24 EFFECTS OF SI,AVE-SYSTEM. 



their emigrations towards the more effeminate Bechuanas, 

 have left their quarrels with the Caffres to be settled by 

 the English, and their wars to be paid for by English gold. 

 The Bakwains at Kolobeng had the spectacle of various 

 tribes enslaved before their eyes — the Bakatla, the 

 Batldkua, the Bahukeng, the Bamosetla, and two other 

 tribes of Bakwains were all groaning under the oppression 

 of unrequited labour. This would not have been felt as 

 so great an evil, but that the young men of those tribes, 

 anxious to obtain cattle, the only means of rising to 

 respectability and importance among their own people, 

 were in the habit of sallying forth, like our Irish and 

 Highland reapers, to procure work in the Cape Colony. 

 After labouring there three or four years, in building stone 

 dykes and dams for the Dutch farmers, they were well 

 content if at the end of that time they could return with 

 as many cows. On presenting one to their chief they 

 ranked as respectable men in the tribe ever afterwards. 

 These volunteers were highly esteemed among the Dutch, 

 under the name of Mantatees. They were paid at the 

 rate of one shilling a day, and a large loaf of bread between 

 six of them. Numbers of them, who had formerly seen 

 me about twelve hundred miles inland from the Cape, 

 recognised me with the loud laughter of joy when I was 

 passing them at their work in the Roggefelt and Bokkefelt, 

 within a few days of Cape Town. I conversed with them 

 and with elders of the Dutch Church, for whom they were 

 working, and found that the system was thoroughly satis- 

 factory to both parties. I do not believe that there is 

 one Boer, in the Cashan or Magaliesberg country, who 

 would deny that a law was made, in consequence of this 

 Labour passing to the colony, to deprive these labourers 

 Df their hardly-earned cattle, for the very cogent reason, 

 that, " if they want to work, let them work for us their 

 masters," though boasting that in their case it would 

 not be paid for. I can never cease to be most unfeignedly 

 thankful that I was not born in a land of slaves. No one 

 can understand the effect of the unutterable meanness of 

 the slave-system on the minds of those who, but for the 

 strange obliquity which prevents them from feeling the 

 degradation of not being gentlemen enough to pay for 

 services rendered, would be equal in virtue to ourselves. 

 Fraud becomes as natural to them as " paying one's way " 

 is to the rest of mankind. 



