The Sun.
London, England, 1846-08-05 00:00:00

ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE

CAFFER WAR.
(From a private Correspondent of the Northern Whig.)
Cape Town, May 15.
You will have seen that we are at war with our Caffer,
or, to write more correctly. our Kafir, neighbours, who
lie along our North-EAstern boundary.
There is no good map of the Cape colony. Arrow-
smith's, and that published by the Useful Knowledge
people, are both incorrect. Our boundary, however, is
the Great Fish River and the Kat River on the east.
In 1819, we bad advanced our limits to the Keir Kamma

River, farther up. But the chiefs_ and People had
been allowed to settle westward of Keis Kamma, and
had remained there until in the course of time com-
plaints of depredations on the colonists became so loud
and general that a partial expulsion of some of the
tribes was determined upon. The measure was carried
into effect with some severity, and at a season of the year
unfavourable to the Kafir.. They resented the clearance
like Tipperary boys. But they nursed their wrath.
and kept it warm, until they had matured their
designs, and extended their confederacy ; and then, in
December, 1834, they rushed •in numbers into the
colony, burning, plundering, and murdering, right and
left. Sir Benjamin D'Urban, then Governor (under
whom Sir Harry Smith, who won the battle of Aliwal,

the other day, then served), hastened to the frontier,
called out the inhabitants, collected a large force,
gradually worked the Kafirs out of the colony, followed
them over the boundary, and at length granted them
terms of peace, by which a new province was added to
the Cape colony, the eastern boundary of which then
became the Great Kye River. Lord Glenelg, taking an
unfavourable view of the causes of the war, and believing
it, though apparently. aggressive on the part of the
Kafirs, to have been, in reality, defensive, rescinded the
D'Urban policy, and ordered that the territory between
the Keir Kamma and the Kye should be unconditionally
abandoned, and that the space between the Great Fish
River and the Keis Kamma (called sometimes the neutral
territory, and sometimes the ceded territory), should be
surrendered to the occupation of the Kafirs, who con-
sented to receive it as a boon, and to regard it as subject
to resumption by the colony, in case of bad behaviour.
The conduct of Lord Glenelg, in thus undoing what Sir
Benjamin D'Urban had done, is even yet a subject of
fierce contention in the colony. But the immense ma-
jority are against him; and, for my own part, looking
at the matter after a ten years' experience, I think his
conduct was unwise. He applied to the lands in ques-
tion English ideas of ownership, inapplicable to the
Kafirs and the nature of their occupation. They are,
themselves, like every other tribe in South Africa, upon
ground which their old men remember the time they
took possession of. Their descent is not clearly traced,
but they are not the aborigines. They found in those ter-
ritories the Hottentots, who had exterminated the Bush-
mans; and the peculiar click of the horrid Hottentot
tongue has been, to some extent, adopted by their con-
querors, whose original language (judging from such
kindred dialects as I have heard spoken, was tor-
mented by no such miserable sound. And in his
estimate of the Kafir character, Lord Glenelg was mis-
led by a good man's sympathy. The Kafir, certainly,
never sheds biood for the mere tiger-like delight
of shedding it, like the miserable, half-human Bushman.
But he is an incorrigible liar and thief, uncivilizable (so
to speak), beyond, I imagine, any other savage ; and,
though. he does not murder for mere fun, he discovers no
regard for either your life or his own, when cattld are
in question. The missionaries have wholly failed to
make any impression on them. Witch-doctors and rain-
makers never had more influence in Kafirland than at

this moment, and missionaries, I regret to say, never had
less ; while I have reason to know, that the custom of
the forcible abduction and violation of females, after
having been for a time discontinued, has been renewed
by Sandilli, the paramount chief of the Gaika tribe, the
most numerous and warlike of our immediate neighbours,
and has been agreed to be put in force against the
families of missionaries, and missionary stations,
generally. In regard, moreover, to the cause of the war,
Lord Glenelg refined too much, and applied reasonings
two much concatenated for the Kafir understanding. I
do not find that they themselves defend their
attack upon the grounds on which the Secre-
tary of State supposed them to have been driven
to it. But, besides all this, the thing was done; and the
true policy, I apprehend, would have been, to regard it
as a fait accompli. The Kafirs had become British sub-
jects, had received British laws, and, in time, might
have bean insensibly imbued with the rudiments of Bri-
tish civilisation. lam far from blaming Lord Glenelg.
His dispatches, as published, do him, if he wrote them—
or Mr. Stephen, were he the writer—much honour. If
he erred, he erred on the noblest side. The Colonial
Office should not be judged by the -event. So judged.
Lord Stanley's New Zealand policy may well be called
mischievous. So judged, Lord Gleneig's Cape policy
may well be called the same. Both aimed to secure the
rights of the aborigines. Both may end in wars, in
which the question simply is—shall the white man die
under the native, or the na' ive die under the white man?
This is a war of which all past history is a prophecy of
the ultimate result. At this moment there is, upon our
frontier, w beginning of this end.

When the D'Urban policy was overthrown, treaties
with the chiefs were entered into. With some of the
mummery of that of Waitangi, they contained a princi-
ple fully comprehended by the Kafirs. The Chiefs were
to repress cattle-stealing by their people ; and, when
stolen cattle were traced over the border, the Chief of
jhe territory into which the "spoor," or trace, was car-
ried, was to compensate the owner, and punish the thief.
To work this system, and render a vigilant executive
authority compatible with a supreme Government, six
hundred miles distant, in Cape Town, a new officer,
called the Lieutenant-Governor of the Eastern districts,
was created. The first appointed was, probably, the
most remarkable man ever produced in this colony, Sir
Andreas Stockenstrom. His father, who was Landrost,
or Chief Magistrate, of Graaf Reinet, fell in a bor-
der foray, under the assigais of the Kafirs. Sir
Andreas succeeded to the office, and rose, by energy
and ability, still higher. As Lieutenant-Governor,
he might have done the colony much service. But
he had given evidence, in London, before the Abori-
gines Committee of 1837 ; and his evidence was sup-
posed to have pressed har on the colonial character,
and, therefore, on his return, as Lieutenant-Governor, he
was received with one roar of indignation, from Gra-
hamstown to Colesberg, which, being a man of excitable
temperament, disturbed , him more thu.n, perhaps, was
necessary. After remaining a couple of years, he went
home, in Sir George Napier's time, to resign. Lord Gle-
nelg, to whom he tendered his resignation, refused to ac-
cept it, and pressed his continuance in office. Then
Lord Glenelg awoke, one morning, and found his ser-
vices dispensed with ; and Lord Normanby quitted Ire
land, to take charge of the Colonial-office. The new
Secretary re-considered the matter, and wrote to Stocken-
strom, that, in consequence of his unpopularity with
the colonists, he considered him unfit to serve

the public asLieutenant• Governor. Perhaps this was
questionable ground to take. How long would Lord
Normanby have been Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, if
unpopularity with those whom the Government was de-
termined to check and control, had been deemed a good
ground for recalling him? Then there was, as I have
heard, much writing to and fro between the ex-Lieu-
tenant-Governor and the Secretary of State ; but no-
thing very satisfactory. The end was, that Lord John
Russell, who exchanged offices with Lord Normanby,
made Sir Andreas a Baronet, and gave him a compen-
satory pension of 7001. a-year, charged on the colonial
revenue. He has since lived here in private life, be-
having with much prudence and circumspection. But
to myself, as to all who know him, it is a source of
no little surprise, that he has not received a Govern-
ment in some other possession, or, his not in some
other way, been brought again into the public service
of the Crown.

Had Stockenstrom remained to work the treaties
which he framed, depredations might have been sup-
pressed. He knew the Chiefs, and they knew him ; and
every inch of their difficult country was as familiar to
him as to themselves. Colonel Hare, of the 27th, a right
-good soldier, succeeded Stockenstrom in 1839, and has
since administered the frontier system. Early and late
have he and the successive Governors, Sir George
Napier and Sir Peregrine Maitland, worked at this ques-
tion. If Peel's difficulty be Ireland, the difficulty of
every Cape Government has been the Boers and Blacks
beyond us. Sometimes winking at depredations ; some-
times threatening chastisement ; sometimes trying sub-
sidies ; sometimes placing troops within the ceded terri-
torythus ;
thingssometiwmuersemouvui. moving against
against a particular delinquent;
cry, from the frontier to
Cape Town, was continually for protection. Horses and
oxen were constantly disappearing, carried off with a
dexterity and daring truly wonderful. The mutual
understanding, or common consciousness, that seems to
exist between a Kafir and an ox he never saw before,
beats mesmerism. A peculiar whistle sets the creature
flying. But the farmer pays for the Kafir's whistle,
which is rather hard.
Sir Peregrine Maitland relieved Sir George Napier,
in the beginning of 1844. When he visited the frontier
in the September of that year, besieged by complaining
colonists, he summoned the Chiefs, remonstrated with
them, and, in order, if possible, to stop their plunder,
remodelled the treaties ; and, for the purpose of further
checking them, availed himself of a power, expressly re-
served by treaty, to establish a military post in the ceded
territory. The erection of post Victoria, and the brave
words previously uttered, for a time abated the nuisance;
but when a conflict beyond the Orange River, between
our emigrant Boers and the Baastards, or Griquas, called
away the troops from the eastern frontier, to put down
the Boers, and protect the Griquas in their lands, de-
predations began afresh, our complaints became less
regarded, and a tone of insolence not previously assumed
began to characterise the communications of the Chiefs.
Compensation under treaty was refused or delayed on
the most frivolous pretences. It 'was easy to see that
war was in the wind.
Such a state of feeling was but natural. The passion
of a Kafir for cattle, like the passion of a miser for gold,
is much more intense than a mere desire of property, or
of what property will procure. But even cattle are with
him only a means to an end. It is with cattle that he
buys his wives.
A party, sometimes called with us " the War Party,"
and sometimes " Young Kafirland," has brought on the
hostilities in which we are now engaged.
The young men have never felt the power of the
colony, having reached maturity since the last war ;