to the need that exists for the further development of their humane endeavours.

Twenty years ago I rode across Mysore in the great famine, great as Alexander and Napoleon were great, destroyers of mankind. Clouds of locusts obliterated the fields, the roads, the high upstanding rocks, the tanks and hillocks, all the features of that pleasant land. They fell like a blight upon the living, and covered the dead like a pall. In Madras and Mysore, then under British administration, between three and four millions of lives were lost.

Of all the changes that have occurred in the intervening period, none is more remarkable than the greater capacity of Government to-day to deal with a similar crisis. Then there was equal zeal and devotion, but little system, incomplete communications, and no organised defence. A far more widely spread famine has been met with the calmness and resolution which come of years of preparation, and are born of a conviction that what man with his finite capacity can do to combat the infinite forces of nature is being done.

Life in India in years of famine, like life anywhere at any time, is fulfilled with sharp contrasts, abounds in sudden surprises, is littered with lost illusions, and, as long as we preserve the peace, and the people marry and have children at the earliest possible opportunity, without any thought for the morrow, so long these visitations must recur.

Two facts loom large before all others at the present moment. The people's lives are endangered. The Government makes available the whole of its sufficient resources to save life. They suffer. Private benevolence can and will assist the Government to mitigate their sufferings.

JUBBULPORE:

Feb. 5, 1897.

J. D. REES.

ENGLAND'S ADVANCE

NORTH OF ORANGE

RIVER

I

I PROPOSE to give a short account of the successive steps by which England has within the last thirty years acquired territory in South Africa to the north of Orange River, and incidentally also of her relations with the two South African republics during that period. In doing so it will be necessary to follow the thread of the history of these two countries respectively from the point at which their independence was recognised by the British Government in formal treaties entered into with that Government.

In the year 1854, Great Britain withdrew from the territory north of Orange River, now known as the Orange Free State. This step had been in contemplation for several years; but one occurrence in particular was the immediate cause of this withdrawal. General Cathcart had, in 1852, visited the Orange River Sovereignty (as the country now constituting the Free State was then called), in order to restore British prestige amongst the native tribes. It was considered absolutely necessary to bring to terms the troublesome Basuto tribe, then under the chieftainship of Moshesh. With a well-equipped force the British general proceeded towards Basutoland, in order to enforce certain demands, including the delivery of a number of cattle, as compensation for certain other cattle that had been stolen by the Basutos, and to compel the chief and his people to maintain peace with his neighbours, and to cease from being 'a nation of thieves.' The terms demanded by the general not having been complied with to his satisfaction, an advance was made into Basutoland; but the Basutos offered armed resistance, which at the battle of Berea proved sufficiently vigorous to induce the general to retire and to return to the Sovereignty without having effected his purpose. When the news of the engagement of Berea reached England the British Government at once notified their intention of withdrawing from the Sovereignty at the earliest possible moment. The expenses connected with the maintenance of imperial authority appeared to be so immense in comparison with the advantages likely to accrue therefrom

that there certainly did not seem to be much inducement for Great. Britain to retain her hold upon the country.

Through this withdrawal the community inhabiting this territory was thrown upon its own resources under the most unpromising circumstances. At the side of the infant State was the Basuto nation, under the ablest chief in South Africa, with a well-armed military force, the number of men at his disposal in case of war being estimated at more than twelve times the number of Free State burghers capable of bearing arms and liable to military service. With other surrounding native tribes there were various unsettled questions still standing open. Far removed from any seaport, the young State was debarred from levying customs duties upon seaborne goods, and thus deprived of a source of income that in the neighbouring colonies has always been the mainstay of revenue. No wonder, then, that under these circumstances a considerable number of the inhabitants strenuously objected to the withdrawal of British authority. A deputation was sent to England to plead their cause; it met with the reception usually accorded to such deputations, and returned without having effected its purpose.

On the 23rd of February 1854, a convention was agreed upon between Her Majesty's Special Commissioner, Sir George Russel Clerk, and the representatives of the inhabitants of the territory. By this instrument the latter were acknowledged as being to all intents and purposes a free and independent people, and their government was to be considered and treated thenceforth as a free and independent government. Subsequently a Royal Proclamation was issued by which the Queen of England abandoned and renounced for herself, her heirs and successors, all dominion over the Orange River territory and the inhabitants thereof.

The following clauses of the Convention are of importance to the proper understanding of subsequent events:

2. The British Government has no alliance whatever with any chiefs or tribes to the north of the Orange River, with the exception of the Griqua chief Adam Kok, and the British Government has no wish or intention to enter hereafter into any treaties which may be prejudicial to the interests of the Orange River Govern

ment.

8. The Orange River Government shall have freedom to purchase their supplies of ammunition in any British colony or possession in South Africa, subject to the laws provided for the regulation of the sale and transit of ammunition in such colonies or possessions; and Her Majesty's Special Commissioner will recommend to the Colonial Government that privileges of a liberal character, in connection with import duties generally, be granted to the Orange River Government, as measures in regard to which it is entitled to be treated with every indulgence, in consideration of its peculiar position and distance from seaports.

Thus, then, was the infant State ushered into the world with fine promise and pretty phrase, to the contentment, no doubt, of those who were satisfied with the withdrawal of British authority, and the

pacification of those who were not. Trustful souls, if they really believed in the efficacy of conventions! It was not many years after the independence of the country had been recognised that its struggle for existence began. War with the Basutos became inevitable after every attempt at conciliation had failed. The incessant inroads of the Basutos into the territory of the Free State, which at no time previous had ever been theirs, accompanied with rapine and brutal murders all along the border, forced the youthful State to rise in self-defence and to determine to settle the question of its own existence once for all. With no light heart did it enter upon the struggle. Almost hopeless it seemed to many; so little chance did there appear to be of the State coming out of it victorious. It is needless to go into the details of the war that ensued. Suffice it to say that not even the most bitter detractor of the republics would at the present day venture to deny that this was a war into which the people of this State were forced, which they did their best to avoid, and (notwithstanding what the atrocity-mongers of that day may have said and written) which they carried on with as much humanity as is consistent with an actual state of war.

In the year 1862, during a cessation of hostilities, Sir Philip Wodehouse arrived at the Cape as Her British Majesty's High Commissioner. Mr. (now Sir) Richard Southey was Colonial Secretary under Sir Philip, as he continued to be under Lieutenant-Governor Hay and Sir Henry Barkly, to whom reference will again be made hereafter. He was a man at that time of whom Mr. Froude thus wrote:

His desire was and is to see South Africa British up to the Zambesi; the natives everywhere taken under the British flag, and the whole country governed by the Crown. When the Diamond-fields were annexed as a Crown colony he accepted the governorship with the hope that north of the Orange River he might carry out his policy, check the encroachments of the Transvaal [sic], and extend the Empire internally. It has been the one mistake of his life. Being without a force of any kind, he could only control the republics by the help of the native chiefs.

In fact, he was 'the Imperial English man' of that day.

Within a few weeks after his arrival at the Cape as High Commissioner, Sir Philip Wodehouse gave a very decided indication of the policy it was intended to pursue. He wrote to Moshesh that a commission was about to proceed to Basutoland in order to ascertain that chief's views and wishes with regard to his own and his people's. relationship to the Cape Colony, it having been understood that Moshesh had expressed a desire that he and his people might become British subjects. The commission, consisting of two gentlemen not noted for their favourable sentiments towards the Free State, proceeded to interview Moshesh in due course; but from their subsequent report it appeared that Moshesh had no desire to come under the British

flag. The idea of making British subjects of the Basutos was, however, never long absent from the High Commissioner's mind. True enough, there was a Convention of which such annexation would be a violation; but that fact would, of course, offer no practical difficulty to the man with the legions at his back; as Sir Philip expressed it in a communication to one of his agents: 'Of course, if the Home Government would but move on, we need not treat the past arrangements with the Free State with much ceremony.' There was, however, a certain fertility of resource in the case of Sir Philip Wodehouse in discovering reasons for ignoring the Convention of 1854. About the same time that he communicated with Moshesh he wrote 'a very unfriendly letter' to the President of the Free State, in which he remarked that 'if war should be the result of the inroads of your people on the inhabitants of the neighbouring territories, you can have no just ground of complaint if the British authorities in this colony feel bound, however reluctantly, to set aside existing treaties.' When in 1867 the Free State was fast overcoming its difficulties, and had every prospect of bringing the Basutos to terms, while some of the Basuto tribes had actually been accepted as Free State subjects, and ground had been allotted to them for occupation, he expressed his opinion in another letter that 'these large acquisitions of territory and population tended to produce such important changes in the political position of the several Powers in this part of Africa as would fully warrant a claim on the part of the British Government, should necessity arise, of a right to reconsider the bearings of the Convention with the Orange Free State of the 23rd of February 1854.' This was a few months before he wrote to his agent already mentioned, 'I dare say there is a good deal of truth in the report that the Basutos are falling to pieces. At the same time I very much wish them to hold together sufficiently and long enough to give me a tolerable pretext for negotiating with them, if the Secretary of State gives me leave.' Again, later, after the British Government had notified their willingness to accept the Basutos as British subjects, whilst the Free State had determined not to cease operations until the murderers of certain two residents in the State, named Bush and Krynaauw, had been given up, and the republican territory was entirely evacuated, he wrote: I cannot regard this policy as anything less than an indication of an unfriendly spirit towards the British Government, quite sufficient to absolve me from the observance of the terms of the Convention of 1854.' This was about the same time that he also penned these words: It is desirable that they' (the Basutos) should make every exertion to embarrass the movements of the Boers; and above all, let them take care to reoccupy the ground, as soon as the commanders move off.' Without any guarantee that the Basutos would cease their depredations, in fact with an absolute certainty

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