Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XII.djvu/165

Rh affairs belong ex officio to both. The 12 additional members of the legislative council are representatives from the counties and boroughs, elected by voters possessing freehold property worth £50, or occupying house or land at a rent of £10 a year; all voters are eligible to membership. Two of these representatives, designated by the lieutenant governor, together with the chief justice and the senior officer in command of the troops, constitute the four additional members of the executive council. The judicial system comprises a supreme court with three justices, sitting at Pietermaritzburg, and local courts and magistrates in the several counties. In 1871 the revenue, derived from customs, land sales, stamps, a native hut tax, and other sources, amounted to £180,498, and the expenditure to £132,978. There is a public debt of £263,000. The military expenses, with the exception of about £4,000 per annum, are borne by Great Britain; they were £39,188 in 1869, of which the colony provided £4,272, besides expending £1,061 for its volunteer forces. There is telegraphic communication between D'Urban and the capital, and a project for the construction of 345 m. of railway has been approved by the government.—The Portuguese discovered the coast of Natal on Christmas day, 1497, and named it in honor of the day. It was visited and favorably reported upon, toward the close of the 17th century and later, by Dampier, Woodes Rogers, and several Dutch navigators. Subsequently a Dutch expedition purchased the territory from some native chiefs. Its actual colonization, however, was not projected till 1823. In that year Mr. Thomson, a merchant of Cape Town, and Lieuts. Farewell and King of the English navy, in the course of a trading voyage to the E. coast of Africa, put into Natal harbor. In 1824 Lieut. Farewell, having visited it again, obtained from the chief of the Zooloos, who had conquered the country, a grant of land around Port Natal, where he hoisted the British flag and took possession. In 1834, in consequence of an application to the governor of the Cape of Good Hope from the Zooloo chief for a white settlement to be formed at Natal, a few emigrants proceeded from that colony. In 1835 the American missionaries commenced operations in the territory; but nothing was done on a large scale till about 1837, when the Dutch farmers who were dissatisfied with the British rule in the Cape Colony ascended to the sources of the Orange river, and found their way across the Quatlamba mountains under the leadership of Pieter Retief, who became engaged in a contest with the chief of the Zooloos and was slain, together with many of his followers. The remainder, led by Andries Willem Pretorius, defeated the Zooloo chief in the following year, and founded Pietermaritzburg with a view to make it the capital of their settlement, which they called the republic of Natal, delegating the necessary powers of government to a council of 24 with a president at their head. The men capable of bearing arms were enrolled as militia subject to the council. When the English government, in 1845, declared the British sovereignty to extend over Natal, and sent a military expedition to take possession of the country, after some resistance the more resolute of the emigrants, under Pretorius, abandoned the territory. Natal remained subordinate to the government of Cape Colony till 1856, when it was constituted a separate and distinct colony. In 1873 a conflict with the Ama-Hlubi tribe, numbering about 10,000, charged with the illegal possession of unregistered firearms, resulted in the killing of about 200 of them, the transportation of as many more, including their chief Langalibalele, and the outlawry of the whole tribe.  NATCHEZ, a tribe of North American Indians, known to Europeans from 1560, when Tristan de Luna aided the gulf tribes against them. With the Tensas, a kindred tribe, they held a tract on the E. bank of the Mississippi. According to their traditions, they came from the southwest, in consequence of wars with ancient inhabitants, and made a stand on the seacoast, where a part remained, while others pushed on to the spot where they were found. Their language, sabæism, and mound building connect them with the Mayas of Yucatan. La Salle reached their country in March, 1683, and planted a cross. Iberville also visited them, and proposed to build a city there. They were mild and friendly, brave, though preferring peace to war, and very dissolute. They were governed by the Great Sun, descended in the female line from a man and woman, their first civilizers, who came down from the sun, and first built the temple for perpetual fire, which was always afterward maintained. This temple was on a mound 8 ft. high, with a pitched roof, and contained the bones of the suns and three logs elowly burning under the care of appointed guardians. The cabin of the sun was on a similar mound, but with rounded roof. His power was despotic, as was that of his sister and immediate kindred. He was never approached without special marks of reverence. Next to the suns were the nobles, while the Michemichequipy, called Puants by the French, formed the common people, and were evidently of the Choctaw race. They used bows and arrows, but had no metals, dressed in buffalo robes, and made feather robes for winter, and others for summer of the bark of the mulberry and of flax. They had many feasts, and on the death of a chief killed many to attend him. The dead were kept on raised platforms till the flesh was consumed. They rapidly declined after the appearance of the French and of English traders, who about the same time reached them. La Mothe Cadillac in 1715 refused the calumet, and they killed some Frenchmen; but Bienville in 1716 compelled them to give up the murderers, and built a fort there.