who claimed land which the Free State farmers had occupied. The Free State commandos attacked him, and had penetrated Basutoland as far as the stronghold of Thaba Bosiyo, when they were obliged to return to protect their own farms from the roving bands of horsemen which Moshesh had skilfully detached to operate in their rear. Being hard pressed, they appealed to the Governor of Cape Colony to mediate between them and Moshesh. Moshesh agreed, and a new frontier was settled by the Governor. However, in 1865 fresh troubles broke out, and there was again war between Moshesh and the Free State. The Governor of Cape Colony was again invoked, but his decision. was not respected by the Basutos, whom Moshesh could not always control,-for they are much less submissive to their chiefs than are the Zulus,and hostilities having recommenced after a brief interval of peace, the Free State made a supreme effort, and in 1868 was on the point of destroying the Basuto power, though it had never been able to capture Thaba Bosiyo, when Moshesh appealed to the High Commissioner to extend British protection to his people. Unwilling to see Basutoland annexed by the Free State, and fearing injury to the Colony from the dispersion of Basuto fugitives through it, the High Commissioner consented, and declared the Basutos British subjects. The Free State was suffered to retain a large tract of fertile land along the north bank of the Caledon River, which it had conquered; but it was mortified by seeing British

authority established to the south of it, all the way from Natal to the borders of Cape Colony, and by the final extinction of the hopes which it had cherished of extending its territories to the sea and acquiring a harbour at the mouth of the St. John's River.

These events, which befell in 1869, mark the recommencement of British advance toward the interior. Still more momentous was another occur

rence which belongs to the same year. In 1869 and 1870 a sudden rush began from all parts of South Africa to a small district between the Modder and the Vaal rivers (where the town of Kimberley now stands), in which diamonds had been discovered. Within a few months thousands of diggers from Europe and America, as well as from the surrounding countries, were at work here, and the region, hitherto neglected, became a prize of inestimable value. A question at once arose as to its ownership. The Orange Free State claimed it, but it was also claimed by a Griqua (half-breed) captain, named Nicholas Waterboer, son of old Andries Waterboer, and by a native Batlapin chief, as well as by the Transvaal Republic. The claims of the lastnamed state were disposed of by the decision of the Governor of Natal, who had been recognized as arbitrator by the Griquas, the Batlapin, and the President of the Republic. He awarded the tract in dispute to Waterboer, thereby cutting out the Free State, which had not been a party to the arbitration; and Waterboer placed himself under the

British government, which presently erected the country into a Crown Colony under the name of Griqualand West. This was in 1871. The Free State protested, and was after a time able to appeal to a judgment delivered by a British court, which found that Waterboer had never enjoyed any right to the territory. However the colony had by this time been set up and the British flag displayed. The British government, without either admitting or denying the Free State title, declared that a district in which it was difficult to keep order amid a turbulent and shifting population ought to be under the control of a strong power, and offered the Free State a sum of ninety thousand pounds in settlement of whatever claim it might possess. The acceptance by the Free State in 1876 of this sum closed the controversy, though a sense of injustice continued to rankle in the breasts of some of the citizens of the Republic.. Amicable relations have subsisted ever since between it and Cape Colony, and the control of the British government over the Basutos has secured for it peace in the V quarter which was formerly most disturbed.

These two cases show how various are the causes and how mixed the motives which press a great power forward even against the wishes of its statesmen. The Basutos were declared British subjects partly out of a sympathetic wish to rescue and protect them, partly because policy required the acquisition of a country naturally strong and ✓ holding an important strategical position. Griqua

land West, taken in the belief that Waterboer had a good title to it, was retained after this belief had been dispelled, partly perhaps because a population had crowded into it which consisted mainly of British subjects, and was not easily controllable by a small state, but mainly because colonial feeling refused to part with a region of such exceptional mineral wealth. And the retention of Griqualand West caused, before long, the acquisition of Bechuanaland, which in its turn naturally led to that northward extension of British influence which has carried the Union ✓ Jack to the shores of Lake Tanganyika. The wish to restrict responsibility, which had been so strong twenty years before, had now died out of the British public at home, and had grown feebler even in the minds of the statesmen whose business it was to find the money needed for these increasing charges on the imperial treasury; while the philanthropic interest in the native races, stimulated by the discoveries of Livingstone, now took the form not of proposing to leave them to themselves, but of desiring to protect them against the adventurers, whether of Boer or of English blood, whom it was found impossible to prevent from pressing forward into the wilderness.

It is remarkable that the change, as yet only an incipient change, in the public opinion of the English people, who now began to feel the desire not merely to retain but to expand their colonial dominion, should have become apparent just at the time when there

occurred that discovery of diamonds which showed that this hitherto least progressive of the larger ✓ colonies possessed unsuspected stores of wealth. The discovery brought a new stream of enterprising and ambitious men into the country, and fixed the attention of the world upon it. It was a turning point in South African history.

That change in the views of the British Government on which I have been commenting found at this moment a fresh expression in another quarter. In 1869 the Portuguese Government concluded a commercial treaty with the South African Republic, under which it seemed probable that a considerable trade might spring up between the Portuguese coast of the Indian Ocean and the interior. This called attention to the port of Lourenço Marques, on the shore of Delagoa Bay, the best haven upon that coast. Great Britain claimed it under a cession which had been obtained from a native chief of the country by a British naval exploring expedition in 1822. Portugal, however, resisted the claim. In 1872 it was referred to the arbitration of Marshal MacMahon, then President of the French Republic, and in 1875 he awarded the territory in dispute to Portugal. Both cases were weak, and it is not easy to say which was the weaker, for, although the Portuguese had undoubtedly been first on the ground, their occupation, often disturbed by the native tribes, had been extremely precarious. The decision was a serious blow to British hopes, and has become Vincreasingly serious with the further development of