354 APPENDIX. 
colony. Preparations they may have made, and plans they 
may have formed previous to their murderous attack on the 
frontier, but they contrived to keep the Missionaries en- 
tirely in the dark, both as to their hostile intentions and 
their preparations. From the disposition of their forces, 
one can scarcely refrain, in the absence of. positive evidence, 
from believing that they must have laid their plans with no 
ordinary degree of sagacity; but whatever the Frontier 
Caffers may have intended, the following statement will 
show you that if anything existed like a positive intention 
on the part of their countrymen to enter the Colony in hostile 
array, they were perfect adepts at concealing their feelings. 
In company with my respected brother, the Rev. J. Ross, of 
the Glasgow Missionary Society, on the very eve of the 
Caffer irruption, I travelled over a considerable part of the 
Caffer country. This journey we began on the 9th, and 
ended on the 13th of December. In the course of it we 
visited and preached to the Caffers about the Rabuse and 
the Igolonei, whom we found not only attentive to our 
message, but extremely kind and peaceable. ‘Thus, Sir, 
you have a proof that the Caffers gave no reason to the 
Missionaries to lead them to imagine that their intentions 
towards the Colony were changed. 
«The first indications of the irruption presented themselves 
to my observation on the 17th December. Never had I 
seen such commotions among the Caffers before. 1 found 
that the trader at our Station, an excellent young man, was 
placed in very trying circumstances on account of the con- 
duct of the covetous and blood-thirsty natives. On compar- 
ing the accounts which I could collect, I began to be appre- 
hensive of the destruction of the property of the traders: I 
feared also that their lives might be endangered; and it was 
very apparent that the safety of the Missionaries was some- 
