England, and yet fearing to disobey the behests of their Great Chief Kreli.
It will thus be seen that the Kafirs do not occupy very much land in South Africa, though their name has become better known than that of any South African tribe,—and though every black Native is in familiar language called a Kafir. The reason has been that the two tribes, the Gaikas and the Galekas, have given us infinitely more trouble than any other. Sandilli with his Gaikas have long been subjected, though they have never been regarded as quiet subjects, such as are the Basutos and the Fingos. There has ever been a dread, as there was notably in 1876, that they would rise and rebel. The alarmists since this present affair of Kreli commenced have never ceased to declare that the Gaikas would surely be up in arms against us. But, as a tribe, they have not done so yet,—partly perhaps because their Chief Sandilli is usually drunk. The Galekas, however, have never been made subject to us.
But the Galekas and Kreli were conquered in the last Kafir war, and the tribe had been more than decimated by the madness of the people who in 1857 had destroyed their own cattle and their own corn in obedience to a wonderful prophecy. I have told the story before in one of the early chapters of my first volume. Kreli had then been driven with his people across the river Bashee to the North,—where those Bomvanas now are; and his own territory had remained for a period vacant. Then arose a question as to what should be done with the land, and Sir Philip Wodehouse, who was then Governor of the Cape Colony, proposed
