their reoccupation. The British commanders were hampered throughout by
the insufficiency of their forces, and it was not till March 1853 that
this most sanguinary of Kaffir wars was brought to a conclusion, after a
loss of many hundred British soldiers. Shortly afterwards, British
Kaffraria was made a crown colony. The Hottentot settlement at Kat river
remained, but the Hottentot power within the colony was now finally
crushed.

_The Great Amaxosa Delusion._--From 1853 the Kaffir tribes on the east
gave little trouble to the colony. This was due, in large measure, to an
extraordinary delusion which arose among the Amaxosa in 1856, and led in
1857 to the death of some 50,000 persons. This incident is one of the
most remarkable instances of misplaced faith recorded in history. The
Amaxosa had not accepted their defeat in 1853 as decisive and were
preparing to renew the struggle with the white men. At this juncture,
May 1856, a girl named Nongkwase told her father that on going to draw
water from a stream she had met strangers of commanding aspect. The
father, Mhlakza, went to see the men, who told him that they were
spirits of the dead, who had come, if their behests were obeyed, to aid
the Kaffirs with their invincible power to drive the white man from the
land. Mhlakza repeated the message to his chief, Sarili, one of the most
powerful Kaffir rulers. Sarili ordered the commands of the spirits to be
obeyed. These orders were, at first, that the Amaxosa were to destroy
their fat cattle. The girl Nongkwase, standing in the river where the
spirits had first appeared, heard unearthly noises, interpreted by her
father as orders to kill more and more cattle. At length the spirits
commanded that not an animal of all their herds was to be left alive,
and every grain of corn was to be destroyed. If that were done, on a
given date myriads of cattle more beautiful than those destroyed would
issue from the earth, while great fields of corn, ripe and ready for
harvest, would instantly appear. The dead would rise, trouble and
sickness vanish, and youth and beauty come to all alike. Unbelievers and
the hated white man would on that day utterly perish. The people heard
and obeyed. Sarili is believed by many persons to have been the
instigator of the prophecies. Certainly some of the principal chiefs
regarded all that was done simply as the preparation for a last struggle
with the whites, their plan being to throw the whole Amaxosa nation