nd other Kafirs on the west, it was torn by incessant intestine
quarrels, and unable either to levy taxes, or to compel for any other
purpose the obedience of its own citizens. But its victories over
Dingaan's armies were feats of arms as remarkable as any South Africa
has seen. The English are not generally slow to recognize the fine
qualities of their adversaries, but they have done less than justice to
the resolution and the daring which the Boers displayed in these early
campaigns against the natives.[20]

With the British annexation of Natal ended the first of the attempts
which the emigrant Boers have made to obtain access to the sea. It was a
turning-point in the history of South Africa, for it secured to Great
Britain that command of the coast which has ever since been seen to be
more and more vital to her predominance, and it established a new centre
of English settlement in a region till then neglected, from whence large
territories, including Zululand and, recently, Southern Tongaland, have
been acquired. Although Britain purported to act, and, indeed, in a
certain sense did act, in self-defence, one cannot repress a feeling
that the Boer settlers, who had occupied a territory they found vacant
and had broken the power of the savage Zulu king, were hardly used. They
ought, at any rate, to have had earlier notice of British intentions.
But against this may be set the fact that the internal dissensions which
rent the infant republic would have sooner or later brought it to the
ground, compelling British intervention, and that the native races have
fared better under British control than they seemed likely to do under
that of the Boers, whose behaviour towards them, though little more
harsh than that of the English colonists, has been much less considerate
than that of the Imperial Government.

Hardly less troubled was the lot of the emigrants who had scattered
themselves over the wide uplands that lie between the Orange River and
the Limpopo. They, too, were engaged in incessant wars with the native
tribes, who were, however, less formidable than the Zulus, and much
cattle lifting went on upon both sides. Only one native tribe and one
native chief stand out from the confused tangle of petty raids and
forays which makes up (after the expulsion of the Matabili) the earlier
annals of the Boer communities. This chief was the famous Moshesh, to
speak of whose career I may digress for a moment from the thread of this