Amandanka tribe suffered something not far
from extermination by the Boers; and if this
massacre did not take place, the Kaffirs
believe that it did, and put it down in their
black book against the country.

Still there arose no special war between the
Kaffirs and the colonists. Balance of power
was disturbed among the Kaffir tribes by the
ambition of one chief, Gaika, who encroached
upon the rest, and, among others, on his
uncle, Polambi. In these Kaffir civil wars,
colonists took part, but were annoyed at
finding that they took part also in the
chance of war, which sometimes told against
their cattle.

So, when the English took possession of the
Cape, they found a hearty mutual disgust
established between the Boers and Kaffirs of
the border. The border settlers took all law
into their own hands, and defied any one to
interfere with them.

England, having obtained by capture an
authority over the Cape Colony (which the
Dutch farmers were, most naturally, unwilling
to recognise), made an attempt to introduce
just laws. A treaty was made with Gaika,
under the erroneous notion that he was the
South African King George. As we have
seen, the Kaffirs are divided into independent
clans, and the other chiefs were so far from
considering themselves bound by the deeds of
Gaika, that they felt aggrieved and slighted
by the position given to a neighbour, of whose
undue power they were jealous.

The colonial strawberry-bed had reached
the Great Fish River when the English
became, for the second time, and finally,
possessors of the Cape. Tolambie and Congo
Kaffirs still remained scattered on their old
ground within the boundary; appropriation
of land, on the one hand, and of cattle, on the
other, with expeditions for recovery of cattle,
and abundant mutual abuse, or now and then
a murder, kept up the temperature of the old
border disputes. The Boers declared that it
was impossible for cattle to be farmed if they
must live next door to Kaffirs. Government
took pity on them, and, in 1811, it was
ordered that all Kaffirs should remove from
among the Dutch, and go beyond the Great
Fish River. The Boers expelled their old
foes with a hearty good will, and no small
severity. The Kaffirs were driven from the
lands on which they had been born, at the
commencement of the harvest season, leaving
their crops to be eaten by the masters of the
day, while they themselves encountered risk
of famine. The Congo chief, incurably
diseased, was murdered, in his sleep, by
angry Boers; and Stockenstrom, an estimable
magistrate, was treacherously killed by
Kaffirs; nor was it without other episodes of
bloodshed that these twenty thousand Kaffirs,
deprived of much cattle, were driven across
the river.

The Kaffirs did not love our colony the
more for this. They felt it, more than ever,
virtuous to take what they could get out of
their enemies, by private foray. But, as a
public body, they believed it necessary to do
what savages, among each other, are
perpetually doing—to submit to the
encroachments of the strong.

Another treaty was made with the Kaffirs,
in 1817, by the Cape Governor of that period,
Lord Charles Somerset. He repeated the
mistake made twenty years before, treating
with Gaika, as sole king.

The Kaffir jealousy against Gaika was thus
forced to a climax, and broke out in war.
Tolambie, the aggrieved uncle, with other
chiefs and the Prophet Makanna, joined their
strength, and, in the next year, fought with
Gaika, giving him a thorough beating. But
the English Government was bound to Gaika
by red tape, and sent an army of soldiers and
Boers to avenge the disgrace of its ally.
Tolambie's country was ravaged, more than
twenty thousand head of cattle were driven
off, and were divided between Gaika and the
Dutchmen.

The confederate clans, thus provoked to
war, burst down upon the colony, in 1819, in
a fearful tempest of wrath. They were even
tempted by their Prophet Makanna (who
insured their lives against shot) to attack
Graham's Town, then a mere military post.
Here, after a desperate struggle, they were
routed with great loss; as they may always
be, by European troops, when they engage in
an open field. It is, however, a rare thing
for Kaffirs to run such risk, when they know
very well the advantage of entangling regular
troops in a vague bush-fight. The war went
on; the whole force of the colony, being
called out, ravaged the hostile Kaffir lands.
The Kaffirs submitted, Makanna surrendered
and was spitefully banished, as a convict, to
Robben Island. The war being over, and all
Kaffirs, except Gaika, thoroughly disgusted,
the English Government lost no time in
disgusting Gaika also; who was compelled to give
up—in return for what we had spent through
our great love for him—a tract of country
between the Fish River and the Keiskamma,
which we call the Ceded Territory.

Dissatisfied with the Boers, our Government
resolved, next, to plant Englishmen and
Scotchmen on the puzzling frontier, about
the Great Fish River. Accordingly, in 1820,
a number of British emigrants, many of them
men of education and intelligence, were
planted in the district between the Great Fish
and Bushman's River, and the district was
dubbed Albany. Beautiful, compact allotments
of fertile land had been made at home;
but, on the spot, it was discovered that the
land was anything but fertile; and, as the
lots were too compact for grazing purposes,
the settlers soon were brought into extreme
distress. Some went, therefore, into the
towns; others went where any bits of hope
were visible, through their despair; and a
large number, like good Englishmen and