and the British South Africa Company in
1893. It was a curious chain of events that brought fire and slaughter
so suddenly, in 1837, upon the peoples of the Zambesi Valley. As the
conflicts of nomad warriors along the great wall of China in the fourth
century of our era set a-going a movement which, propagated from tribe
to tribe, ended by precipitating the Goths upon the Mediterranean
countries, and brought Alaric to the Salarian Gate of Rome, so the
collapse of the French monarchy, inducing the Revolution and the
consequent war with England, carried the English to the Cape, brought
the Boers into collision with the Matabili, and at last hurled the
savage host of Mosilikatze on the helpless Makalakas.

The defeat and expulsion of the Matabili left the vast territories
between the Orange River and the Limpopo in the hands of the Boer
immigrants. Within these territories, after much moving hither and
thither, those small and rude communities began to grow up which have
ripened, as we shall presently see, into the two Dutch republics of our
own time. But, meanwhile, a larger and better organized body of Boers,
led by a capable and much-respected man named Pieter Retief, marched
first eastward and then southward across the Quathlamba watershed, and
descended from the plateau into the richer and warmer country between
those mountains and the Indian Ocean. This region had been in 1820
almost depopulated by the invasions of Tshaka, and now contained scarce
any native inhabitants. A few Englishmen had since 1824 been settled on
the inlet then called Port Natal, where now the prosperous town of
Durban lies beneath the villas and orchards of Berea, and (having
obtained a cession of the maritime slip from King Tshaka) were
maintaining there a sort of provisional republic. In 1835 they had asked
to be recognised as a colony under the name of Victoria, in honour of
the young princess who two years afterwards mounted the throne, and to
have a legislature granted them. The British government, however, was
still hesitating whether it should occupy the port, so the emigrants did
not trouble themselves about its rights or wishes. Thinking it well to
propitiate the Zulu king, Dingaan, whose power over-shadowed the
country, the Boer leaders proceeded to his kraal to obtain from him a
formal grant of land. The grant was made, but next day the treacherous
tyrant, offering them some native beer as a sort of stirrup-cup before
their departur