Page:South Africa (1878 Volume 1).djvu/272

This page needs to be proofread.

with very much greater favour. The salary awarded to a Governor may perhaps best attest the importance of a new Colony. The Transvaal has begun with £3,000 a year. A poor £2,500 is even still considered sufficient for the much older Colony of Natal.

Since 1848 Natal has had its history, but not one that has peculiarly endeared it to the Mother Country. In 1849 a body of English emigrants went out there who have certainly been successful as farmers, and who came chiefly I think from the County of York. I do not know that there has since that been any one peculiar influx of English, though of course from time to time Englishmen have settled there,—some as farmers, more probably as traders, small or large. In 1850 Mr. Pine succeeded Mr. West as second Governor,—a gentleman who has again been Governor of the same Colony as Sir Benjamin Pine, and who has had to encounter,—somewhat unfairly, as I think,—the opprobrium incident to the irrational sympathy of a certain class at home in the little understood matter of Langalibalele. Langalibalele has, however, been so interesting a South African personage that I must dedicate a separate chapter to his history. In 1853 Dr. Colenso was appointed Bishop of Natal, and by the peculiarity of his religious opinions has given more notoriety to the Colony,—has caused the Colony to be more talked about,—than any of its Governors or even than any of its romantic incidents. Into religious opinion I certainly shall not stray in these pages. In my days I have written something about clergymen but never a word about religion. No doubt shall be thrown by me either upon the