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 CHAPTER XI.

BRITISH KAFRARIA.

It is not improbable that many Englishmen who have not been altogether inattentive to the course of public affairs as affecting Great Britain may be unaware that we once possessed in South Africa a separate colony called British Kafraria, with a governor of its own, and a form of government altogether distinct from that of its big brother the Cape Colony. Such however is the fact, though the territory did not, perhaps, attract much notice at the time of its annexation. Some years after the last Kafir war which may have the year 1850 given to it as its date, and after that wonderful Kafir famine which took place in 1857,—the famine which the natives created for themselves by destroying their own cattle and their own food,—British Kafraria was made a separate colony and was placed under the rule of Colonel Maclean. The sanction from England for the arrangement had been long given, but it was not carried out till 1860. It was not intended that the country should be taken away from the Kafirs;—but only the rule over the country, and the privilege of living in accordance with their own customs. Nor was this privilege abrogated all at once, or abruptly. Gradually and piecemeal they were to be