the state of affairs it is my object to
describe. Ever since its first establishment as a colony Natal has been
turned into a city of refuge for the native inhabitants of Zululand, the
Transvaal, Swaziland, and elsewhere. If news came to a Zulu chief that
his king purposed to eat him up, he at once fled across the Tugela with
his wives and followers and settled in Natal. If the Boers or Swazis
destroyed a tribe, the remnant found its way to Natal.

That country, indeed, is to the South African native a modern Isles of
the Blest. Once across the border line, and, whatever his crime, he
is in a position to defy his worst enemy, and can rest secure in the
protection of the Home and local Governments, and of the enactments
specially passed to protect him and his privileges. The Government
allots him land, or if it does not he squats on private land: bringing
with him his own peculiar and barbarous customs. In all the world I do
not know a race more favoured by circumstances than the Natal Zulus.
They live on the produce of the fields that their wives cultivate, or
rather scratch, doing little or no work, and having no occasion to do
any. They are very rich, and their taxes are a mere trifle, fifteen
shillings per annum for each hut. They bear no share of the curse that
comes to all other men as a birthright; they need not labour. Protected
by a powerful Government, they do not fear attack from without, or
internal disorder. What all men desire, riches and women, are theirs in
abundance, and even their children, the objects of so much expense and
sore perplexity to civilised parents, are to them a source of wealth.
Their needs are few; a straw hut, corn for food, and the bright sun.
They are not even troubled with the thought of a future life, but, like
the animals, live through their healthy, happy days, and at last, in
extreme old age, meet a death which for them has no terrors, because it
simply means extinction. When compared to that of civilised races, or
even of their own brethren in the interior, their lot is indeed a happy
one.

But the stream of immigration, continuous though it has been, would not
by itself have sufficed to bring up the native population to its present
enormous total, without the assistance of the polygamous customs of the
immigrants.

I believe that inquirers have ascertained, that, as a general rule, the
practice of polygamy has not the effect of bringing about an abnormal
growth of population