CHAPTER XI.
BRITISH KAFRARIA.
It is not improbable that many Englishmen who have not
been altogether inattentive to the course of public affairs as
affecting Great Britain may be unaware that we once possessed
in South Africa a separate colony called British
Kafraria, with a governor of its own, and a form of government
altogether distinct from that of its big brother the
Cape Colony. Such however is the fact, though the territory
did not, perhaps, attract much notice at the time of its
annexation. Some years after the last Kafir war which may
have the year 1850 given to it as its date, and after that
wonderful Kafir famine which took place in 1857,—the
famine which the natives created for themselves by destroying
their own cattle and their own food,—British Kafraria
was made a separate colony and was placed under the rule
of Colonel Maclean. The sanction from England for the
arrangement had been long given, but it was not carried out
till 1860. It was not intended that the country should be
taken away from the Kafirs;—but only the rule over the
country, and the privilege of living in accordance with their
own customs. Nor was this privilege abrogated all at once,
or abruptly. Gradually and piecemeal they were to be
