The

but little share in the origin of this practice. greater part of the farmers being without slaves, their sole dependence for servants is upon the Bushmen, and other aborigines of the country. When stopping at a farm-house on my late journey into the interior of South Africa, one of the first inquiries was concerning some children, who were with my people, and whether they were to be disposed of. During the same journey, I met several families of colonists, on their way to the Bushman country. An old waggon, a few cooking utensils, a span of bullocks and a few breeding sheep, with two or three old muskets, composed all the stock and furniture with which they were provided for the commencement of their establishment. Looking at the slender provision of those people, it would be difficult to say how they could expect to find subsistence for themselves and their families in the desolate country to which they were travelling. Yet numbers of families, under similar circumstances on their first emigration, have, within these few years, risen to the possession of considerable property. Being asked how they expected to succeed, they stated that the boors in that country were acquiring stock, and with the help of Bushmen, and Bushman children, whom they would be able to get for nothing, they hoped to do as well as others had done.

The cruel and barbarous custom, said in this letter to be so prevalent among the Bushmen, is a charge of too grave a character, and too pregnant with serious consequences not to call for some remarks. If the writer of this letter (whose respectability, and humanity of character I willingly acknowledge) believed the charge that is here made, he must have been

imposed upon by the misrepresentations of those who invented and propagated the calumny, to justify this nefarious traffic. In civilized, or in barbarous states, parents may be found without affection for their offspring, but these instances are exceptions to a general rule, to a law which is as powerful in its operation in the breast of a Bushman, as it is in that of his oppressor. The missionaries have lived among the Bushmen; they have had the best opportunities of observing whether there were any grounds for this charge against them; and they are unprejudiced witnesses; but I never put the question to a missionary who did not rebut the charge as a foul aspersion, and invented for the purpose of covering the atrocities committed upon that people. In my late journey in 1825, going and returning through the Bushman country, I had ample opportunities of conversing with that people, both among the farmers and in a state of nature; and their heaviest complaints were those that were occasioned by the manner in which they were robbed of their children.

In the month of September, 1826, Mr. James Clark, whom I left at Philippolis in 1825, to take charge of the Bushman mission at that place, made a journey among the wild Bushmen to the north-east of the missionary institution, for the purpose of inviting the natives at a distance to come under his instructions, and the following extract from his journal affords a satisfactory illustration of all that I have advanced on this subject:

"October 28th.-After morning prayer we observed the first strange Bushman we had seen, lying amongst, the long grass at a considerable distance, with his in

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TREATMENT OF THE BUSHMEN FROM 1817 TO 1825. 269

fant child clinging to his arms. We called to him, but he was afraid to come near us; and on our Bushman guide bringing him to us, he trembled much. He said he thought we were come to take Bushman children; but on my giving him a little tobacco, he considered us friends, and immediately set the grass on fire, when his wife and his other children appeared and followed us also."

མན་ས་

In no period of equal length, in the history of the colony of the Cape of Good Hope, has the work of death and slavery been carried on with the same degree of success which has attended it in the interim between 1817 and 1825. In 1816, we had 1600 people belonging to our Bushman stations of Toverberg and Hephzibah; and the Bushmen, though reduced and harassed by the commandoes which had been sent against them, were still the nominal possessors of the Bushman country south of the Orange river, and were to be seen existing in separate and independent kraals, in different parts of that country. But in 1825, when I visited their country, those kraals had disappeared; the missionary stations had all been put down; the country was then in the possession of the farmers; and the poor Bushmen still residing in it, were either in their service, or living like fugitives among the rocks, afraid to appear by day-light, lest they should be shot at like wild beasts.

Barrow travelled in this country in 1797, and by the following remarkable fact which he relates, we are furnished with a standard, by which we may take a comparative view of the destructive effects of the commandoes against the Bushmen, under the Dutch and the English governments :—

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it seems

"Twenty years ago," says this writer, they were less numerous and less ferocious than at the present day; and their boldness, as well as their numbers, is said of late to have very much increased. At one time they were pretty well kept under by the regular expeditions of the peasantry, which were undertaken against them. Each division had its commandant, who was authorised to raise a certain number of men, and these were furnished by government with powder and ball. It was a service at all times taken with reluctance, especially by such as were least exposed to the attacks of the savages; and during the late disturbances at Graaff-Reinet, these expeditions met with considerable interruptions. The people of Bruintjes-hoogte were the first who failed in raising their proportion of men. Zuurveldt was deserted, and Camdeboo and Zwart-Ruggens became negligent and remiss. The people of Sneeuwberg, lying nearest to the common enemy, were left to sustain the whole burden of repelling its attacks; and, had they not conducted themselves with great fortitude, perseverance, and address, that valuable part of the colony, the nursery of cattle, would now have been abandoned. A whole division called the Tarka, and a great part of another, the Sea-Cow River, and Rhinoceros-berg, had been deserted, as well as a small part of Sneeuwberg."

In the year 1774, the commando system began. Previous to that period the Bushmen were in the habit of visiting the colony on friendly terms. The manner in which these commandoes were conducted against the Bushmen under the Dutch government, has been described by Barrow and by Colonel Collins, and many copies of the original documents of those persons,

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who had the conducting of them, have been given in these volumes *. Captain Stockenstrom, in his letter of 5th June, 1822, in the printed document containing the returns to parliament, styles the commandoes against the Bushmen "cruel expeditions," and candidly admits, that the colonists were the first aggressors. We here find a discrepancy between his statement, and that of Lord Charles Somerset, who describes these commandoes as ordered out, "in consequence of the repeated depredations and murders committed by this marauding race of people."

In the whole history of Dutch colonization, there is not, perhaps, a single part of that history, which reflects so much discredit upon their national character, as their conduct towards this unfortunate race of people; and, yet it appears from the statement of Mr. Barrow, and the statement is countenanced by the details he gives, that the Bushmen had been increasing in numbers and ferocity for twenty years, previous to the period at which he wrote; that is, during the greater part of the time that the commando system existed under the Dutch government.

After making some allowance for the exaggeration, as to the increase of their numbers, which might be occasioned by the alarm of the colonists, we are justified in asserting that their sufferings, under the Dutch government, did not amount to one-tenth of what they have had to endure under the English government.

Judging from the detestation, in which this country had been accustomed to hold the tyranny of the Dutch towards the aborigines of its colonies; and from the style in which their cruelty to the Bushmen was de

* See vol. i., from page 41 to 53.