OF THE BORDER POLICY. 139 
notorious; and they have for years formed the sub- 
ject of complaint by the Missionaries, by the settlers 
of all classes and of every variety of opinion on other 
points, and even by not afew of the officers of 
Government, civil and military, who have found them- 
selves embarrassed and thwarted in their zealous 
efforts to promote the peace of the frontier, by the 
contradictory and inappropriate regulations which 
have been from time to time prescribed to them. 
“ In consequence of certain difliculties and scruples 
respecting international law, (the absurdity of at- 
tempting to apply the strict rules of which, in the 
intercourse betwixt a civilized and barbarous people, 
I shall not now stop to prove,) no direct and official 
mode of communication betwixt the Chiefs and the 
Colonial authorities has been established. There 
does not exist a single written treaty, to which, 
after due explanation, the Caffer Chiefs have become 
contracting parties. I beg leave to furnish the fol- 
lowing statement, as an illustration of the evils arising 
from this source :— 
“ A kind of agreement was made with ie ie in 
1819, by which our Government understood that he 
ceded the lands, now called the ‘ Neutral Territory;’ 
but the Chiefs of the Amagonakwaybie tribe, Pato, 
KKama, Cobus, &c., affirm that they were not parties 
to that treaty, although they lost by it the whole of 
their ancient territory, and that by the usages of the 
Caffer nation, Gaika, the Chief of another tribe, had 
