h whom the British authorities came in contact. Those authorities, as
I have already observed, were in those days, under orders received from
home, anxious rather to contract than to extend the sphere of imperial
influence, and cared little for what happened far out in the wilderness,
except whenever the action of the Boers induced troubles among the
natives.

It was otherwise with the emigrants who lived to the south-west, between
the Vaal River and the frontier of Cape Colony, which was then at the
village of Colesberg, between what is now De Aar Junction and the upper
course of the Orange River. Here there were endless bickerings between
the Boers, the rapidly growing native tribe of the Basutos, and the
half-breeds called Griquas, hunting clans sprung from Dutch fathers and
Hottentot women, who, intermixed with white people, and to some extent
civilized by the missionaries, were scattered over the country from
where the town of Kimberley now stands southward to the junction of the
Orange and Caledon rivers. These quarrels, with the perpetual risk of a
serious native war arising from them, distressed a succession of
governors at Cape Town and a succession of colonial secretaries in
Downing Street. Britain did not wish (if I may use a commercial term not
unsuited to her state of mind) "to increase her holding" in South
Africa. She regarded the Cape as the least prosperous and promising of
her colonies, with an arid soil, a population largely alien, and an
apparently endless series of costly Kafir wars. She desired to avoid all
further annexations of territory, because each annexation brought fresh
responsibilities, and fresh responsibilities involved increased
expenditure. At last a plan was proposed by Dr. Philip, a prominent
missionary who had acquired influence with the government. The
missionaries were the only responsible persons who knew much about the
wild interior, and they were often called on to discharge functions
similar to those which the bishops performed for the barbarian kings in
western Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries of our era. The
societies which they represented commanded some influence in Parliament;
and this fact also disposed the Colonial Office to consult them. Dr.
Philip suggested the creation along the north-eastern border of a line
of native states which should sever the Colony from the unsettled
districts, and should isolate the more turbulent emigrant Boers from
those who had rema