"Stuurman and two of his comrades, after remaining some years prisoners in Robben Island, contrived to escape, and effected their retreat through the whole extent of the colony into Caffreland, a distance of more than six hundred miles! Impatient, however, to return to his family, Stuurman, in the year 1816, sent out a messenger to the missionary, Mr. Read, from whom he had formerly experienced kindness, entreating him to endeavour to procure permission for him to return in peace. Mr. Read, as he himself informed me, made application on his behalf to the landdrost Cuyler,—but without avail. That magistrate recommended that he should remain where he was. Three years afterwards, the unhappy exile ventured to return into the colony without permission. But he was not long in being discovered and apprehended, and once more sent a prisoner to Cape Town, where he was kept in close confinement till the year 1823, when he was finally transported as a convict to New South Wales. What became of Boschman, the third brother, I never learned. Such was the fate of the last Hottentot chief who attempted to stand up for the rights of his country."
Mr. Pringle adds, that this statement, having been published by him in England in 1826, the benevolent General Bourke, then Lieutenant-Governor at the Cape, wrote to the Governor of New South Wales, and obtained some alleviation of the hardships of his lot for Stuurman; that, in 1829, the children of Stuurman, through the aid of Mr. Bannister, presented a memorial to Sir Lowry Cole, then governor at the Cape, for their father's recall, but in vain; but that, in 1831, General Bourke, being himself Governor of
