the bay, after receiving favourable accounts from their comrades of the treatment they experienced in the British service, would enter as volunteers into this corps; but what was to be done with the old people, the women and children? Klaas Stuurman found no difficulty in making provision for them. 'Restore,' said he, 'the country of which our fathers have been despoiled by the Dutch, and we have nothing more to ask.' I endeavoured to convince him," continues Mr. Barrow, "how little advantage they were likely to obtain from the possession of a country, without any other property, or the means of deriving a subsistence from it. But he had the better of the argument. 'We lived very contentedly,' said he, 'before these Dutch plunderers molested us; and why should we not do so again if left to ourselves? Has not the Groot Baas (the Great Master) given plenty of grass-roots, and berries, and grashoppers for our use? and, till the Dutch destroyed them, abundance of wild animals to hunt? and will they not turn and multiply when these destroyers are gone?'"
How uniform is the language of the uncivilized man wherever he has been driven from his ancient habits by the white invaders,—trust in the goodness of Providence, and regret for the plenty which he knew before they came. These words of Klaas Stuurman are almost the same as those of the American Indian Canassateego to the English at Lancaster in 1744.
But we are breaking our narrative. Klaas was killed in a buffalo hunt, and his brother David became the chief of the kraal. "The existence of this independent kraal gave great offence to the neighbouring boors. The most malignant calumnies were propagated
