t out, after loading their own wives and
children with caresses, and proceed to shoot down in cold blood men
and women, of a different color, it is true, but possessed of domestic
feelings and affections equal to their own. I saw and conversed with
children in the houses of Boers who had, by their own and their masters'
account, been captured, and in several instances I traced the parents
of these unfortunates, though the plan approved by the long-headed among
the burghers is to take children so young that they soon forget their
parents and their native language also. It was long before I could give
credit to the tales of bloodshed told by native witnesses, and had I
received no other testimony but theirs I should probably have continued
skeptical to this day as to the truth of the accounts; but when I found
the Boers themselves, some bewailing and denouncing, others glorying in
the bloody scenes in which they had been themselves the actors, I was
compelled to admit the validity of the testimony, and try to account for
the cruel anomaly. They are all traditionally religious, tracing their
descent from some of the best men (Huguenots and Dutch) the world ever
saw. Hence they claim to themselves the title of "Christians", and all
the colored race are "black property" or "creatures". They being the
chosen people of God, the heathen are given to them for an inheritance,
and they are the rod of divine vengeance on the heathen, as were the
Jews of old. Living in the midst of a native population much larger than
themselves, and at fountains removed many miles from each other, they
feel somewhat in the same insecure position as do the Americans in
the Southern States. The first question put by them to strangers is
respecting peace; and when they receive reports from disaffected or
envious natives against any tribe, the case assumes all the appearance
and proportions of a regular insurrection. Severe measures then appear
to the most mildly disposed among them as imperatively called for, and,
however bloody the massacre that follows, no qualms of conscience ensue:
it is a dire necessity for the sake of peace. Indeed, the late Mr.
Hendrick Potgeiter most devoutly believed himself to be the great
peacemaker of the country.

But how is it that the natives, being so vastly superior in numbers to
the Boers, do not rise and annihilate them? The people among whom they
live are Bechuanas, not Caffres, though no one would ever learn that