SOUTHERN AFRICA. 287 



est spots have been laid desolate^ and many hundreds of 

 the border colonists reduced to ruin^ are the inciting causes 

 assio-ned by the emigTants for the unprecedented and hazar- 

 dous step they have taken. 



If it be impossible to view the violent remedy soug-ht by 

 these oppressed but misguided men in other than a criminal 

 %ht^ yet no unprejudiced person^ who has visited the more 

 remote districts of this unhappy colony^ will hesitate to ac- 

 knowledg-e that the evils they comj^lain of actually exist. 

 Long subjected to the pilfering's of a host of Hottentot va- 

 grants, whose lives are passed in one perpetual round of 

 idleness, dehnquency, and brutish intoxication on the thresh- 

 old of the gin-shop, the South African settler has lately, in 

 too many instances, been reduced from comparative affluence 

 to want, by being unseasonably, and without adequate com- 

 pensation, bereft of the services of his slaves— who, prone 

 to villany, and no longer compelled to labour, have only 

 served to swell the swarm of drones by which it is his destiny 

 to be persecuted. Far greater than these, however, are the 

 evils that have arisen out of the perverse misrepresentations 

 of cantino- and designing men, to ^vhose mischievous and 

 gratuitous interference, veiled under the cloak of philan- 

 thropy, is principally to be attributed the desolated condition 

 of the eastern frontier. Bounded by a dense and almost im- 

 penetrable jungle, to defend which nine times the military 

 force now employed would barely be adequate ; and flanked 

 by a population of eighty thousand dire, irreclaimable 

 savages, naturally inimical. Avarlike, and predatory, the 

 hearths of the Cape-border colonists have for years past been 

 deluo-ed with the blood of their nearest and dearest relatives. 

 And whilst, during the unprovoked inroads of these ruthless 

 barbarians, their wives and helpless offspring have been 

 mercilessly butchered before their eyes j whilst their corn- 

 fields have been laid waste, their flocks swept off, and their 



