138 SOUTH AFRICA. 



ancestress resided. To the considerable mental 

 powers Arnott possessed others less admirable 

 were added, and after a few years of practice in 

 Colesberg, he found it advisable to remove to 

 Griqualand West, where he became Secretary and 

 adviser to Waterboer, one of the two reigning 

 chiefs in that country. The name of the other was 

 Cornelius Kok. 



Arnott's scheme was to assert and endeavour 

 to substantiate an " ex post facto " claim on the 

 part of Waterboer to the position of having always 

 been paramount chief, and that, as a natural con- 

 sequence, all acts done by Cornelius Kok un- 

 authorised by Waterboer's sign manual were 

 invalid "pro facto." 



This claim was an entire novelty as fictitious 

 as new and if Lord Kimberley had taken the 

 trouble to examine certain musty documents in 

 his office, he would have become cognisant of facts 

 proving the position of Kok as an independent 

 chief, acknowledged as such formally by the 

 British Government, and that Waterboer was never, 

 in the native sense of the word, a chief at all, but 

 inherited merely a "quasi" right to the position, 

 as being the son and heir of his father, who was 



