History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0234/02343.txt

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$Title{Impressions Of South Africa
Chapter XVIII - Through Natal To The Transvaal, Part I}
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$Author{Bryce, James}
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$Subject{british
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natal
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$Date{1897}
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Title:       Impressions Of South Africa
Book:        Part III - A Journey Through South Africa
Author:      Bryce, James
Date:        1897

Chapter XVIII - Through Natal To The Transvaal, Part I

     There are two ways of reaching the Witwatersrand gold-fields, now the
central point of attraction in South Africa, from the southeast coast. One
route starts from Delagoa Bay, a place of so much importance as to deserve a
short description.  It is a piece of water protected from the ocean by Inyack
Island, and stretching some twenty miles or more north and south.  At the
north end, where two rivers discharge their waters into it, is an almost
landlocked inlet, on the east side of which stands the town of Lourenco
Marques, so called from the Portuguese captain who first explored it in 1544,
though it had been visited in 1502 by Vasco da Gama. The approach to this
harbor is long and circuitous, for a vessel has to wind hither and thither to
avoid shoals; and as the channel is ill buoyed, careful captains sometimes
wait for the tide to be at least half full before they cross the shallowest
part, where there may be only twenty feet of water at low tide.  Within the
harbor there is plenty of good deep anchorage opposite the town, and a still
more sheltered spot is found a little farther up the inlet in a sort of
lagoon.  The town, which is growing fast, but still in a rough and unsightly
condition, runs for half a mile along the bay front, and behind rises up the
slope of a hill facing to the west.  The site looks healthy enough, though it
would have been better to plant the houses nearer to the point which shields
the anchorage.  But behind the town to the east and north there are large
swamps, reeking with malaria; and the residents have, therefore, though of
course much less in the dry season, to be on their guard against fever, which,
indeed, few who remain for a twelvemonth escape.  The Portuguese government is
unfortunately hard pressed for money, and has not been able to complete the
projected quays, nor even to provide a custom-house and warehouses fit to
receive and store the goods intended for the Transvaal, which are now
discharged here in large quantities.  In November, 1895, everything was in
confusion, and the merchants loud in their complaints. Business is mostly in
English and German, scarcely at all in Portuguese, hands.  With better
management and the expenditure of a little money, both the approach to the
harbor and the town itself might be immensely improved; and although the
country round is not attractive, being mostly either sandy or marshy, the
trade with the Transvaal gold-fields seems so certain to develop and maintain
itself that expenditure would be well bestowed.  It has often been suggested
that Great Britain should buy the place, but the sensitive pride of Portugal
would probably refuse any offer.

     The other port which now competes for the Transvaal trade with Delagoa
Bay is Durban, the largest town in the British colony of Natal. It stands on a
sandy flat from which a spit of land runs out into the sea between the open
ocean and the harbor.  The harbor is commodious, but the bar on the channel
connecting it with the ocean has hitherto made it unavailable except for
vessels of light draft.  Much has been done by the colony to deepen the
channel, and at the time of my visit a new dredger was on its way, from the
exertions of which great things were hoped. Heretofore the largest steamers
have had to lie out in the ocean a mile or two away, and as there is usually a
swell, in which the little steam-tenders pitch about pretty freely, the
process of disembarkation is trying to many passengers.  There is, however,
good reason to hope that the bar difficulties may ultimately be overcome, as
they have already been greatly reduced; and the harbor, once you are within
it, is perfectly sheltered.

     Durban is a neat and, in some parts, even handsome town, with wide and
well-kept streets, to which the use of slender jinrikishas (drawn by active
Zulus or Indians) instead of cabs, as well as the number of white-clad coolies
in the streets, gives a curious Eastern touch, in keeping with the
semi-tropical vegetation.  The climate is sultry during three months, but very
agreeable for the rest of the year.  Many of the whites, however, - there are
14,000 of them, and about the same number of Kafirs and immigrants from India,
- live on the hill of Berea to the north of the town, where the sea breeze
gives relief even in the hottest weather.  This suburb of Berea is one of the
prettiest spots in South Africa.  The name, of which the origin seems to have
been forgotten by the citizens of to-day, comes from a missionary settlement
planted here in very early days, and called after the Berea mentioned in Acts
xvii. 10, 11.  It has been skilfully laid out in winding roads, bordered by
tasteful villas which are surrounded by a wealth of trees and flowering
shrubs, and command admirable views of the harbor, of the bold bluff which
rises west of the harbor, and of the ocean.  The municipality bought the land,
and by selling or leasing it in lots at increased prices has secured a revenue
which has kept local taxation at a very low figure, and has enabled many town
improvements to be made and many enterprises to be worked for the benefit of
the citizens.  Durban has been a pioneer of what is called, in its extremer
forms, municipal socialism; and it enjoys the reputation of being the best
managed and most progressive town in all South Africa.  It possesses among
other things a fine town-hall with a lofty tower, built by the exertions of
the present mayor, a deservedly respected Scotch merchant.

     East of Durban a low and fertile strip of country stretches along the
coast, most of which is occupied by sugar plantations, tilled by coolies
brought from India, because the native Kafir does not take kindly to steady
labor.  North of the town the country rises, and here the patient industry of
other Indians has formed a great mass of gardens, where subtropical and even
some tropical fruits are grown in great quantities, and have now begun to be
exported to Europe.  Across this high ground, and through and over the still
higher hills which rise farther inland, the railway takes its course, often in
steep inclines, to the town of Pietermaritzburg, eighty miles distant, where
the Governor dwells, and a small British garrison is placed.  Durban was from
the first an English town, and the white people who inhabit it are practically
all English. Maritzburg was founded by the emigrant Boers who left Cape Colony
in the Great Trek of 1836, and descended hither across the Quathlamba
Mountains in 1838.  Its population is, however, nowadays much more British
than Boer, but the streets retain an old-fashioned half-Dutch air; and the
handsome Parliament House and Government Offices look somewhat strange in a
quiet and straggling country town.  Its height above the sea (2500 feet) and
its dry climate make it healthy, though, as it lies in a hollow among high
hills, it is rather hotter in summer than suits English tastes.  The
surrounding country is pretty, albeit rather bare; nor is the Australian
wattle, of which there are now large plantations in the neighborhood, a very
attractive tree.

     This seems the fittest place for a few words on the public life of Natal,
the British colony which has been the latest to receive responsible
self-government.  This gift was bestowed upon it in 1893, not without some
previous hesitation, for the whole white population was then about 46,000, and
the adult males were little over 15,000.  However, the system then established
seems to be working smoothly.  There is a cabinet of five ministers, with two
Houses of Legislature, an Assembly of thirty-seven and a Council of eleven
members, the former elected for four years at most (subject to the chance of a
dissolution), the latter appointed by the Governor for ten years.  No regular
parties have so far been formed, nor can it yet be foreseen on what lines they
will form themselves, for the questions that have chiefly occupied the
legislature are questions on which few differences of principle have as yet
emerged.  All the whites are agreed in desiring to exclude Kafirs and
newcomers from India from the electoral franchise.  All are agreed in
approving the present low tariff, which is for revenue only; and Natal has one
of the lowest among the tariffs in force in British colonies.  (The ordinary
ad valorem rate is five per cent.) Even between the citizens of English and
those of Dutch origin, the latter less than one fourth of the whole and living
chiefly in the country, there has been but little antagonism, for the Dutch,
being less numerous than in Cape Colony, are much less organized.  Among the
English, British sentiment is strong, for the war of 1881 with the Transvaal
people not merely reawakened the memories of the Boer siege of Durban in 1842,
but provoked an anti-Boer feeling, which is kept in check only by the
necessity of conciliating the Transvaal government in order to secure as large
as possible a share of the import trade into that country. As the Natal line
of railway is a competitor for this trade with the Cape lines, as well as with
the line from Delagoa Bay, there is a keen feeling of rivalry toward Cape
Colony, which is thought to have been unfriendly in annexing the native
territories of Griqualand East and Pondoland, which lie to the west of Natal,
and which the latter colony had hoped some day or other to absorb.  When her
hopes of territorial extension were closed on that side, Natal began to cast
longing eyes on Zululand, a hilly region of rich pastures which is at present
directly administered by the Imperial Government, and which contains not only
some gold-reefs of still unascertained value, but also good beds of coal.  And
now (1897) the home government has consented to allow Natal to absorb both
Zululand and the Tonga country all the way north to the Portuguese frontier.

     The political life of Natal flows in a tranquil current, because the
population is not merely small, but also scattered over a relatively wide
area, with only two centers of population that rise above the rank of
villages.  The people, moreover, lead an easy and quiet life.  They are fairly
well off, occupying large cattle-farms, and with no great inducement to bring
a great deal of land under tillage, because the demand for agricultural
produce is still comparatively small.  Not much over one fortieth part of the
surface is cultivated, of which about two hundred thousand acres are
cultivated by Europeans, of course by the hands of colored laborers.  Sugar is
raised along the coast, and tea has lately begun to be grown.  The Natalians
have, perhaps, become the less energetic in developing the natural resources
of their country because thrice in their recent history the equable course of
development has been disturbed. In 1871 many of the most active spirits were
drawn away to the newly discovered diamond-fields of Kimberley.  In 1879 the
presence of the large British force collected for the great Zulu war created a
sudden demand for all sorts of food-stuffs and forage, which disappeared when
the troops were removed; and since 1886 the rapid growth of the Witwatersrand
gold-fields, besides carrying off the more adventurous spirits, has set so
many people speculating in the shares of mining companies that steady industry
has seemed a slow and tame affair.  At present not many immigrants come to
Natal to settle down as farmers; and the colony grows but slowly in wealth and
population.  Nevertheless, its prosperity in the long run seems assured.  It
is more favored by soil and by sky than most parts of Cape Colony.  It has an
immense resource in its extensive coal-fields.  Its trade and railway traffic
are increasing.  In proximity to these coal-fields it has deposits of iron
which will one day support large industrial communities.  And its inhabitants
are of good, solid stuff, both English, Dutch, and German, for there are many
German immigrants.  No British colony can show a population of better quality,
and few perhaps one equally good.

     Besides the railway question, which is bound up with the problem of the
port of Durban and its bar, the question which has most interest for the
people of Natal is that of the colored population, Kafir and Indian. The
Kafirs, mostly of Zulu race, number 460,000, about ten times the whites, who
are estimated at 50,000.  Nearly all live under tribal law in their own
communities, owning some cattle, and tilling patches of land which amount in
all to about three hundred and twenty thousand acres.  The law of the colony
wisely preserves them from the use of European spirits. A few of the children
are taught in mission schools, - the only educational machinery provided for
them, - and a very few have been converted to Christianity, but the vast
majority are little influenced by the whites in any way.  They are generally
peaceable, and perpetrate few crimes of violence upon whites; but however
peaceable they may have shown themselves, their numerical preponderance is
disquieting.  A Kafir may, by the Governor's gift, obtain the electoral
suffrage when he has lived under European law for at least seven years; but it
has been bestowed on extremely few, so that in fact the native does not come
into politics at all.  The Indian immigrants, now reckoned at 50,000, are of
two classes. Some are coolies, who have been imported from India under
indentures binding them to work for a term of years, chiefly on the sugar
plantations of the coast.  Many of these return at the expiration of the term,
but more have remained, and have become artisans in the towns or cultivators
of garden patches.  The other class, less numerous, but better educated and
more intelligent, consists (besides some free immigrants of the humbler class)
of so-called "Arabs" - Mohammedans, chiefly from Bombay and the ports near it,
or from Zanzibar - who conduct retail trade, especially with the natives, and
sometimes become rich.  Clever dealers, and willing to sell for small profits,
they have practically cut out the European from business with the natives, and
thereby incurred his dislike.  The number of the Indians who, under the
previous franchise law, were acquiring electoral rights had latterly grown so
fast that, partly owing to the dislike I have just mentioned, partly to an
honest apprehension that the Indian element, as a whole, might become unduly
powerful in the electorate, an act was recently (1894) passed by the colonial
legislature to exclude them from the suffrage.  The home government was not
quite satisfied with the terms in which this act was originally framed, but
has now (1897) approved an amended act which provides that no persons shall be
hereafter admitted to be electors "who (not being of European origin) are
natives or descendants in the male line of natives of countries which have not
hitherto possessed elective representative institutions founded on the
parliamentary franchise, unless they first obtain from the Governor in Council
an order exempting them from the provisions of this act." Under this statute
the right of suffrage will be withheld from natives of India and other
non-European countries, such as China, which have no representative
government, though power is reserved for the government to admit specially
favored persons.  In 1897 another act was passed (and approved by the home
government) which permits the colonial executive to exclude all immigrants who
cannot write in European characters a letter applying to be exempted from the
provisions of the law.  It is intended by this measure to stop the entry of
unindentured Indian immigrants of the humbler class.

     I have referred particularly to this matter because it illustrates one of
the difficulties which arise wherever a higher and a lower, or a stronger and
a weaker, race live together under a democratic government. To make race or
color or religion a ground of political disability runs counter to what used
to be deemed a fundamental principle of democracy, and to what has been made
(by recent amendments) a doctrine of the American Constitution.  To admit to
full political rights, in deference to abstract theory, persons who, whether
from deficient education or want of experience as citizens of a free country,
are obviously unfit to exercise political power is, or may be, dangerous to
any commonwealth.  Some way out of the contradiction has to be found, and the
democratic Southern States of the North American Union and the oligarchical
republic of Hawaii, as well as the South African colonies, are all trying to
find such a way.  Natal, where the whites are in a small minority, now refuses
the suffrage to both Indians and Kafirs; while Cape Colony, with a much larger
proportion of whites, excludes the bulk of her colored people by the judicious
application of an educational and property qualification.  The two Boer
republics deny the supposed democratic principle, and are therefore consistent
in denying political rights to people of color.  The Australian colonies have
taken an even more drastic method.  Most of them forbid the Chinese to enter
the country, and admit the dark-skinned Polynesian only as a coolie laborer,
to be sent back when his term is complete.  France, however, is more
indulgent, and in some of her tropical colonies extends the right of voting,
both for local assemblies and for members of the National Assembly in Paris,
to all citizens, without distinction of race or color.

     Maritzburg is a cheerful little place, with an agreeable society,
centered in Government House, and composed of diverse elements, for the
ministers of state and other officials, the clergy, the judges, and the
officers of the garrison, furnish a number, considerable for so small a town,
of capable and cultivated men.  There are plenty of excursions, the best of
which is to the beautiful falls of the Umgeni at Howick, where a stream, large
after the rains, leaps over a sheet of basalt into a noble cirque surrounded
by precipices.  Passing not far from these falls, the railway takes its
northward course to the Transvaal border.  The line climbs higher and higher,
and the country, as one recedes from the sea, grows always drier and more
arid.  The larger streams flow in channels cut so deep that their water is
seldom available for irrigation; but where a rivulet has been led out over
level or gently sloping ground, the abundance of the crop bears witness to the
richness of the soil and the power of the sun.  The country is everywhere
hilly, and the scenery, which is sometimes striking, especially along the
banks of the Tugela and the Buffalo rivers, would be always picturesque were
it not for the bareness of the foregrounds, which seldom present anything
except scattered patches of thorny wood to vary the severity of the landscape.
Toward the base of the great Quathlamba or Drakensberg Range, far to the west
of the main line of railway, there is some very grand scenery, for the
mountains which on the edge of Basutoland rise to a height of 10,000 feet
break down toward Natal in tremendous precipices.  A considerable coal-field
lies near the village appropriately named Newcastle, and there are valuable
deposits near the village of Dundee also, whither a branch line which serves
the collieries turns off to the east.  Traveling steadily to the north, the
country seems more and more a wilderness, in which the tiny hamlets come at
longer and longer intervals.  The ranching-farms are very large, - usually six
thousand acres, - so there are few settlers; and the Kafirs are also few, for
this high region is cold in winter, and the dry soil does not favor
cultivation.  At last, as one rounds a corner after a steep ascent, a bold
mountain comes into sight, and to the east of it, connecting it with a lower
hill, a ridge or neck, pierced by a tunnel. The ridge is Laing's Nek, and the
mountain is Majuba Hill, spots famous in South African history as the scenes
of the battles of 1881 in the Transvaal War of Independence.  Few conflicts in
which so small a number of combatants were engaged have so much affected the
course of history as these battles; and the interest they still excite
justifies a short description of the place.

     Laing's Nek, a ridge 5500 feet above the sea and rising rather steeply
about 300 feet above its southern base, is part of the Quathlamba watershed,
which separates the streams that run south into the Indian Ocean from those
which the Vaal on the north carries into the Orange River and so the Atlantic.
It is in fact on the southeastern edge of that great interior table-land of
which I have so often spoken.  Across it there ran in 1881, and still runs,
the principal road from Natal into the Transvaal Republic, - there was no
railway here in 1881, - and by it therefore the British forces that were
proceeding from Natal to reconquer the Transvaal after the outbreak of
December, 1880, had to advance to relieve the garrisons beleaguered in the
latter country.  Accordingly, the Boer levies, numbering about a thousand men,
resolved to occupy it, and on January 27 they encamped with their wagons just
behind the top of the ridge.  The frontier lies five miles farther to the
north, so that at the Nek itself they were in the territory of Natal.  The
British force of about one thousand men, with a few guns, arrived the same day
at a point four miles to the south, and pitched their tents on a hillside
still called Prospect Camp, under the command of General Sir George Colley, a
brave officer, well versed in the history and theory of war, but with little
experience of operations in the field.  Undervaluing the rude militia opposed
to him, he next day attacked their position on the Nek in front; but the
British troops, exposed, as they climbed the slope, to a well-directed fire
from the Boers, who were in perfect shelter along the top of the ridge,
suffered so severely that they had to halt and retire before they could reach
the top or even see their antagonists.  A monument to Colonel Deane, who led
his column up the slope and fell there pierced by a bullet, marks the spot.
Three weeks later (after an unfortunate skirmish on the 8th), judging the Nek
to be impregnable in front, for his force was small, but noting that it was
commanded by the heights of Majuba Hill, which rise 1400 feet above it on the
west, the British general determined to seize that point.  Majuba is composed
of alternate strata of sandstone and shale lying nearly horizontally, and
capped - as is often the case in these mountains - by a bed of hard igneous
rock (a porphyritic greenstone).  The top is less than a mile in
circumference, depressed some sixty or seventy feet in the center, so as to
form a sort of saucer-like basin.  Here has been built a tiny cemetery, in
which some of the British soldiers who were killed lie buried, and hard by, on
the spot where he fell, is a stone in memory of General Colley.  The hill
proper is fully eight hundred feet above its base, and the base about six
hundred feet above Laing's Nek, with which it is connected by a gently sloping
ridge less than a mile long.  It takes an hour's steady walking to reach the
summit from the Nek; the latter part of the ascent being steep, with an angle
of from twenty to thirty degrees, and here and there escaped into low faces of
cliff in which the harder sandstone strata are exposed.

     The British general started on the night of Saturday, February 26, from
Prospect Camp, left two detachments on the way, and reached the top of the
hill, after some hard climbing up the steep west side, at 3 A.M. with
something over four hundred men.  When day broke, at 5 A.M., the Boers below
on the Nek were astonished to see British redcoats on the sky-line of the hill
high above them, and at first, thinking their position turned, began to inspan
their oxen and prepare for a retreat. Presently, when no artillery played upon
them from the hill, and no sign of a hostile movement came from Prospect Camp
in front of them to the south, they took heart, and a small party started out,
moved along the ridge toward Majuba Hill, and at last, finding themselves
still unopposed, began to mount the hill itself.  A second party supported
this forlorn hope, and kept up a fire upon the hill while the first party
climbed the steepest parts.  Each set of skirmishers, as they came within
range, opened fire at the British above them, who, exposed on the upper slope
and along the edge of the top, offered an easy mark, while the Boers, moving
along far below, and in places sheltered by the precipitous bits of the slope,
where the hard beds of sandstone run in miniature cliffs along the hillside,
did not suffer in the least from the irregular shooting which a few of the
British tried to direct on them.  Thus steadily advancing, and firing as they
advanced, the Boers reached at last the edge of the hilltop, where the British
had neglected to erect any proper breastworks or shelter, and began to pour in
their bullets with still more deadly effect upon the hesitating and already
demoralized troops in the saucer-like hollow beneath them.  A charge with the
bayonet might even then have saved the day.  But though the order was given to
fix bayonets, the order to charge did not follow.  General Colley fell shot
through the head, while his forces broke and fled down the steep declivities
to the south and west, where many were killed by the Boer fire.  The British
loss was ninety-two killed, one hundred and thirty-four wounded, and
fifty-nine taken prisoners; while the Boers, who have given their number at
four hundred and fifty, lost only one man killed and five wounded.  No wonder
they ascribed their victory to a direct interposition of Providence on their
behalf.

     The British visitor, to whom this explanation does not commend itself, is
stupefied when he sees the spot and hears the tale.  Military authorities,
however, declare that it is an error to suppose that the occupants of a height
have, under circumstances like those of this fight, the advantage which a
height naturally seems to give them.  It is, they say, much easier for
skirmishers to shoot from below at enemies above, than for those above to pick
off skirmishers below; and this fact of course makes still more difference
when the attacking force are accustomed to hill-shooting and the defenders
above are not.  But allowing for both these causes, the attack could not have
succeeded had Laing's Nek been assailed from the front by the forces at
Prospect Camp, and probably would never have been made had the British on the
hill taken the offensive early in the day.

     We reached the top of the mountain in a dense cloud, which presently
broke in a furious thunderstorm, the flash and the crash coming together at
the same moment, while the rain quickly turned the bottom of the saucer-like
hollow almost into a lake.  When the storm cleared away what a melancholy
sight was this little grassy basin strewn with loose stones, and bearing in
its midst the graves of the British dead inclosed within a low wall!  A remote
and silent place, raised high in air above the vast, bare, brown country which
stretched away east, south, and west without a trace of human habitation.  A
spot less likely to have become the scene of human passion, terror, and
despair could hardly be imagined.  Yet it has taken its place among the most
remarkable battlefields in recent history, and its name has lived, and lives
to-day, in men's minds as a force of tremendous potency.

     Crossing Laing's Nek, - the top of which few future travelers will tread,
because the railway passes in a tunnel beneath it, - one crosses the main
watershed of South Africa, and comes out on the north upon the great rolling
plateau which stretches to the Zambesi in one direction and to the Atlantic in
another.  Four or five miles further, a little beyond the village of
Charleston, one leaves Natal and enters the South African Republic.  The
railway had just been completed at the time of our visit, and though it was
not opened for traffic till some weeks later, we were allowed to run over it
to the point where it joins the great line from Cape Town to Pretoria.  The
journey was attended with some risk, for in several places the permanent way
had sunk, and in others it had been so insecurely laid that our locomotive and
car had to pass very slowly and cautiously.  The country is so sparsely
peopled that if one did not know it was all taken up in large grazing-farms
one might suppose it still a wilderness.  Here and there a few houses are
seen, and one place, Heidelberg, rises to the dignity of a small town, being
built at the extreme southeastern end of the great Witwatersrand gold-basin,
where a piece of good reef is worked, and a mining population has begun to
gather. The country is all high, averaging 5000 feet above sea-level, and is
traversed by ridges which rise some 500 to 1000 feet more.  It is also
perfectly bare, except for thorny mimosas scattered here and there, with
willows fringing the banks of the few streams.