red by the jealous
tribes of the interior, and others were treacherously slaughtered by
their professed ally, the blood-thirsty chief of the Zulus--and how
the exasperated survivors turned upon their assailants, broke their
power, and scattered them; how they planted towns, formed a regular
government, and set up an independent republic; all these, and many
similar events, must be left for the future historians of South Africa
to record. Neither is it necessary to refer here to the policy which
led our government afterwards to extend its authority over the lands
thus conquered and settled by the emigrants, or to the manner in which
this authority, at first resisted, was finally established. Natal was
thus made a British province in 1842. Many of the boors, naturally
enough disliking the new government thus forced upon them, retraced
their course over the Drakenberg, back into the upland plains of the
interior. Here they were left pretty much to themselves, until the
year 1848, when Sir Harry Smith proclaimed the extension of the
Queen's supremacy over the whole of the territory situated between the
Orange and Vaal Rivers; but, as has been already said, it was not
until March of last year that this acquisition was finally sanctioned,
and the new colony established by an act of the imperial government.

The Vaal River--sometimes called the Nu Gariep, and sometimes the
Yellow River--is the principal tributary of the Orange River; indeed,
it is so large an affluent, that some geographers have doubted, as in
the case of the Mississippi and the Missouri, which should properly be
considered the main stream. These rivers, the Orange and the Vaal,
rising near together in the Drakenberg chain, take a wide circuit, the
one to the south-west, the other to the north-west, and flow each a
distance of about 400 miles before their junction. The territory which
they thus enclose is nearly as large as England, comprising between
40,000 and 50,000 square miles. It is inhabited by about 80,000
natives, of various Bechuana, Namaqua, and half-caste tribes, and by
some 15,000 or 20,000 colonists of European origin. Over all these
inhabitants, colonists and natives, the British sovereignty has been
proclaimed. Subject to this supremacy, the native chiefs and tribes
are still left to manage their own affairs, according to their
original laws and customs. But in order to indicate clearly and
decisively the fact, that the royal authority is now p