378 CRITIC A L PERIOD IN SO UTH A ERICA N IIISTOR Y 
aiiarcliy into which the re{)ublic drifted, of the danger of a gen- 
eral uprising of the natives throughout the whole of South Africa, 
of tlie appeal made to the British government by a portion of the 
Boer nation, and of the strenuous efforts of the president of the 
republic to arouse the nation at large to a sense of its “ imi)ending 
dissolution ” and to induce it to enter a confederation with the 
British colonies on the model of the Dominion of Canada is all 
impartially related in the volumes of Appletons’ Annual Cyclo- 
l)a?dia covering the period in question.* 
All writers are agreed that at this time the Boers were utterly 
unable to defend themselves against the natives; their forces in 
the field had been overwhelmingly defeated and protection for 
their families and i)roi)ert3' could be secured only by the pay- 
ment of hlacUmail to the native chiefs. To add to the demoral- 
ization created hv the success of the Kaffirs in the north the 
Zulu king threatened invasion from the south, and the Boers 
were declared l)y their own president to be without any proper 
ct)Uception of their obligations as a civilized government. Em- 
boldened by their success against the republic the natives every- 
where assumed a menacing attitude, and a conflagration that 
would have overspread the whole of South Africa seemed on the 
verge of breaking out. Whether the Boers had at that time any 
idea of reasserting tlieir independence after the subjugation of 
their enemies bv the British there is no evidence to show, but it 
is an indisputal)le fact that they exchanged their independent 
sovereignly, such as it was, for British })rotection, if not with an 
enthusiasm at variance with their stolid character, at least with 
undi.sguised satisfaction and a manifest sense of relief. 
Two years or a little more after the annexation of the Trans- 
vaal the British, after sustaining several serious reverses, com- 
))letely broke the Zulu power and captured its Avarlike king, 
CetewaA'o. Three months later Secocoeni, the Kaffir chieftain 
to whose military skill the com ]>lete overthrow of the Boers had 
l)een largelv due, surrendered to British authority. This sub- 
jugation of the natiyes paved the way to that reestablishment of 
tlie Boer republic which took place the following A'ear. 
\\diile the two cases are not in every respect analogous, the 
encroachments of the British on the dominions of the Boers are 
not unlike those of our own frontiersmen on the treaty reserva- 
*See Appletons’ Annual Cycloptedia, New Series, Vols. I-II, 1876-'77, Articles, 
“Africa," “Cape Colony,” and “Transvaal Republic.” See also the Book of Facts, 
Harper Brothers, New York, 1895, p. 807. 
