Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/165

 their Kafir neighbours, whose domain they were gradually encroaching upon. On both sides predatory expeditions and cattle-lifting raids were incessant; but towards the close of 1434, the year of the great trek, these troubles broke out into a general war. The English were not prepared for the organised attack of a whole nation. In the course of a few weeks all the eastern border lands were overrun, the farmsteads given to the flames, the herds captured to the number of about two hundred and fifty thousand, and all the squatters either driven west or overtaken and massacred. Governor d'Urban thereupon summoned all available

forces, and fell with irresistible fury on the invaders. A terrible retribution overtook them, and a new strip of territory was annexed to the colony. Nevertheless the natives had on many occasions been treated with such flagrant injustice that the British Minister, yielding to the pressure of public opinion, refused to sanction the repressive and other measures adopted by the Colonial Government. With a candour rare in the history of Cabinet administration, he even declared that the Kafirs had ample justification for their conduct during the war, that they were in their perfect right in endeavouring to resist the encroachments of their neighbours, and in procuring by force the reparation they were unable to obtain by other means, and that the conquered, not the conquerors, were in the right in the first instance.