TRAVELS IN 
CHAP. VI. 
Miscellaneous Observations, made on a military Expedition to the Kaffer 
Frontier^ intended chiefly to shew the Character and Disposition of the 
. 'Boors. 
1* ROM the moment that the departure of the Earl of Ma- 
cartney for England was made known in the distant parts of 
the colony, the ignorant and misguided boors, excited by that 
party of mischievous, and not less ignorant, persons in Cape 
Town, who had long shewn their hatred to good order, seemed 
to think that with his Lordship had departed all authority- 
and the means of bringing them to legal punishment. Their 
restless and turbulent minds and, above all, their avaricious 
and iniquitous views upon the harmless Kaffers, could no 
longer brook restraint ; and they determined, at a select 
meeting, as one of them observed in a letter to his friend at 
the Cape, " Now that the old Lord was gone away, to prove 
" themselves true patriots." 
The first act of their patriotic spirit was an attempt to take 
by violence, out of the hands of justice, a criminal whom the 
Landrost, or chief magistrate of the district, had forwarded, 
under the escort of a dragoon, towards the Cape. His crime, 
which was an act of forgery on orphan property committed to 
the care of a constituted board in the Cape called the IVees- 
kammer, or chamber for managing the effects of minors and 
1 
