in the event of a long drought, to overcome the Matabele Zulus, otherwise they would have to fight their way through the eastern Bamangwatos.
At the end of my journey, after my return to the diamond-fields in 1877, I took up this matter publicly, anxious to do anything in my power to prevent any overt conflict between the emigrants and the noble Bamangwato king. The tenour of my views will be apprehended from the concluding paragraph of my first article, published in the Diamond News of March 24th: “It is absurd for people like these Boers, who are not in a condition to make any progress whatever in their own country, and who regard the most necessary reforms with suspicion, to think of founding a new state of their own.”[1]
Two months after writing that article, I heard they were in expectation of securing the friendship of Khamane, while he was living with Sechele at enmity with Khame. Their scheme of raising him to the throne failed, and no better success attended them in their subsequent attempt to form an alliance with Matsheng.
During 1876 and the following year, the condition of the emigrants, as they still lingered about the Limpopo, changed decidedly for the worse; they had ceased to talk about the conquest of a hostile country, but on the contrary took every means to avoid a battle; many of them had succumbed to fever, and sickness continued to make such ravages amongst them that they resolved to start once more. Again they applied to Khame for a safe passage through his land, but made a move in the direction
- ↑ Boers of this kind are not to be confounded with the more cultivated portion of the Dutch community in South Africa.
