ace, there is yet a spirit of justice in
her heart and head which prompts the question, among the first of such
demands, as to how best and most fairly to deal by the natives of
the newly-acquired land. In earlier times, when steam was not, and
telegraphs and special correspondents were equally unknown agencies for
getting at the truth of things, this question was more easily answered
across a width of dividing ocean or continent. Then distant action might
be prompt and sharp on emergency, and no one would be the wiser. But of
late years, owing to these results of civilisation, harsh measures have,
by the mere pressure of public opinion, and without consideration
of their necessity in the eyes of the colonists, been set aside as
impracticable and inhuman. In the case of Natal, most of the early
questions of possession and right were settled, sword in hand, by the
pioneer Dutch, who, after a space of terrible warfare, drove back the
Zulus over the Tugela, and finally took possession of the land. But they
did not hold it long. The same hateful invading Englishman, with his new
ideas and his higher forms of civilisation, who had caused them to quit
the "Old Colony," the land of their birth, came and drove them, _vi
et armis_, from the land of their adoption. And it was not long before
these same English became lords of this red African soil, from the coast
up to the Drakensberg. Still there were difficulties; for although the
new-comers might be lords of the soil, there remained yet a remnant,
and a very troublesome remnant, of its original and natural masters:
shattered fragments of the Zulu power in Natal, men who had once swept
over the country in the army of Chaka the Terrible, Chaka of the Short
Spear, but who had remained behind in the fair new land, when Chaka's
raids had been checked by the white man and his deadly weapons.
Remnants, too, of conquered aboriginal tribes, who had found even
Chaka's rule easier than that of their own chieftains, swelled the
amount to a total of some 100,000 souls.

One of the first acts of the English Government, when it took up the
reins, was to allot to each of these constituent fragments a large
portion of the land. This might perhaps have been short-sighted
legislation, but it arose from the necessity of the moment. According
to even the then received ideas of colonisation and its duties, it
was hardly possible--danger apart--to drive all the natives over
the frontier, so they wer