Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/222

 170 SOUTH AND EAST AFRICA. town in Basutoland, stands at an elevation of over 5,000 feet at the foot of a table-shaped bluff on the east side of a stream flowing to the Caledon. From the summit of this rock the famous King Moshesh, or the " Shaver," so called because he had succeeded in " shaving off " the heads of all his rivals, long defied the attacks of the Zulus by rolling down huge boulders on his assailants. Ultimately he managed to conciliate these fugitives from their own land by sending them cattle and offering them his friendship. Most of the other towns in Basutoland, such as Leribi, Berea, and Bethesda, have at different times been the residence of tribal chiefs or missionary stations. Maseru, which lies in the Thaba Bossigo district, not far from the left bank of the Caledon, is the residence of the British Commissioner. The Basuto chiefs have ceased to be anything more than the subordinates of the European magistrates. Against their sentences appeal may be made to the English tribunal, which decides definitely. Nevertheless a picho, or general assembly of all the tribes, still meets annually for the discussion of affairs of common interest. The marriage laws have been modified, and polygamists are permitted to register the stipulated payment of cattle only for the purchase of their first wife, all subsequent matrimonial contracts being null and void before the law. As amongst the Kafirs on the eastern slope of the mountains, the hut tax is fixed at ten shillings. The use of alcoholic drinks is officially interdicted, but a brjsk contraband trade is carried on between Basutoland and the Orange Free State. Even before the present administration the great chiefs were forbidden to drink beer. In their position as judges they are expected always to keep a per- fectly clear head, and the rule has now been usefully extended to all their subjects. Kafihlam). Since the ye:ir 1885 the eastern slope of the main coast range comprised between the rivers Kei and Um-Fumodna has, like Basutoland, been entirely annexed to Cape Colony. But British immigrants and dealers still penetrate very cautiously into the country, and in certain districts are for the present even forbidden to settle at all. The su[)reme colonial authority is represented by magistrates residing with the tribal chiefs, and these magistrates at the same time take care that the lands reserved to the Kafirs are not encroached on by Eujopean squatters. Nevertheless the ceaseless work of onward pressure, which began with the landing of the Dutch at the foot of Table Mountain, still continues in virtue of a sort of natural law, owing to which the two colonies of the Cape and Natal constantly tend to join hands across the intervening Kafir territory and thus form a continuous zone of European settlements from the Orange estuary to Delagoa Bay. This racial tendency is all the more active that Kafirland presents special attractions to immigrants, being at once the most salubrious, fertile, and pic- turesque region in the whole of Austral Africa. In 1877, twenty years after the failure of a first attempt at colonisation, the British settlers were in'ited to