independent Kafirs,—not that Kafirs unable to live with the British might run into it as do the American Indians into the Indian Territory or the Maories of New Zealand into the King-County there;—but that a single tribe may entertain dreams of independence and dreams of hostility? Whether we have done well or ill by occupying South Africa, I will not now stop to ask. But if ill, we can hardly salve our consciences by that little corner. And yet that little corner has always been the supposed focus of rebellion from which the scared colonist has feared that war would come upon him. Of what real service can it be to leave to the unchecked dominion of Kafir habits a tract of 1,600 square miles when we have absorbed from the Natives a territory larger than all British India. We have taken to ourselves in South Africa within this century an extent of land which in area is the largest of all Her Majesty's dominions, and have been wont to tell ourselves that as regards the Natives it is all right because we have left them their own lands in Kafraria Proper. Let the Briton who consoles himself with this thought,—and who would still so console himself,—look at the strip on the map along the coast, an inch long perhaps and an inch deep; and then let him measure across the continent from the mouth of the Orange River to the mouth of the Tugela. It makes a Briton feel like the American who would not swear to the two hundredth duck.
We have not caught Kreli yet. When we have, if we should catch him, I do not in the least know what we shall do with him. There is a report which I do not believe that the Governor has threatened him with Robben Island.
