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 the adult son from the home and the hands of his father. But Natal did not spring into existence after this fashion and has owed nothing to the fostering care of the Cape Colony. I will quote here the commencing words of a pamphlet on the political condition of Natal published in 1869, because they convey incidentally a true statement of the causes which led to its colonization. “The motives which induced the Imperial Government to claim Natal from the Dutch African emigrants were not merely philanthropic. The Dutch in their occupation of the country had been involved in serious struggles with the Zulus. The apprehension that these struggles might be renewed and that the wave of disturbance might be carried towards the Eastern frontier of the Cape influenced to some extent the resolution to colonize Natal. But whatever may have been the prudential considerations that entered into their counsels, the Government were deeply impressed with the wish to protect the Natives and to raise them in the scale of humanity.”[14] From this the reader will learn that the British took up the country from the Dutch who had on occupying it been involved in difficulties with the Natives, and that the English had stepped in to give a government to the country, partly in defence of the Dutch against the Natives,—but partly also, and chiefly in defence of the Natives against the Dutch. This was, in truth, the case. The difficulties which the Dutch wanderers had encountered were awful, tragic, heartrending. They had almost been annihilated. Dingaan, the then chief of the Zulus, had resolved to annihilate them, and had gone nearer to success than the Indians of Mexico or Peru had ever done with Cortez or Pizarro. But they had stood their ground,—and were not inclined to be gentle in their dealings with the Zulus,—as the congregation of tribes was called with which they had come in contact.
Natal received its name four centuries ago. In 1497 it was visited,—or at any rate seen,—by Vasco da Gama on Christmas day and was then called Terra Natalis from that cause. It is now called Na-tal, with the emphasis sharp on the last syllable. I remember when we simply translated the Latin word into plain English and called the place Port Natal in the ordinary way,—as may be remembered by the following stanza from Tom Hood’s “Miss Kelmansegg”:—
Into this world we come like ships,
Launched from the docks and stocks and slips,
For future fair or fatal.
And one little craft is cast away
On its very first trip to Babbicombe Bay,
While another rides safe at Port Natal.
After that no more was known of the coast for more than a hundred and fifty years. In the latter part of the eighteenth century the Dutch seem to have had a settlement there,—not the Dutch coming overland as they did afterwards, but the Dutch trading along the coast. It did not, however, come to much, and we hear no more of the country till 1823,—only fifty-five years ago,—when an English officer of the name of Farewell, with a few of his countrymen, settled himself on the land where the town of D’Urban now stands. At that time King Chaka of the Zulus, of whom I shall speak in a following chapter, had well-nigh exterminated the natives of the coast, so that there was no one to oppose Mr. Farewell and his companions. There they remained, with more or less of trouble from Chaka’s successor and from invading Zulus, till 1835, when the British of the Cape Colony took so much notice of the place as to call the settlement Durban, after Sir Benjamin D’Urban, its then Governor.
Then began the real history of Natal which like so many other parts of South Africa,—like the greater part of that South Africa which we now govern,—was first occupied by Dutchmen trekking away from the to them odious rule of British Governors, British officers, British laws,—and what seemed to them to be mawkish British philanthropy. The time is so recent that I myself have been able to hear the story told by the lips of those who were themselves among the number of indignant emigrants,—of those who had barely escaped when their brethren and friends had been killed around them by the natives. “Why did you leave your old home?” I asked one old Dutch farmer whom I found still in Natal. With the urbanity which seemed always to characterize the Dutch he would say nothing to me derogatory to the English. “He says that there was not land enough for their wants,” explained the gentleman who was acting as interpreter between us. But it meant the same thing. The English were pressing on the heels of the Dutchmen.
The whole theory of life was different between the two people and remains so to the present day. The Englishman likes to have a neighbour near him; the Dutchman cannot bear to see the smoke of another man’s chimney from his own front door. The Englishman would fain grow wheat; the Dutchman is fond of flocks and herds. The Englishman is of his nature democratic;—the Dutchman is patriarchal. The Englishman loves to have his finger in every pie around him. The Dutchman wishes to have his own family, his own lands, above all his own servants and dependants, altogether within his own grasp, and cares for little beyond that. There had come various laws in the Cape Colony altogether antagonistic to the feelings of the Dutch farmer, and at last in 1834, came the emancipation act which was to set free all the slaves in 1838. Although the Dutch had first explored Natal before that act came into operation,—it had perhaps more to do with the final exodus of the future Natalians than any other cause. The Dutchman of South Africa could not endure the interference with his old domestic habits which English laws were threatening and creating.
In 1834 the first Dutch party made their way from Uitenhage in the Eastern Province of the Cape Colony, by land, across the South Eastern corner of South Africa over the Drakenberg mountains to the Natal coast. Here they fraternised with the few English they found there, examined the country and seemed to have made themselves merry,—till news reached them of the Kafir wars then raging. They gallantly hurried back to their friends, postponing their idea of permanent emigration till this new trouble should be over. It was probably the feeling induced by Lord Glenelg’s wonderful despatch of Dec. 1835,—in which he declared that the English and Dutch had been all wrong and the Kafirs all right in the late wars,—which at last produced the exodus. There were personal grievances to boot, all of which sprang from impatience of the Dutch to the English law; and towards the end of 1836 two hundred Dutchmen started under Hendrik Potgieter. A more numerous party followed under Gerrit Maritz. They crossed the Orange river, to which the Cape Colony was then extended, and still travelling on, making their waggons their homes as they went, they came to the Vaal, leaving a portion of their numbers behind them in what is now the Orange Free State. We have no written account of the mode of life of these people as they trekked on, but we can conceive it. No Dutchman in South Africa is ever without a waggon big enough to make a home for his family and to carry many of his goods, or without a span or team of oxen numerous enough to drag it. They took their flocks and horses with them, remaining here and there as water and grass would suit them. And here and there they would sow their seeds and wait for a crop, and then if the crop was good and the water pleasant, and if the Natives had either not quarrelled with them or had been subdued, they would stay for another season till the waggon would at last give place to a house, and then, as others came after them, they would move on again, jealous of neighbourhood even among their own people. So they went northwards till they crossed the Vaal river and came into hostile contact with the fierce tribes of the Matabeles which then occupied the Transvaal.
What took place then belongs rather to the history of the Transvaal than to that of Natal; but the Dutch pioneers who had gone thus far were forced back over the Vaal; and though they succeeded in recovering by renewed raids many of the oxen and waggons of which they had been deprived by a great Chief of the Matabele tribe named Mazulekatze, they acknowledged that they must carry their present fortunes elsewhere, and they remembered the pleasant valleys which some of them had seen a few years earlier on the Natal coast. With great difficulty they found a track pervious to wheels through the Drakenbergs, and made their way down to the coast. There had been disagreements among the Dutch themselves after their return back over the Vaal river, and they did not all go forth into Natal. Pieter Retief, who had now joined them from the old Colony and who had had his own reasons for quarrelling with the British authorities in the Cape, was chosen the Chief of those who made their way eastwards into Natal, and he also, on reaching the coast, fraternised with the English there who at that time acknowledged no obedience to the British Government at Capetown. It seems that Retief and the few English at Durban had some idea of a joint Republic;—but the Dutchman took the lead and finding that the natives were apparently amenable, he entertained the idea of obtaining a cession of the land from Dingaan, who had murdered and succeeded his brother Chaka as King of the Zulus.
Dingaan made his terms, which Retief executed. A quantity of cattle which another tribe had taken was to be returned to Dingaan. The cattle were obtained and given up to the Zulu Chief. In the meantime Dutchman after Dutchman swarmed into the new country with their waggons and herds through the passes which had been found. We are told that by the end of 1837 a thousand waggons had made their way into this district now called Natal and had occupied the northern portion of it. Probably not a single waggon was owned by an Englishman,—though Natal is now specially an English and not a Dutch Colony. There was hardly a Native to be seen, the country having been desolated by the King of the Zulus. It was the very place for the Dutch,—fertile, without interference, and with space for every one.
Early in 1838 Retief with a party of picked men started for the head quarters of Dingaan, the Zulu King, with the recovered cattle which he was to give up as the price of the wide lands assigned to him. Then there was a festival and rejoicings among the Zulus in which the Dutchmen joined. A deed of cession was signed, of which Dingaan, the King, understood probably but little. But he did understand that these were white men coming to take away his land and at the moment in which the ceremonies were being completed,—he contrived to murder them all. That was the end of Pieter Retief, whose name in conjunction with that of his friend and colleague Gerrit Maritz still lives in the singular appellation found for the capital of Natal,—Pieter Maritzburg.
Then Dingaan, with a spirit which I cannot reprobate as I find it reprobated by other writers, determined to sally forth and drive the Dutch out of the land. It seems to me of all things the most natural for a king of Natives to do,—unless the contemplation of such a feat were beyond his intelligence or its attempt beyond his courage. It may be acknowledged that it is the business of us Europeans first to subjugate and then to civilize the savage races—but that the Savage shall object to be subjugated is surely natural. To abuse a Savage for being treacherous and cruel is to abuse him for being a Savage, which is irrational. Dingaan failed neither in intelligence or courage, and went forth to annihilate the Dutch in those northern portions of the present Colony which are now called Klip-River and Weenen. The latter word is Dutch for wailing and arose from the sufferings which Dingaan then inflicted. He first came across a party of women and children at the Blue Krans river,—in the district now called Weenen,—and killed them all. Various separated parties were destroyed in the same way, till at last an entrenchment of waggons was formed,—a “laager” as it is called in Dutch,—and from thence a battle was fought as from a besieged city against the besiegers. The old man who told me that he had trekked because land in the Colony was insufficient had been one of the besieged, and his old wife, who sat by and added a word now and then to the tale, had been inside the laager with him and had held her baby with one hand while she supplied ammunition to her husband with the other. It was thus that the Dutch always defended themselves, linking their huge waggons together into a circle within which were collected their wives and children, while their cattle were brought into a circle on the outside. It must be remembered that they, few in number, were armed with rifles while the Savages around were attacking them with their pointed spears which they call assegais.
By far the greater number of Dutch who had thus made their way over into Natal were killed,—but a remnant remained sufficient to establish itself. In these contests the white man always comes off as conqueror at last. Dingaan, however, carried on the battle for a long time, and though driven out of Natal was never thoroughly worsted on his own Zulu territory. Both Dutch and English attacked him in his own stronghold, but of those who went over the Buffalo or Tugela river in Dingaan’s time with hostile intentions but few lived to return and tell the tale. There was one raid across the river in which it is said that 3,000 Zulus were killed, and that Dingaan was obliged to burn his head kraal or capital, and fly; but even in this last of their attacks on Zulu land the Dutch were at first nearly destroyed.
At last these battles with Dingaan were brought to an end by a quarrel which the emigrants fostered between Dingaan and his brother Panda,—who was also his heir. I should hardly interest my readers if I were to go into the details of this family feud. It seems however that in spite of the excessive superstitious reverence felt by these Savages for their acknowledged Chief, they were unable to endure the prolonged cruelties of their tyrant. Panda himself was not a warrior, having been kept by Dingaan in the back-ground in order that he might not become the leader of an insurrection against him; but he was put forward as the new king; and the new king’s party having allied themselves with the Europeans, Dingaan was driven into banishment and seems to have been murdered by those among whom he fell. That was the end of Dingaan and has really been the end, up to this time, of all fighting between the Zulus and the white occupiers of Natal. From the death of Dingaan the ascendancy of the white man seems to have been acknowledged in the districts south and west of the Tugela and Buffalo rivers.
The next phase in the history of Natal is that which has reference to the quarrels between the Dutch and the English. There is I think no doubt that during the first occupation of the land by the Dutch the English Government refused to have anything to do with the territory. It was then the same as it has been since when we gave up first the Transvaal, and afterwards the Orange Free State, or “Sovereignty” as it used to be called. A people foreign to us in habits and language, which had become subject to us, would not endure our rule,—would go further and still further away when our rule followed them. It was manifest that we could not stop them without the grossest tyranny;—but were we bound to go after them and take care of them? The question has been answered in the negative even when it has been asked as to wandering Englishmen who have settled themselves on strange shores,—but though answered in the negative it has always turned out that when the Englishmen have reached a number too great to be ignored the establishment of a new Colony has been inevitable. Was it necessary that Downing Street should run after the Dutch? Downing Street declared that she would do nothing of the kind. Lord Glenelg had disclaimed “any intention on the part of Her Majesty’s Government to assert any authority over any part of this territory.” But Downing Street was impotent to resist. The Queen’s subjects had settled themselves in a new country, and after some shilly-shallying on the part of the Cape authorities, after the coming and going of a small body of troops, these subjects declared their intention of establishing themselves as a Republic—and begged Her Majesty to acknowledge their independent existence. This was in January 1841, when Sir George Napier was Governor. In the meantime the Dutch had had further contests with remaining natives,—contests in which they had been the tyrants and in which they shewed a strong intention of driving the black tribes altogether away from any lands which they might want themselves. This, and probably a conviction that there were not sufficient elements of rule among the Dutch farmers to form a government,—a conviction for which the doings of the young Volksraad of Natalia gave ample reason,—at last caused our Colonial Office to decide that Natal was still British territory. Sir George Napier on 2nd Dec. 1841 issued a proclamation stating, “That whereas the Council of emigrant farmers now residing at Port Natal and the territory adjacent thereto had informed His Excellency that they had ceased to be British subjects,” &c. &c.; the whole proclamation is not necessary here;—“his Excellency announced his intention of resuming military occupation of Port Natal by sending thither without delay a detachment of Her Majesty’s forces.” And so the war was declared.[15]
The war at first went very much in favour of the Dutch. A small detachment of British troops,—about 300 men,—was marched overland to Durban, and two little vessels of war were sent round with provisions and ammunition. The proceedings of this force were so unfortunate that a part of it was taken and marched up to prison at Pieter Maritzburg and the remainder besieged in its own camp where it was nearly starved to death. The story of the whole affair is made romantic by the remarkable ride made by one Mr. King, during six days and nights, along the coast and through the Kafir country, into the Cape Colony, bearing the sad news and demanding assistance. As Great Britain had now begun the campaign, Great Britain was of course obliged to end it successfully. A larger force with better appurtenances was sent, and on 5th July, 1842, a deed of submission was signed on behalf of the Dutch owning the sovereignty of Queen Victoria. That is the date on which in fact Natal did first become a British possession. But a contest was still carried on for more that a twelvemonth longer through which the Dutch farmers strove to regain their independence, and it was not till the 8th of August, 1843, that the twenty-four members of the still existing Volksraad declared Her Majesty’s Government to be supreme in Port Natal.
But the Dutchmen could hardly even yet be said to be beaten. They certainly were not contented to remain as British subjects. Very many of them passed again back over the Drakenberg mountains determined to free themselves from the British yoke, and located themselves in the districts either to the North or South of the Vaal river,—although they did so far away from the ocean which is the only highway for bringing to them stores from other countries, and although they were leaving good low-lying fertile lands for a high arid veld the most of which was only fit for pastoral purposes. But they would there be, if not free from British rule,—for the Republics were not yet established,—far at any rate from British interference. If any people ever fought and bled for a land, they had fought and bled for Natal. But when they found they could not do what they liked with it, they “trekked” back and left it. And yet this people have shewn themselves to be generally ill-adapted for self government,—as I shall endeavour to shew when I come to speak of the Transvaal Republic,—and altogether in want of some external force to manage for them their public affairs. Nothing perhaps is harder than to set a new Government successfully afloat, and the Dutch certainly have shewn no aptitude for the task either in Natal or in the Transvaal.
It is not to be supposed that all the Dutch went, or that they went all at once. In some parts of the Colony they are still to be found prospering on their lands,—and some of the old names remain. But the country strikes the stranger as being peculiarly English, in opposition to much of the Cape Colony which is peculiarly Dutch. In one district of Natal I came across a congregation of Germans, with a German minister and a German church service, and German farmers around, an emigration from Hanover having been made to the spot. But I heard of no exclusively Dutch district. The traveller feels certain that he will not require the Dutch language as he moves about, and he recognises the Dutchman as a foreigner in the land when he encounters him. In the Transvaal, in the Orange Free State, and in many parts of the Western districts of the Cape Colony,—even in Capetown itself,—he feels himself to be among a Dutch people. He knows as a fact that the Dutch in South Africa are more numerous than the English. But in Natal he is on English soil, among English people,—with no more savour of Holland than he has in London when he chances to meet a Dutchman there. And yet over the whole South African continent there is no portion of the land for which the Dutchman has fought and bled and dared and suffered as he has done for Natal. As one reads the story one is tempted to wish that he had been allowed to found his Natalia, down by the sea shore, in pleasant lands, where he would not have been severed by distance and difficulties of carriage from the comforts of life,—from timber for instance with which to floor his rooms, and wood to burn his bricks, and iron with which to make his ploughs.
But the Dutch who went did not go at once, nor did the English who came come at once. It is impossible not to confess that what with the Home Government in Downing Street and what with the Governors who succeeded each other at the Cape there was shilly-shallying as to adopting the new Colony. The province was taken up in the manner described in 1843, but no Governor was appointed till 1845. Major Smith, who as Captain Smith had suffered so much with his little army, was the military commander during the interval, and the Dutch Volksraad continued to sit. Questions as to the tenure of land naturally occupied the minds of all who remained. If a Boer chose to stay would he or would he not be allowed to occupy permanently the farm, probably of 6,000 acres which he had assumed to himself? And then, during this time, the tribes who had fled in fear of the Dutch or who had been scattered by the Zulu King, flocked in vast hordes into the country when they had been taught to feel that they would be safe under British protection. It is said that in 1843 there were not above 3,000 natives in all Natal, but that within three or four years 80,000 had crowded in. Now the numbers amount to 320,000. Of course they spread themselves over the lands which the Dutch had called their own, and the Dutch were unable to stop them. In December 1845 Mr. West was appointed the first Governor of Natal, and attempts were made to arrange matters between the remaining Boers and the Zulus. A commission was appointed to settle claims, but it could do but little,—or nothing. Native locations were arranged;—that is large tracts of land were given over to the Natives. But this to the Boers was poison. To them the Natives were as wild beasts,—and wild beasts whom they with their blood and energy had succeeded in expelling. Now the wild beasts were to be brought back under the auspices of the British Government!
In 1847 Andrias Pretorius was the dominant leader of the Natal Boers and he went on a pilgrimage to Sir Henry Pottinger who was then Governor in the Cape Colony. Sir Henry Pottinger would not see him,—required him to put down what he had to say in writing, which is perhaps the most heartbreaking thing which any official man can do to an applicant. What if our Cabinet Ministers were to desire deputations to put down their complaints in writing? Pretorius, who afterwards became a great rebel against British authority and the first President of the Transvaal Republic, returned furious to Pieter Maritzburg,—having however first put down “what he had to say” in very strong writing. Sir Henry was then leaving the Colony and answered by referring the matter to his successor. Pretorius flew to the public press and endeavoured to instigate his fellow subjects to mutiny by the indignant vehemence of his language. When the news of his failure with Sir Henry Pottinger reached the Boers in Natal, they determined upon a further wholesale and new expatriation. They would all “trek” and they did trek, on this occasion into the district between the Orange and the Vaal,—where we shall have to follow them in speaking of the origin of the two Dutch Republics. In this way Natal was nearly cleared of Dutchmen in the year 1848.
It all happened so short a time ago that many of the actors in those early days of Natal are still alive, and some of my readers will probably remember dimly something of the incidents as they passed;—how Sir Harry Smith, who succeeded Sir Henry Pottinger as Governor of the Cape, became a South African hero, and somewhat tarnished his heroism by the absurdity of his words. The story of Retief hardly became known to us in England with all its tragic horrors, but I myself can well remember how unwilling we were to have Natal, and how at last it was borne in upon us that Natal had to be taken up by us,—perhaps as a fourth rate Colony, with many regrets, much as the Fiji islands have been taken up since. The Transvaal, inferior as it is in advantages and good gifts, has just now been accepted with very much greater favour. The salary awarded to a Governor may perhaps best attest the importance of a new Colony. The Transvaal has begun with £3,000 a year. A poor £2,500 is even still considered sufficient for the much older Colony of Natal.
Since 1848 Natal has had its history, but not one that has peculiarly endeared it to the Mother Country. In 1849 a body of English emigrants went out there who have certainly been successful as farmers, and who came chiefly I think from the County of York. I do not know that there has since that been any one peculiar influx of English, though of course from time to time Englishmen have settled there,—some as farmers, more probably as traders, small or large. In 1850 Mr. Pine succeeded Mr. West as second Governor,—a gentleman who has again been Governor of the same Colony as Sir Benjamin Pine, and who has had to encounter,—somewhat unfairly, as I think,—the opprobrium incident to the irrational sympathy of a certain class at home in the little understood matter of Langalibalele. Langalibalele has, however, been so interesting a South African personage that I must dedicate a separate chapter to his history. In 1853 Dr. Colenso was appointed Bishop of Natal, and by the peculiarity of his religious opinions has given more notoriety to the Colony,—has caused the Colony to be more talked about,—than any of its Governors or even than any of its romantic incidents. Into religious opinion I certainly shall not stray in these pages. In my days I have written something about clergymen but never a word about religion. No doubt shall be thrown by me either upon the miracles or upon Colenso. But when he expressed his unusual opinions he became a noted man, and Natal was heard of for the first time by many people. He came to England in those days, and I remember being asked to dinner by a gushing friend. “We have secured Colenso,” said my gushing friend, as though she was asking me to meet a royal duke or a Japanese ambassador. But I had never met the Bishop till I arrived in his own see, where it was allowed me to come in contact with that clear intellect, the gift of which has always been allowed to him. He is still Bishop of Natal, and will probably remain so till he dies. He is not the man to abandon any position of which he is proud. But there is another bishop—of Maritzburg—whose tenets are perhaps more in accord with those generally held by the Church of England. The confusion has no doubt been unfortunate,—and is still unfortunate, as has been almost everything connected with Natal. And yet it is a smiling pretty land, blessed with numerous advantages; and if it were my fate to live in South Africa I should certainly choose Natal for my residence. Fair Natal, but unfortunate Natal! Its worldly affairs have hitherto not gone smoothly.
In 1856 the Colony, which had hitherto been but a sub-Colony under the Cape was made independent, and a Legislative Council was appointed, at first of twelve elected and of four official members;—but this has since been altered. From that day to this there seems to have always been alive in Natal questions of altering the constitution, with a desire on the part of many of the English to draw nearer to, if not to adopt a system of government by parliamentary majorities,—and with a feeling on the part of a few that a further departure and a wider severance from such form of government would be expedient.
In 1873 came the Langalibalele affair to which I will only refer here for the purpose of saying that it led to the sending out of Sir Garnet Wolseley as a temporary governor or political head mediciner to set things right which were supposed at home to be wrong. There can be no doubt that the coming of a picked man, as was Sir Garnet, had the effect of subordinating the will of the people of the Colony to the judgment of the Colonial Office at home. Such effects will always be caused by such selections. A Cabinet Minister will persuade with words which from an Under Secretary would be inoperative. A known man will be successful with arguments which would be received with no respect from the mouth of one unknown. Sir Garnet Wolseley enjoyed an African reputation and was recognised as a great man when he landed in South Africa. The effect of his greatness was seen in his ability to induce the Legislative Council to add eight nominated members to their own House and thus to clip their own wings. Before his coming there were 15 elected members, and 5 official members—who were the Governor’s Council and who received a salary. Now there are 13 nominated members, of whom eight are chosen by the Governor but who receive no salaries. The consequence is that the Government can command a majority in almost all cases, and that Natal is therefore, in truth, a Crown Colony. I know that the word will be received with scorn and denial in Natal. A Legislative Council with a majority of freely elected members will claim that i