Robben Island is a forlorn isle lying off Capetown which has been utilized for malefactors and lunatics. Langalibalele has a comfortable farm house on the Gape Flats where he has a bottle of wine and a bottle of beer allowed him a day,—and where he lives like a second Napoleon at a second St. Helena. I trust that nothing of the kind will be done with Kreli. There is an absurdity about it which is irritating. It is as though we were playing at Indian princes among the African black races. The man himself has not risen in life beyond the taste for squatting in his hut with a dozen black wives around him and a red blanket over his shoulders. Then we put him into a house where he squats on a chair instead, and give him wine and beer and good clothes. When we take the children of such a one and do something in the way of educating them, then the expenditure of money is justified. Many Kafirs,—many thousand Kafirs have risen above squatting in huts and red blankets; but they are the men who have learned to work, as at the Kimberley mine, and not the Chiefs. The only excuse for such treatment as that which Langalibalele receives, which Kreli if caught would probably receive, is that no one knows what else to propose. I am almost inclined to think it better that Kreli should not be caught. Prisoners of that nature are troublesome. What a blessing it was to France when Marshal Bazaine escaped.
I was told before leaving the Cape that the trouble would probably not cost above £50,000. So cheap a disturbance certainly should not be called a war. The cattle taken would probably be worth the money;—and then the 300-acre
