f a much more serious interference at a subsequent date
with both Boer and Kafir. And so non-interference, in the admirable
spirit of the Duke of Portland's despatch, came to bear one meaning in
Downing Street and quite another in Capetown.

[Sidenote: D'Urban's policy.]

The earliest of the three crucial "divergences of opinion," to which
collectively the history of our South African administration owes its
sombre hue, was that which led to the reversal of Sir Benjamin
D'Urban's frontier policy by Charles Grant (afterwards Lord Glenelg)
at the end of the year 1835. The circumstances were these. On
Christmas Day, 1834, the Kafirs (without any declaration of war,
needless to say) invaded the Cape Colony, murdering the settlers in
the isolated farms, burning their homesteads, and driving off their
cattle. After a six months' campaign, in which the Dutch and British
settlers fought by the side of the regular troops, a treaty was made
with the Kafir chiefs which, in the opinion of D'Urban and his local
advisers, would render the eastern frontier of the Colony secure from
further inroads. The Kafirs were to retire to the line of the Kei
River, thus surrendering part of their territory to the European
settlers who had suffered most severely from the invasion; while a
belt of loyal Kafirs, supported by a chain of forts, was to be
interposed between the defeated tribes and the colonial farmsteads. In
addition to these measures, D'Urban proposed to compensate the
settlers for the enormous losses[1] which they had incurred; since, as
a contemporary and not unfriendly writer[2] puts it, the British
Government had exposed them for fourteen years to Kafir depredations,
rather than acknowledge the existence of a state of affairs that must
plainly have compelled it to make active exertions for their
protection.

[Footnote 1: The official returns showed that 456 farm-houses
had been wholly, and 350 partially, destroyed; and that 60
waggons, 5,715 horses, 111,930 head of horned cattle, and
161,930 sheep had been carried off by the Kafirs. And this
apart from the remuneration claimed by the settlers for
services in the field, and commandeered cattle and supplies.]

[Footnote 2: Cloete. See note, p. 16.]

The view of the home authority was very different. In the opinion of
His Majesty's ministers at Downing Street the Kafir invasion was the
result of a long series of unj