520 FACTORS IN NATIVE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT. 



rose to eminence, only to decline, and Holland, France and Britain 

 were so deeply, and so terribly, concerned, as each strove to 

 establish their pre-eminence in the trade with the East. 



Apart from the actual discovery of the land, the ship played 

 no mean part in gleaning- information of the coast that was being 

 skirted, and strangely enough, that information was secured mainly 

 by the disasters which befell the mariners, who, being cast up on 

 the coasts of Kaffraria, were under the necessity of making their 

 way overland to Capetown or Delagoa Bay, and in so doing 

 were brought into contact with the Natives. In some cases ships, 

 setting out from India, were never heard of more, and were no 

 doubt cast up on our inhospitable shores, those who were fortu- 

 nate enough to escape with their lives being sometimes killed by 

 the Natives, and at other times carefully tended by them. In 

 all probability the experiences of those who got ashore from the 

 Grostfcnor in 1782 were repeated in some instances of which 

 we have no record, because no survivor succeeded in making his 

 way to a settlement ; but in any case it is a fact that no small 

 amount of information concerning the natives, and the conditions 

 obtaining in the Interior, came to light in this particular way. 

 The late Dr. G. McCall Theal, in his " History of South Africa," 

 has deemed it of such importance that a lengthy chapter is 

 devoted to the subject of the shipwrecks. 



One such tragedy of the sea became transformed into a 

 tragedy of the land, the particulars being quite well authenticated, 

 and lingering even to our own day as a tradition in Pondoland. 



It appears that a vessel unknown was wrecked near to the 

 Umzimvubu River mouth, and that six persons in all were saved, 

 one of whom, named Quma by the natives, became the wife of a 

 principal chief. On his death, the brother, defying the ancient 

 law and custom, married his deceased brother's wife, and so 

 Oiuna became his great wife. The Rev. Stephen Kay actually 

 saw her children, as did another traveller. Van Reenen by- name. 

 The latter, in his Journal dated 4th November, 1790, describing 

 the descendant? of this party, states : 



We found tliat the}' were descendant^ from whites, some, too, from 

 slaves of mixed colour, and natives of the East Indies. 



It is thus clear that some of the descendants would have 

 distinctively European characteristics, and apparently the parents 

 themselves attained a remarkable ascendancy and exercised a 

 notable influence over the whole tribe, their children retaining 

 and continuing sufficient of those characteristics to make an 

 appreciable efifect upon the tribe itself. At a time when, as we 

 have seen, no Native would venture to plant anything other than 

 ihe usual Kaffir corn, mealies, sugar-cane, and pum]:)kins, for fear 

 of thus rendering themselves unclean and so (according to. their 

 superstitions) prevent rain, this little colony ai:)pears to have 

 introduced the sweet potato, which is cultivated in those distant 

 parts of Pondoland to this day — in itself quite an achievement. 



At the time of which we are speaking, the Amaquean tribe 

 dwelt between the Umtata and the Umzimvubu Rivers, and there 

 their descendants would no doubt still be living had not Tshaka's 



