The private correspondenc...
The Times, 1824-01-29T00:00:00

The private correspondence from the Cape duringthe. last few months adds grievously to the impressions long since received of the depIorable state in which the poor emnigrants have found themselves. For three years succes- sively, the crops of wheat and Indian corn have been fa- mished by drought or been destroyed by a species of blight called rust. The soil and climate were discovered from this sad experience-to be utterly unfit for purposes of til- lage husbandry, and the resources of the settlers were wholly exhausted. Many of them are said to have applied to Lord CHARLES SOMERSET for a conveyance to England or to Van Diemen's Land; but the answer, as reported in the letters, was, that no means of such conveyance were at his Excellency's disposal." Sir R. DoNKIN, who had been Governor ad interim z during Lord C. SohrEssET's visit home, bad satisfied himself that the grants of land to individuals were too confined tD furnish them with food for their cattle, and had accordingly, directed a survey, of the different loca. tions, for the avowed purpose of extending them; but this liberal intention appears to have been set aside, and a peremptory refusal given to Lord C.SOMERSET, to fulfil the promise of the acting Governor, although communicated in writiug to the settlers. Feelings unfriendly io the emi - grants are said to have been excited in the breast of the Governor, by an address expressive of their gratitude to Sir R. DONEIN. This last statement we fain woald hope to be untrue; since, if well founded, irmust be received as evidence against his Lordship of a most unworthy and ig- noble spirit. With a view to. the safety of the emigrants, Sir R. DON-KN had established military posts in thu neighbourhood of the Fish River-Fort Wiltshire, in ad- vance of that river-apd Fredericksburg,h, between the Fish River and the Beeka. The latter was half way on the route towards the Ca?fres-was formed of half-pay officers and other militaty acquainted with the/mode of Caffre warfare-and formed an effectual protection to thesettlements newly created. Immediately, say the. letters, on Lord C. SOsfERSrT'S return, all these safeguards of the colony wvere withdrawn. The town of Batburst, in the centre of the emigrant country, was stripped at once of its garrison-wvas deprived of its rank as county town-the capital of the unfortunate persons who had expended their all in buildings and domestic establishments there, was lost, and that whole country left at the mercy of the Caffre de- predations. The consequence was, that the cattle were car- ried off by droves; the colonists, Dutch as well as English, attacked by the plunderers in open day; and some of them savagely murdered. Lord C. SOMERSET is accused in these accounts, but on what authority Nve cannot state, with endeavouring to infuse into the Government at home, against the emigrants, the same unfavourable spirit bywhieh his own mind was actuated. A private meeting of a few respectable settlers, for the peaceful purpose of selecting a deputation to the Governor to represent to him their miser- able and destitute condition,was prohibited by public notice, and by a thrcat, that if they should venture to assemble, they would be dispersed by force! We have extracted from a volumninous statement, already made public through a re- spectable provincial paper here (the Hampshire Tlegraph), a small portion of the grievances by which our fellow-sub- jects, in their hapless exile, are at this moment saidE to be afflicted. The account may possibly be fbunded in truth: it is, therefore, a fit subject for inquiry. What the mexits of Lord C. Som.Ensias may be, independent of his profuse salary, and power almost unlimited, we know not. His Lordship is one ot a Ducal tamily, more than one of whom have been regularly quartered on the national purse of England, and no individual of whom, that we hear of, has ever dared to vote against the existing Administration.