes,—revenues which have become their own by hereditary descent. Mr. Burgers had a month or two more of his Presidency to enjoy, with but little chance of re-election to an office the stipend of which could not have been paid for want of means. But this argument ought not to be required. An expensive and disagreeable duty was forced upon us by a country which could not rule itself, andcertainly we should not convict ourselves of an injustice by giving a pension to the man whose incompetence imposed upon us the task. I trust that the rumour though very general has been untrue.
Pretoriaitself, 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 would answer to the last days of March on our side of the equator. The mornings were very fine, but somewhat chilly,—not so as to make a fire desirable but just to give a little sting to the water. The noon-day was hot,—not too hot for exercise; but the heat seemed to increase towards the afternoon, the level rays of the sun being almost oppressive. Then suddenly there would come an air so cold that the stranger who had not expected the change and who was wearing perhaps his lightest clothes would find that he wanted a great coat and a warm cravat round his neck. It was not till I was about to leave the place that I became alive to its peculiarities. I caught a cold every evening in consequence of my ignorance, becoming quite hoarse and thinking of hot water externally and internally as I went to bed;—but in the morning I was always quite well again. I was assured, however, that the climate of Pretoria was one which required great care from its inhabitants. It is subject to very violent storms, and deaths from lightning are not uncommon. The hailstorms, when they come, are very violent, the stones being so large as not unfrequently to batter the cattle to death. I was glad to find that they were unfrequent, and that my good fortune saved me from experiencing their effects. “What does a man do if he be out in the veld?” I asked when I heard these frightful stories. “Put his saddle over his head,” was the answer, showing much as to the custom of a people who seldom walk to any distance always having horses at command. “But if he have not a saddle?” “Ah, then indeed, he would be badly off.” My informants, for I was told of the hailstorms and the necessary saddles more than once, seemed to think that in such a dilemma there would be no hope for a man who, without a saddle, might chance to be beyond the reach of a roof. I could not, however, learn that people were often killed. I therefore accepted the Pretorian hailstones with a grain of salt.
The first President of the Colony was named Pretorius and hence the name of the town, which became the capital in the time of his son who was the second President. The old man was one of the pioneer farmers who first entered in upon the country under circumstances already described, and the family now is very numerous in the Transvaal, occupying many farms. Potchefstroom,—a hundred miles to the south-west of Pretoria,—was the first capital and is still the bigger town; but President Pretorius the second thought it well to move the seat of Government more to the centre of the large district which the Republic was then claiming, and called the little city Pretoria, after the name of his father.
I am quite unable to say what is the population of the capital, as those of whom I inquired could only guess at it from their own point of view. I should think it might amount to two thousand exclusive of the military. At the time I was there it was of a very shifting nature, and will be so for; some months. It has lately become the seat of a British Government, and people have flocked into it knowing that money will be flying about. Money has flown about very readily, and there are hands of course to receive it. Six hundred British soldiers are stationed there under tents, and soldiers, though their pay is low, are great consumers. A single British soldier will consume as much purchased provender as a whole Boer family. But as people are going in, so are they going out. The place therefore in its present condition is like a caravansary rather than an established town. All menial services are done by a Kafir population,—not permanently resident Kafirs who can be counted, but by a migratory imported set who are caught and used as each master or mistress of a family may find it possible to catch and use them. “They always go when you have taught them anything,” one poor lady said to me. Another assured me that two months of continuous service was considered a great comfort. And yet they have their domestic jealousies. I dined at a house at which one of our British soldiers waitedat table, an officer who dined there having kindly brought the much-needed assistance with him. The dinner was cooked by a Kafir who, as the lady of the house told me, was very angry because the soldier was allowed to interfere with the gala arrangements of the day. He did not see why he should not be allowed to show himself among the company after having undergone the heat of the fray. These Kafirs at Pretoria, and through all those parts of the Transvaal which I visited, are an imported population,—the Dutch having made the land too hot to hold them as residents. The Dutch hated them, and they certainly have learned to hate the Dutch in return. Now they will come and settle themselves in Pretoria for a short time and be good-humoured and occasionally serviceable. But till they settle themselves there permanently it is impossible to count them as a resident population.
Down many of the streets of the town,—down all of them that are on the slope of the descent,—little rivulets flow, adding much to the fertility of the gardens and to the feeling of salubrity. Nothing seems to add so much to the prettiness and comfort of a town as open running water, though I doubt whether it be in truth the most healthy mode of providing for man the first necessary of life. Let a traveller, however, live for a few days but a quarter of a mile from his water supply and he will learn what is the comfort of a rivulet just at his door-step. Men who have roughed it in the wilderness, as many of our Colonists have had to do before they have settled themselves into townships, have learned this lesson so perfectly that they are inclined, perhaps, to be too fond of a deluge. For purposes of gardening in such a place as Pretoria there can be no doubt about the water. The town gardens are large, fertile, and productive, whereas nothing would grow without irrigation.
The streets are broad and well laid out, with a fine square in the centre, and the one fact that they have no houses in them is the only strong argument against them. To those who know the first struggling efforts of a colonial town,—who are familiar with the appearance of a spot on which men have decided to begin a city but have not as yet progressed far, the place with all its attributes and drawbacks will be manifest enough. To those who have never seen a city thus struggling into birth it is difficult to make it intelligible. The old faults of old towns have been well understood and thoroughly avoided. The old town began with a simple cluster of houses in close contiguity, because no more than that was wanted. As the traffic of the day was small, no provision was made for broad spaces. If a man could pass a man, or a horse a horse,—or at most a cart a cart,—no more was needed. Of sanitary laws nothing was known. Air and water were taken for granted. Then as people added themselves to people, as the grocer came to supply the earlier tanner, the butcher the grocer, the merchant tailor his three forerunners, and as a schoolmaster added himself to them to teach their children, house was adjoined to house and lane to lane, till a town built, itself after its own devise, and such a London and such a Paris grew into existence as we who are old have lived to see pulled down within the period of our own lives. There was no foresight and a great lack of economy in this old way of city building.
But now the founder has all these examples before his eyes, and is grandly courageous in his determination to avoid the evils of which he has heard and perhaps seen so much. Of course he is sanguine. A founder of cities is necessarily a sanguine man, or he would not find himself employed on such a work. He pegs out his streets and his squares bravely, being stopped by no consideration as to the value of land. He clings to parallelograms as being simple, and in a day or two has his chief thoroughfare a mile long, his cross streets all numbered and named, his pleasant airy squares, each with a peg at each corner, out in the wilderness. Here shall be his Belgravia for the grandees, and this his Cheapside and his Lombard Street for the merchants and bankers. We can understand how pleasant may be the occupation and how pile upon pile would rise before the eyes of the projector, how spires and minarets would ascend, how fountains would play in the open places, and pleasant trees would lend their shade to the broad sunny ways.
Then comes the real commencement with some little hovel at the corner of two as yet invisible streets. Other hovels arise always at a distance from each other and the town begins to be a town. Sometimes there will be success, but much more often a failure. Very many failures I have seen, in which all the efforts of the sanguine founder have not produced more than an Inn, a church, half a dozen stores; and twice as many drinking booths. And yet there have been the broad streets,—and the squares if one would take the trouble to make enquiry. Pretoria has not been a failure.Among recent attempts of the kind Pretoria is now likely to be a distinguished success. An English Governor is to live there, and there will be English troops;—I fear, for many years. Balls will be given at Pretoria. Judges will hold their courts there, and a Bishop will live in a Pretorian Bishopstowe. But the Pretoria of to-day has its unknown squares, and its broad ill defined streets about which houses straggle in an apparently formless way, none of which have as yet achieved the honours of a second storey. The brooks flow pleasantly, but sometimes demand an inconvenient amount of jumping. The streets lie in holes, in which when it rains the mud is very deep. In all such towns as these mud assumes the force of a fifth element, and becomes so much a matter of course that it is as necessary to be muddy, as it is to be smoke-begrimed in London. In London there is soap and water, and in Pretoria there are, perhaps, clothes-brushes; but a man to be clean either in one place or the other must always be using his soap or his clothes-brush. There are many gardens in Pretoria,—for much of the vacant spaces is so occupied. The time will come in which the gardens will give place to buildings, but in the mean time they are green and pleasant-looking. Perhaps the most peculiar feature of the place is the roses. There are everywhere hedges of roses, hedges which are all roses,—not wild roses but our roses of the garden though generally less sweet to the smell. And with the roses, there are everywhere weeping willows, mourning gracefully over the hitherto unaccomplished aspirations of the country. This tree, which I believe to have been imported from St. Helena, has become common to thetowns and homesteads of the Transvaal. To the eye that is strange to them the roses and weeping willows are very pretty; but, as with everything else in the world, their very profusion and commonness detracts from their value. The people of Pretoria think no more of their roses, than do those of Bermuda of their oleanders.
In such towns the smallness of the houses is not the characteristic which chiefly produces the air of meanness which certainly strikes the visitor, nor is it their distance from each other, nor their poverty; but a certain flavour of untidiness which is common to all new towns and which is, I fear, unavoidable. Brandy bottles and sardine boxes meet the eye everywhere. Tins in which pickled good things have been conveyed accumulate themselves at the corners. The straw receptacles in which wine is nowadays conveyed meet the eye constantly, as do paper shirt-collars, rags, old boots, and fragments of wooden cases. There are no dust holes and no scavengers, and all the unseemly relics of a hungry and thirsty race of pioneers are left open to inspection.
And yet in spite of the mud, in spite of the brandy bottles, in spite of the ubiquitous rags Pretoria is both picturesque and promising. The efforts are being made in the right direction, and the cottages which look lowly enough from without have an air of comfort within. I was taken by a gentleman to call on his wife,—an officer of our army who is interested in the gold fields of the Transvaal,—and I found that they had managed to gather round them within a very small space all the comforts of civilized life. There was nofront door and no hall; but I never entered a room in which I felt myself more inclined to “rest and be thankful.” I made various calls, and always with similar results. I found internal prettinesses, with roses and weeping willows outside which reconciled me to sardine boxes, paper collars, and straw liquor-guards.
In the middle of Pretoria is a square, round which are congregated the public offices, the banks, hotels, and some of the chief stores, or shops of the place, and in which are depastured the horses of such travellers as choose to use the grass for the purpose. Ours, I hope, were duly fed within their stables; but I used to see them wandering about, trying to pick a bit of grass in the main square. And here stands the Dutch Reformed Church,—in the centre,—a large building, and as ugly as any building could possibly be made. Its clergyman, quite a young man, called upon me while I was in Pretoria, and told me that his congregation was spread over an area forty miles round. The people of the town are regular attendants; for the Dutchman is almost always a religious father of a family, thinking much of all such services as were reverenced by his fathers before him. But the real congregation consists of the people from the country who flock into the Nichtmaal, or Lord’s Supper, once in three months, who encamp or live in their waggons in the square round the Church, who take the occasion to make their town purchases and to perform their religious services at the same time. The number attending is much too large to enter the church at once, so that on the appointed Sunday one service succeeds another. The sacrament is given, andsermons are preached, and friends meet each other, amid the throng of the waggons. The clergyman pressed me to stay and see it;—but at this time my heart had begun to turn homewards very strongly. I had come out to see Pretoria, and, having seen it, was intent upon seeing London once again.
There are various other churches,—all of them small edifices,—in the place, among which there is a place of worship for the Church of England. And there is a resident English clergyman, a University man, who if he live long enough and continue to exercise his functions at Pretoria will probably become the “clergyman of the place.” For such is the nature of Englishmen. Now that the Transvaal is an English Colony there can be no doubt but that the English clergyman will become the “clergyman of the place.”
I would fain give as far as it may be possible an idea to any intending emigrant of what may be the cost of living in Pretoria. Houses are very dear,—if hired; cheap enough if bought. When I was there in September, 1877, the annexation being then four months old, a decent cottage might be bought for seven or eight hundred pounds, for which a rental of seven or eight pounds a month would be demanded. A good four-roomed house with kitchen &c. might be built, land included, for a thousand pounds, the rent demanded for which would be from £150 to £175 a year. Meat was about 6d. a pound, beef being cheaper and I think better than mutton. Butter, quite uneatable, was 2s. a pound. Eggs a shilling a dozen. Fowls 1s. 6d. each. Turkeys, very good, 7s. 6d. to 9s. 6d. each. Coals 10s. a half hundredweight,—and woodfor fuel about £2 for a load of two and a half tons. These prices for fuel would add considerably to the cost of living were it not that fires are rarely necessary except for the purpose of cooking. Bread is quoted at 1s. a loaf of two pounds, but was I think cheaper when I was there. Potatoes were very dear indeed, the price depending altogether on the period of the year and on the season. I doubt whether other vegetables were to be bought in the market, unless it might be pumpkins. Potatoes and green vegetables the inhabitant of Pretoria should grow for himself. And he should be prepared to live without butter. Why the butter of South Africa should be almost always uneatable, culminating into an acme of filth at Pretoria, I cannot say;—but such was my experience. After all men and women can live without butter if other things be in plenty.
Then comes that difficult question of domestic service. All that the inhabitant of Pretoria will get in this respect will cost him very much less than in Europe, very much less indeed than in England, infinitely less than in London. With us at home the cost of domestic service has become out of proportion to our expenditure in other respects, partly because it has become to be thought derogatory to do anything for ourselves, and partly because our servants have been taught by their masters and mistresses to live in idle luxury. Probably no man earning his bread eats so much meat in proportion to the work he does as the ordinary London footman. This is an evil to those who live in London from which the inhabitant of Pretoria will find himself free. He will get a “boy” or perhaps two boys about the house,—never a girl let the mistress ofthe family coming out to the Transvaal remember,—to whom he will pay perhaps 10s. a month and whom he will feed upon mealies. The “boy’s” wages and diet will cost perhaps £12 per annum. But indeed they will not cost him so much, for the “boy” will go away, and he will not be able to get another just when he wants one. These boys he will find to be useful, good humoured, and trustworthy,—if only he could keep them. They will nurse his baby, cook his dinner, look after his house, make his bed, and dig his garden. That is they will half do all these things,—with the exception of nursing the baby, whom the Kafir is never known to neglect or injure. The baby perhaps may serve to keep him a whole twelvemonth, for he is very fond of a white baby. The wife of the British gentleman who thus settles himself at Pretoria will, at first, be struck with horror at the appearance of the Kafir, who will probably wear an old soldier’s jacket with a ragged shirt under it and no other article of clothing; and she will not at first suffer the Savage to touch her darling. But she will soon become reconciled to her inmate and the darling will take as naturally to the Kafir man as though he were some tendered, best instructed old English nurse out of a thoroughly well-to-do British family. And very soon she will only regret the reckless departure of the jet black dependant who had struck her at first with unmingled disgust.
Gradually I suppose these people will learn to cling to their work with some better constancy. I, as a stranger, was tempted to say that better diet, better usage, and better wages would allure them. But I was assured that I waswrong in this, and that any attempts in that direction only spoilt “the Native.” No doubt if you teach a Native to understand that he is indispensable to your comfort you raise his own estimation of himself, and may do so in such a manner as to make him absurdly fastidious. He is still irrational, still a Savage. He has to be brought by degrees to bend his neck to the yoke of labour and to learn that continued wages are desirable. That the thing will be done by degrees I do not at all doubt, and do not think that there is just cause of dissatisfaction at the rate of the present progress. The new comer to Pretoria to whom I am addressing myself will doubtless do something towards perfecting the work. In the meantime his domestic servants will cost him very much less than they have done in England.
A man with a wife and family and £500 a year would I think live with more comfort, certainly with more plenty in Pretoria, than in England. The inhabitants of Pretoria will demur to this, for it is a matter of pride to the denizens of every place to think that the necessaries of life are dearer there than elsewhere. But the cheapness of a place is not to be reckoned only by what people pay for the articles they use. The ways of the country, the requirements which fashion makes, the pitch to which the grandeur of Mrs. Smith has aroused the ambition of Mrs. Jones, the propensities of a community to broadcloth or to fustian,—these are the causes of expensive or of economical living. A gentleman in Pretoria may invite his friends to dinner with no greater establishment than a Kafir boy to cook the dinner and another to hand the plates, whereas he does not dare todo so in London without paying 10s. for the assistance of the greengrocer.
As, however, men with £500 a year will not emigrate in great numbers to Pretoria it would be more important to say how the labouring man might live in the Transvaal. With him his condition of life does not depend so much on what he will have to pay for what he consumes as on the wages which he may receive. I found that an artizan can generally earn from 10s. to 12s. a day at almost any trade,—if the work of the special trade be required. But I am far from saying that amidst so small a community all artizans would find an opening. At the present moment bricklayers and carpenters are in demand at Pretoria,—and can live in great plenty on their wages.
As to workmen, who are not artizans but agricultural labourers, I hardly think that there is any opening for them in the Transvaal. Though the farmers all complain that they cannot plough their lands because there is no labour, yet they will not pay for work. And though the Kafir is lazy and indifferent, yet he does work sufficiently to prevent the white man from working. As I have said before the white men will not work along with the Kafir at the same labour. If there be but a couple of black men with him he presumes that it is his business to superintend and not to work. This is so completely the case in the Transvaal that it is impossible to name any rate of wages as applicable to white rural labour. Sons work for their fathers or brothers may work together;—but wages are not paid. The Dutchman has a great dislike to paying wages.
The capital of the Transvaal is all alive with soldiers. There are 600 redcoats there, besides artillery, engineers and staff. These men live under canvas at present, and are therefore very visible. Barracks however are being built, with officers’ quarters and all the appurtenances of a regular military station. It was odd enough to me to see a world of British tents in the middle of a region hazily spoken of at home six months ago as the South African Republic; but how much stranger must it be to the Dutch Boers who certainly anticipated no such advent. I had the honour of being invited to dine at the mess, and found myself as well entertained as though I had been at Aldershott. When I was sitting with the officers in their uniform around me it seemed as though a little block of England had been cut out and transported to the centre of South Africa.
It may be as well to say a few words here as elsewhere as to the state of education in our new Colony. The law on this matter as it stood under the Republic is the law still. Now, as I write, it is hardly more than six months since the annexation and there has not been time for changes. On no subject was the late President with his Cabinet more alive to the necessity of care and energy, on no subject were there more precise enactments, and on no subject were the legislative enactments more pretentious and inefficacious. There are three classes of schools,—the High Schools, the District Schools, and the Ward Schools, the whole being under the inspection of a Superintendent General of Education. The curriculum at the High Schools is very high indeed,including Dutch, English, French, German, Latin, Greek, geometry, algebra, and all the ologies, together with logic, music, drawing, and astronomy. The law enacts that the principal master at a High School shall receive £400 a year, and the Assistant Masters £250 each;—but even at these salaries teachers sufficiently instructed could not be found, and when the Superintendent made his last return there was but one High School in the Transvaal, and at that school there were but five pupils. At the High School, the pupils paid 30s. a month, which, presuming there to be two months of holydays in the year, would give £15 per annum. There would be therefore £75 towards maintaining a school of which the Head Master received £400. But the reality of the failure was worse even than this. The law required that all boys and girls should pay the regular fees, but in order to keep up the number of pupils gratuitous instruction was offered. Three months after annexation the five High School pupils had dwindled down to two, and then the school was closed by order of the British Governor. The education no doubt was far too advanced for the public wants; and as it was given by means of the Dutch language only it did not meet the needs of those who were most likely to make use of it. For, even while the Transvaal was a Dutch Republic, the English language was contending for ascendancy with that of the people. In this contention the President with his Government did his best to make Dutch, and Dutch only, the language of the country. For this we cannot blame him. It was naturally his object to maintain the declining nationality of his country. But the parentsand pupils who were likely to profit by such a school as I have described were chiefly English.
At the District and Ward schools the nature of the instruction proposed to be given is lower. The District schools are held in the chief towns,—such as they are,—and the Ward schools in sub-divisions of the Districts. They too have failed for the same reasons. They are too expensive and pretentious. The Salaries,—i.e.the lowest salaries permitted by law,—are £200 and £100 for head masters at the two classes of schools, and £125 and £30 for assistant masters. According to the last return there were 236 pupils at the District schools, and 65 at the Ward schools. The pupils pay varying fees, averaging 7s. a month or about £3 10s. per annum each. There are six District schools and two Ward schools, at which the masters’ salaries alone would amount to £1,700 per annum,—presuming there to be no assistant masters,—while the total of fees would be about £1,050 per annum. As the Government had been for many months penniless, it need hardly be explained further that the schools must have been in a poor condition. The nominal cost to the State during the last years of the Republic was about £3,500, being more than £11 per year for each pupil over and above the fees. What was still due under the head had of course to be paid out of British taxes when the country was annexed.
But all this does not show the extent of the evil. The white population of the country is supposed to be 45,000, of which about a tenth or 4,500 ought to be at school. The public schools at present show 300. There are some privateschools as to which I could obtain no trustworthy information; but the pupils educated at them are few in number.
The average Boer is generally satisfied in regard to education if his children can be made to read the Bible. To this must be added such a knowledge of the ritual of the religion of the Dutch Reformed Church as will enable the children to pass the examination necessary for confirmation. Until this ceremony has been completed they cannot marry. So much, by hook or by crook, is attained, and thus the outermost darkness of ignorance is avoided. But the present law as to education does not provide for even this moderate amount of religious instruction, and is therefore, and has been, most unpopular with the Boers. It must be understood that on all religious matters the late Government was at loggerheads with the bulk of the population, the President being an advocate of free-thinking and absolute secularism,—of an education from which religion should be as far as possible removed; whereas the Boer is as fanatic, as conservative, and as firmly wedded to the creed of his fathers as an Irish Roman Catholic Coadjutor. It may, on this account, be the easier for the Colonial Government to reconcile the population to some change in the law.
A few of the better class of farmers, in the difficulty which at present exists, maintain a schoolmaster in their houses for a year or two, paying a small salary and entertaining the teachers at their tables. I have met more than one such a schoolmaster in a Boer’s house. In the course of my travels I found an Englishman in the family of a Dutchman who could not speak a word of English,—and was astonished tofind so much instructed intelligence in such a position. Formerly there existed a class of itinerant schoolmasters in the Transvaal, who went from house to house carrying with them some rudiments of education, and returning now and again on their tract to see how the seed had prospered. These were supported by the Government of the day, but the late Government in its ambitious desire to effect great things, discontinued this allowance. It is not improbable that the renewal of some such scheme may be suggested.
It will be imperative on the Colonial Government to do something as the law now existing has certainly failed altogether. But there are great difficulties. It is not so much that education has to be provided for the children of a people numbering 45,000;—but that it has to be done for children dispersed over an area as big as Great Britain and Ireland. The families live so far apart, owing to the absurdly large size of the farms, that it is impossible to congregate them in schools.
When I was at Pretoria I rode out with four companions to see a wonderful spot called the “Zoutpan” or saltpan. It is 28 miles from the town and the journey required that we should take out a tent and food, and that we should sleep in the veld. I was mounted on an excellent horse who was always trying to run away with me. This tired me much, and the ground was very hard. While turning myself about upon the ground I could not but think how comfortable the beds are in London. The saltpan, however, was worth the visit. That it had been a volcanic crater there could be no doubt, but unlike all other volcanic craters that I have seenit was not an aperture on the apex of a mountain. We went north from Pretoria and crossing through the spurs of the Magaliesberg range of hills found ourselves upon a plain which after a while became studded with scrub or thorn bushes. Close to the saltpan, and still on the plain, we came to the residence of a Boer who gave us water,—the dirtiest that ever was given me to drink,—with a stable for our horses and sold us mealies for our animals. As one of our party was a doctor and as the Boer’s wife was ill, his hospitality was not ill repaid. A gentle rise of about 200 feet from the house took us to the edge of the pan, which then lay about 300 feet below us,—so as to look as though the earthwork around the valley had been merely thrown out of it as earth might be thrown from any other hole. And this no doubt had been done,—by the operation of nature.
The high outside rim of the cup was about 2¼ miles round, with a diameter of 1,500 yards; and the circle was nearly as perfect as that of a cup. Down thence to the salt lake at the bottom the inside of the bowl fell steeply but gradually, and was thickly covered with bush. The perfect regularity of shape was, to the eye, the most wonderful feature of the phenomenon. At the bottom to which we descended lay the shallow salt lake, which at the time of our visit was about half full,—or half covered, I might better say, in describing the gently shelving bottom of which not more than a moiety was under water. In very dry weather there is no water at all,—and then no salt. When full the lake is about 400 yards across.
Some enterprising Englishman had put up a large iron pan 36 feet by 20, and 18 inches deep, with a furnace under it, which, as everything had been brought out from England at a great cost for land transit, must have been an expensive operation. But it had been deserted because the late Government had been unable to protect him in the rights which he attempted to hire from them. The farmers of the neighbourhood would not allow themselves to be debarred from taking the salt,—and cared nothing for the facts that the Government claimed the privilege of disposing of the salt and that the Englishman had bought the privilege. The Englishman therefore withdrew, leaving behind him his iron pan and his furnace, no doubt with some bitter feelings.
It is probable, I believe, that another Englishman,—or a Scotchman,—will now commence proceedings there, expecting that Downing Street will give better security than a Republican President. In the meantime our friend the Boer pays £50 per annum to the Government, and charges all comers some small fine per load for what they take. Baskets are inserted into the water and are pulled up full of slush. This is deposited on the shore and allowed to drain itself. On the residuum carbonate of soda rises, with a thick layer, as solid cream on standing milk;—and below this there is the salt more or less pure,—very nasty, tasting to me as though it were putrid,—but sufficing without other operation for the curing of meat and for the use of cattle. I was told by one of our party that the friable stone which we found all around is soda-feldspar from which, as it meltsin the rain, the salt is brought down. Here, at this place, there is but one crater;—whereas at other places of a like nature, as in New Zealand and Central America, I have seen various mouths crowded together, like disjected fragments of a great aperture down into the earth. Here there is but the one circle, and that is as regular as though it had been the work of men’s hands.
Such saltpans in South Africa are common, though I saw none other but the one which I have described. The northern district of the Transvaal is called Zoutpansberg from the number of its saltpans,—and there are others in other parts of the country. I do not know that there is much else particularly worthy of notice in the neighbourhood of Pretoria, unless it be the wonderboom,—a pretty green over-arching tree, which makes for its visitors a large bower capable of holding perhaps 50 persons. It is a graceful green tree;—but not very wonderful.