“How do you know?—­They got me from my parents, and ill-treated me.

“(Sir Evelyn Wood.) How many times did you get the stick?—­Every day.

“(Sir H. de Villiers.) What did the Boers do with you when they caught you?—­They sold me.

“How much did they sell you for?—­One cow and a big pot.”

On the 28th May, 1881, amongst the other documents-handed in for the consideration of the Royal Commission, is the statement of a Headman, whose name also it was considered advisable to omit in the Blue book, lest the Boers should take vengeance on him.  He says, “I say, that if the English Government dies I shall die too; I would rather die than be under the Boer Government.  I am the man who helped to make bricks for the church you see now standing in the square here (Pretoria), as a slave without payment.  As a representative of my people, I am still obedient to the English Government, and willing to obey all commands from them, even to die for their cause in this country, rather than submit to the Boers.

“I was under Shambok, my chief, who fought the Boers-formerly, but he left us, and we were put up to auction and sold among the Boers.  I want to state this myself to the Royal Commission.  I was bought by Fritz Botha and sold by Frederick Botha, who was then veldt cornet (justice of the peace) of the Boers.”

Many more of such extracts might be quoted, but it is not my motive to multiply horrors.  These are given exactly as they stand in the original, which may all be found in Blue Books-presented to Parliament.

It has frequently been denied on behalf of the Transvaal, and is denied at this day, in the face of innumerable witnesses to the contrary, that slavery exists in the Transvaal.  Now, this may be considered to be verbally true.  Slavery, they say, did not exist; but apprenticeship did, and does exist.  It is only another name.  It is not denied that some Boers have been kind to their slaves, as humane slave-owners frequently were in the Southern States of America.  But kindness, even the most indulgent, to slaves, has never been held by abolitionists to excuse the existence of slavery.

Mr. Rider Haggard, who spent a great part of his life in the Transvaal and other parts of South Africa, wrote in 1899:  “The assertion that Slavery did not exist in the Transvaal is made to hoodwink the British public.  I have known men who have owned slaves, and who have seen whole waggon-loads of Black Ivory, as they were called, sold for about L15 a piece.  I have at this moment a tenant, Carolus by name, on some land I own in Natal, now a well-to-do man, who was for twenty years a Boer slave.  He told me that during those years he worked from morning till night, and the only reward he received was two calves.  He finally escaped to Natal.”