436 CATTLE AS AN ECONOMIC FACTOR IN SOUTH AFRICA. 



wealth ; and eventually gaining the necessary authority, he himself 

 set out with a company one hundred strong, discovering at length 

 the copper mountains of Namaqualand. He might possibly have 

 been guided to still richer discoveries had he not been dependent 

 upon oxen. Had he penetrated to the Orange River and estab- 

 lished a settlement at its mouth how different might have been 

 the course of South African history! But on this occasion, as 

 on numberless others, the history of South Africa followed the 

 tail of the ox, and Van der Stel thought it prudent on the approach 

 of summer to return ere his beasts died of thirst and starvation 

 in the land of drought. 



The net result however of these explorations, inconclusive 

 though they were, was soon seen in the increasing flow of 

 emigration northward and eastward. The ox-waggon made 

 possible this steady advance of the white man, and on his approach 

 Bushmen and Hottentots withdrew unwillingly, oftentimes 

 Harassing the advance by sweeping off the herds of the emigrants. 

 But superior weapons told in the end. Assegai and poisoned 

 arrow could not withstand the musket, and so the eastern march 

 continued unchecked. 



In 1737 the Company proclaimed the Gamtoos River the 

 boundary of the settlement ; but, pushing on, the brave pioneers of 

 Empire arrived on the .shores of Algoa Bay by 1754. Even then 

 they continued eastwards until on the banks of the Fish River 

 they met the advance guard of the Bantu hordes travelling in 

 the opposite direction, and from that time onwards the pioneers 

 and the Kaffir<? were in constant conflict. 



IV. CONT.-VCT WITH THE BaNTIT. 



When Governor van Plettenberg visited the eastern frontier 

 in 1778 he found a very unsatisfactory state of affairs obtaining. 

 From the very first the Kaffirs had taken every opportunity of 

 stealing the cattle belonging to the pioneers, and in consequence 

 commandoes were formed for the purpose of reprisals, and the 

 recapture (with interest) of the stolen stock. The Governor, 

 seeking to bring this trouble to an end, arranged with the Bantu 

 that the Fish River should be the dividing line. But the natives 

 continued their depredations, and before long the frontier was 

 again in confusion. The position on the northern frontier was 

 also, at this time, equally intolerable, for there the Bushmen were 

 raiding the farms and either driving off, or hamstringing, the 

 cattle, until commandoes were raised and sent " to exterminate 

 the pest.'' At that time some 300 miles of country along the 

 mountains was cleared, the official report stating that 503 Bush- 

 men had been killed and 239 taken prisoners. It is further 

 recorded that between 1786 and 1795. 617 horses, 17.633 cattle, 

 and 77.176 sheep were stolen by the Bushmen, and that in that 

 period 2,480 of these people were killed by the colonists. All 

 this, however, necessitated the employment of between two 

 hundred and three hundred Boers everv vear, and the fact that so 



