d in the Boers, and it is these
things which destroy people to make an end of them in the country. _The
custom of the Boers has always been to cause people to be sold, and
to-day they are still selling people._ Last year I saw them pass with
two waggons full of people whom they had bought at the river at Tanane"
(Lake Ngate).

The Special Correspondence of the "Cape Argus," a highly respectable
journal, writes thus on the 28th November 1876:--"The Boer from whom
this information was gleaned has furnished besides some facts which may
not be uninteresting, as a commentary on the repeated denials by Mr.
Burgers of the existence of slavery. During the last week slaves have
been offered for sale on his farm. The captives have been taken from
Secocoeni's country by Mapoch's people, and are being exchanged at the
rate of a child for a heifer. He also assures us that the whole of the
Highveld is bring replenished with Kafir children, whom the Boers have
been lately purchasing from the Swazies at the rate of a horse for a
child. I should like to see this man and his father as witnesses before
an Imperial Commission. He let fall one or two incidents of the past
which were brought to mind by the occurrences of the present. In 1864,
he says, 'The Swazies accompanied the Boers against Males. The Boers did
nothing but stand by and witness the fearful massacre. The men and women
were also murdered. One poor woman sat clutching her baby of eight days
old. The Swazies stabbed her through the body, and when she found that
she could not live, she wrung the baby's neck with her own hands to save
it from future misery. On the return of that Commando the children who
became too weary to continue the journey were killed on the road. The
survivors were sold as slaves to the farmers.'"

The same gentleman writes in the issue of the 12th December
as follows:--"The whole world may know it, for it is true, and
investigation will only bring out the horrible details, that through the
whole course of this Republic's existence it has acted in contravention
of the Sand River Treaty; and slavery has occurred not only here and
there in isolated cases, but as an unbroken practice, and has been
one of the peculiar institutions of the country, mixed up with all its
social and political life. It has been at the root of most of its wars.
It has been carried on regularly even in times of peace. It has been
characterised by all those circumstances which have s