“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 Kaffirs, though no one would ever learn that distinction from a Boer; and history does not contain one single instance in which the Bechuanas, even those of them who possess firearms, have attacked either the Boers or the English.  If there is such an instance, I am certain it is not generally known, either beyond or in the Cape Colony.  They have defended themselves when attacked, as in the case of Sechele, but have never engaged in offensive war with Europeans.  We have a very different tale to tell of the Kaffirs, and the difference has always been so evident to these border Boers that, ever since ‘those magnificent savages,’ (the Kaffirs,) obtained possession of firearms, not one Boer has ever attempted to settle in Kaffirland, or even face them as an enemy in the field.  The Boers have generally manifested a marked antipathy to anything but ‘long-shot’ warfare, and, sidling away in their emigrations towards the more effeminate Bechuanas, they have left their quarrels with the Kaffirs to be settled by the English, and their wars to be paid for by English gold.

“The Bechuanas at Kolobeng had the spectacle of various tribes enslaved before their eyes;—­the Bakatla, the Batlo’kua, the Bahukeng, the Bamosetla, and two other tribes of Bechuanas, were all groaning under the oppression of unrequited labour.  This would not have been felt as so great an evil, but that the young men of those tribes, anxious to obtain cattle, the only means of rising to respectability and importance among their own people, were in the habit of sallying forth, like our Irish and Highland reapers, to procure work in the Cape Colony.  After labouring there three or four years, in building stone dykes and dams for the Dutch farmers, they were well content if at the end of that time they could return with as many cows.  On presenting one to the chief, they ranked as respectable men in the tribe ever afterwards.  These volunteers were highly esteemed among the Dutch, under the name of Mantatees.  They were paid at the rate of one shilling a day, and a large loaf of bread among six of them.  Numbers of them, who had formerly seen me about twelve hundred miles inland from the Cape, recognised me with the loud laughter of joy when I was passing them at their work in the Roggefelt and Bokkefelt, within a few days of Cape Town.  I conversed with them, and with Elders of the Dutch Church, for whom they were working, and found that the system was thoroughly satisfactory to both parties.  I do not believe that there is a Boer, in the Cashan or Magaliesberg country, who would deny that a law was made, in consequence of this labour passing to the Colony, to deprive these labourers of their hardly-earned cattle, for the very urgent reason that, “if they want to work, let them work for us, their masters,” though boasting that in their case their work would not be paid.