hold of (it does not appear for what crime) by disguising himself in the mantle of one of his wives. Petty hostilities now went on at intervals till 1835, when, in consequence of some successful forays of the Kafirs, the border commotions were converted by the English into a national war. This was like the Chinese war-very bloody on one side. The governor in one of his despatches, states that he lost a hundred men and slew four thousand! "There have been taken from them," also, adds he, "besides the conquest and alienation of their country, about sixty thousand head of cattle, almost all their goats, their habitations every where destroyed, and their gardens and corn fields laid waste." All this was virtually declared by the home secretary to be robbery and murder, the "conquest resulting from a war in which, as far as he is at present enabled to judge, the original justice is on the side of the conquered, not of the victorious party." The territory was ordered to be restored.

It is unnecessary to include in this sketch the extracolonial events that are only now in progress. The manumission of the slaves at the Cape, together with the total change of system-except in public wars-introduced by the British, disgusted so much the boers, or Dutch farmers on the eastern frontier, that they took the extraordinary resolution of marching in a body with their flocks and herds into Kafir-land. Their passage through the native tribes was attended by the horrors that might have been expected; and their present settlement in Natal, where in 1842 they encountered and defeated a large British force, and were with difficulty driven back from the coast, is still besieged by the original occupiers of the land.

CHAPTER II.

RECENT COLONIZATION, RESOURCES, AND COMMERCE OF THE CAPЕ.

THE Marquess Wellesley in 1798 strongly urged upon government the policy of keeping possession of the Cape as a naval station-as an intermediate military depot to prepare their troops for the climate of India-and as a victualling rendezvous for the Company's fleets both outwards and homewards. He was of opinion that it was vain to expect the settlement to pay its expenses; " but I doubt," said he, "whether with the Cape in the hands of an enemy it would be possible for you to maintain your India trade or empire, unless you could acquire some other settlement on the southern coast of Africa." Since that time the increasing importance of British connection with the further east, and the rapid rise of a British empire in the new southern world, have added force to his arguments; while the development of the resources of the country have shown an excess of revenue over expenditure. But as for its expenses as a military depot, amount

ing we believe to 206,000l. a year, these do not properly come into the colonial accounts, as they are incurred in guarding the whole eastern dominion; and in this point of view the station, from its greater cheapness of living, effects a saving to the nation, rather than otherwise, in the maintenance of troops.

From the year in which the Marquess wrote till 1802, the whole exports did not exceed 15,0007; and in 1803 a colonist asked in utter perplexity-" In what articles can we trade? what can we export? wherewith must we pay?" The British, on definitively taking possession, solved the difficulty by bringing up the exports from 58,6847., the average in 1806-10, to 220,9337., the average in 1823-4; and since then a comparatively slight but decided increase has been visible. In 1820 a body of 3,736 free emigrants were sent out from Britain at the expense of 50,000l. to government, and located on the territory next the Kafir frontier. After the usual interval of misfortune, filling here a space of three years as in South Australia, the settlement of Albany took root and flourished up to the Kafir inroad in 1834, which gave a temporary interruption to its prosperity.

"The natural resources upon which the inhabitants of the colony have to rely," say the Commissioners of Inquiry in 1829, "for the support of the stock we have mentioned, consist of the wild pasturage, extending over tracks of country by no means fertile. There are few places in the colony calculated for the production of artificial grasses, although, with good management, and a command of water, they are found to resist and survive the long droughts which are common at the Cape. The natural grasses abound with deleterious and astringent herbs, the taint of which is perceivable in the breath and milk of the cows, and which at certain seasons of the year

are destructive to the cattle. Change of pasturage is found to be the only remedy for the numerous diseases with which they are affected, and which are rendered more frequent and destructive by want of care, and protection from cold and wet weather. The northeastern parts of the colony have been subject to the visitation of locusts, which are equally destructive to artificial as to natural pasturage." This, in a few words, enumerates the disadvantages of the Cape, with the exception of blight, or rust, to which the crops are subject to an extent not known in Europe.

The ravages of the locusts are chiefly in the northern and eastern districts. Their original country appears to be the sandy deserts of the north; whence, rising upon the wind in myriads, by the instinct of hunger, they sail in vast clouds in quest of food. The air is darkened by them for miles, and the rushing sound of their wings resembles the near dash of a mill-wheel. In the evening they alight, sometimes in masses several inches deep; and when they take the wings of the morning anew, no token is left of their supper but the grey earth instead of the verdant field or the blooming garden. Sometimes their expedition takes place before they are able to fly; and in this case they appear in a dark red column, perhaps a mile broad, rolling along in an unswerving direction. rivulet is no barrier; a line of fire is extinguished by their forlorn hope, and the rest of the legion walk over their bodies; walls-houses-chimneys-all are climbed and surmounted; till at length arriving at a broad and rapid river, or the sea itself, the marauders-who have not left one blade of grass in their passage-plunge bravely in and disappear. All evils, however, have their compensations. Birds, beasts, reptiles, and men prey alike upon the general enemy. The natives grow fat

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when there are plenty of locusts; and the inhabitants of the towns are seen hurrying out into the devastated fields with sacks and pack-oxen to gather in the animal harvest. The creatures are steamed, dried in the sun, winnowed (to deprive them of their legs and wings), and either put away in sacks or garnered on the barn floor in a heap. They resemble shrimps in taste, and are either eaten whole with salt, or pounded with water into a cold porridge. The locust-plague continues for several years at a time, and is said to make its appearance with some regularity about once in fifteen years.

The extraordinary exuberance of animal life in Southern Africa has been often a subject of admiration. "The arid deserts," says Pringle, " uninhabitable by man, furnish food and refuge to the ostrich and the serpent-eater; and in the tracks of death-like desolation, where even these solitary birds cannot find a fountain, life is still pouring forth from the inexhaustible womb of the parched yet pregnant earth: thousands of lizards and land-tortoises are seen crawling about, or basking on the rocks and stones, and myriads of myriads of ants are building their clay pyramids, or busily travelling to and fro, in long black trains across the sultry ground."

But the deserts themselves, it must be said, if we look for their type in the Great Karroo (which is three hundred miles long by seventy or eighty) are not mere plains of sand as in other parts of the same continent. They have a thin argillaceous soil, diversified with slaty hills, and traversed by numerous torrents; and they appear rather to be burnt up by the heat of the sun during the dry season than naturally unfit for vegetation; for no sooner does the rain begin to fall in the early spring than myriads of flowers rush into bloom, and the Alpine farmers in the neighbourhood hasten down from