THE TRANSVAAL. 183 



an invasion, but as the leaders were mostly men 

 in official positions, who were, as a rule, making 

 their small piles by a systematic pillage of the 

 Kaffir tribes within or near the Transvaal 

 boundaries, an organised movement in sufficient 

 strength became hopeless. Shortly after the 

 restoration of the country by England, poverty 

 and famine prevailed to an extent which will never 

 be known to any but eyewitnesses, of whom I was 

 one ; and had the discovery of gold been delayed 

 for a very few years, the Transvaal would have 

 become a huge cemetery for the majority of its 

 inhabitants. This may seem now to be an 

 exaggerated view of the situation prevailing at 

 the period alluded to, but it is nevertheless a sub- 

 stantially correct one. The providential discovery 

 of gold alone averted a catastrophe in the very 

 nick of time, just as Sir Bartle Frere's destruction 

 of the Zulu power had previously saved the Trans- 

 vaal from wholesale massacre, which, ruined and 

 but poorly furnished with obsolete arms, and no 

 ammunition to speak of, the Boers would have been 

 powerless to escape from, or at best could only 

 have saved their lives by flight and by sacrificing 

 the whole of the live stock on which they were 



