Page:George McCall Theal, History of South Africa from 1873 to 1884, Volume 1 (1919).djvu/68

48 History of the Cape Colony. [1877 In the first of these, Emjanyana, was the residence of the former agent, Mr. Wright, and he was left there as magistrate with the additional title and authority of chief magistrate of Tembuland Proper. In the second, Engcobo, was the site selected for the office of the magistrate with Dalasile's people. In April 1876 Mr. Walter E. Stanford was stationed there as magistrate. In the third, Umtata, the seat of magistracy quickly became the most important town in the whole territory between the Kei and Natal. Major J. F. Boyes assumed duty there as magistrate in April 1876. The fourth district, Mqanduli, bordered on the coast. In August 1876 the reverend John H. Scott, previously a Wesleyan missionary, was stationed there as magistrate. The few European farmers in the territory remained on the same conditions as before, except that they were required to pay the annual rent to the Cape government instead of to Gangelizwe. It was soon discovered that the power of Gangelizwe could not easily be set aside. The European govern- ment, the magistrates, and some of the alien clans mi<^ht ignore him, but the clans of pure Tembu blood would not. All their national traditions, their ideas of patriotism, their feelings of pride, prompted them to be loyal to him. Stronger still than any of these motives was their religion. The belief of the Bantu is firm that the spirits of the dead chiefs hold the destinies of the tribes in their keeping. To renounce allegiance to the chief, the descendant and representative of those to whose spirits they offer sacrifices and whose wrath they dread as the greatest calamity that can overtake them, is in the Bantu way of thinking the most enormous of crimes. The magistrates encountered such difficulties in governing the people, owing to their sullen demeanour and continual complaints of the degradation to which their