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 legs. Though a Governor of ours had made the award we were not bound to remedy Dutch injustice. But now what are we to do? Are we to give back the country with its British and Dutch inhabitants,—a dozen families at Bloomhof and a dozen more at Christiana,—and the farmers here and there to the dominion of Gassibone and his Batlapins? I think I may say that most certainly we shall do nothing of the kind,—but with what excuse we shall escape the necessity I do not see so clearly. In the meantime there is the Landroost at Christiana,—now paid with British gold, who before the annexation was paid with Transvaal notes worth 5s. to the nominal pound. When I talked to him of Keate's award and of Gassibone's line, he laughed at me. Annexation to British rule with all the beauties of British punctuality was a great deal too good a thing to be sacrificed to a theory of justice in favour of such a poor race of unfighting Kafirs as the Batlapins! I have no doubt that he was right, and that the Transvaal Colony will maintain a Landroost at Christiana as long as Landroosts remain in that part of South Africa.

But the question was a very vital one in that neighbourhood. As I was passing over the Vaal in a punt to the Orange Free State a Boer who had heard my name, and who paid me the undeserved compliment of thinking my opinion on such a matter worth having, consulted me on his peculiar case. After the Keate award, when by the decision then made the portion of territory in question had been adjudged to be the property of Gassibone and his tribe, this Boer had bought land of the Kafirs. The land so pro