Chap. II. TREATMENT OF NATIVES BY BOERS. 31 



actually to sell themselves ; but never in any one case, within 

 the memory of man, has a Bechuana chief sold any of his 

 people, or a Bechuana man his child. Hence the necessity for 

 a foray to seize children. And those individual Boers who 

 woidd not engage in it for the sake of -slaves can seldom resist 

 the two-fold plea of a well-told story of an intended uprising 

 of the devoted tribe, and the prospect of handsome pay in the 

 division of the captured cattle besides. 



It is difficult for a person in a civilised country to conceive 

 that any body of men possessing the common attributes of 

 humanity (and these Boers are by no means destitute of the 

 better feelings of our nature) should with one accord set out, 

 after loading their own wives aud children with caresses, and 

 proceed to shoot down in cold blood men and women, of a 

 different colour, it is true, but possessed of domestic feelings and 

 affections equal to their own. I saw and conversed with children 

 in the houses of Boers who had by their own and then masters' 

 account been captured, and in several instances I traced the 

 parents of these unfortunates, though the plan approved by the 

 long-headed among the burghers is to take children so young 

 that they soon forget then parents and then native language 

 also. It was long before I could give credit to the tales of 

 bloodshed told by native witnesses, and had I received no other 

 testimony but theirs I should probably have continued sceptical 

 to this day as to the truth of the accounts ; but when I found 

 the Boers themselves, some bewailing and denouncing, others 

 glorying in the bloody scenes in which they had been themselves 

 the actors, I was compelled to admit the validity of the testi- 

 mony, and try to account for the cruel anomaly. They are all 

 traditionally religious, tracing their descent from some of the 

 best men (Huguenots and Dutch) the world ever saw. Hence 

 they claim to themselves the title of " Christians," and all the 

 coloured race are " black property " or " creatures." They being 

 the chosen people of God, the heathen are given to them for 

 an inheritance, and they are the rod of divine vengeance on the 

 heathen, as were the Jews of old. Living in the midst of a native 

 population much larger than themselves, and at fountains removed 

 many miles from each other, they feel somewhat in the same 

 insecure position as do the Americans in the Southern States. 



