AFRiCANA; "Shsky'biblioteek UNIVERSITEIT VAN PRETORIA. Klasnommer...-^..PA(^-)--'!-03.... Registernommer (>.L^.^.L |^Ac-KEg^r f\ p) THE CRADLE DAYS OF NATAL Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2014 https://archive.org/details/cradledaysofnataOOgmac Francis George Farewell, Lieutenant R.N. Founder of Port Natal. {From a miniature in the Durban Museum.) THE CRADLE DAYS OF NATAL (1497-1845) BY GRAHAM MACKEURTAN LL.B. (Cant.) V ONE OF HIS majesty's COUNSEL FOR THE UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA mTH ILLUSTRATIONS LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. LONDON • NEW YORK • TORONTO 1930 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. LTD. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E.C.4. 6 OLD COURT HOUSE STREET, CALCUTTA 53 NICOL ROAD, BOMBAY 36A MOUNT ROAD, MADRAS LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 55 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 221 EAST 20TH STREET, CHICAGO TREMONT TEMPLE, BOSTON 128-132 UNIVERSITY AVENUE, TORONTO MADE IN GREAT BRITAIN TO WILLIS AND THE BABES i ;; PREFACE AM much indebted to the following for kindness and I assistance during my effort to write a readable history of the early days of one of the fairest countries on the earth : Mr. E. C. Chubb, Curator of the Durban Museum ; Mr, Franklin Rooke, Librarian of the Durban Public Library Messrs. Lloyd and Freere, Librarian and Under Librarian of the South African Public Library, Capetown ; Mr. Graham Botha, Keeper of the Union Archives, and Miss Kincaid of his Depart- ment ; Sir George Cory, the great Historian ; Dr. Loram of the Natal Education Department ; Mr. T. B. Horwood of the Natal Bar ; Mr. Gubbins of Ottoshoop ; the Rev. Mr. Brueckner of Mission Station ; Mrs. W. Stuart of Adams' Grahamstown ; the Rev. Mr. Eveleigh of the Wesleyan Church Book Depot Mr. M. Basson, Keeper of the Natal Archives ; Colonel Molyneux, Mr. Denis Shepstone and Mr. J. F. Clark of Durban ; Miss Alice Bell, my Secretary ; Dr. Brownlee of Mount Edgecombe ; Mr. Leonard Line of Pietermaritzburg ; and General Thomson of Kokstad. Mr. Lynn Acutt of Durban has supplied most of the photo- graphs reproduced. Unhappily there is no portrait of Pieter Retief in existence. Graham Mackeurtan Durban North April igjo vii 3 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I, THE DISCOVERY I II. THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY lO III. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 35 IV. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY {continued) ... 53 V. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 71 VI. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY—THE SETTLEMENT AND ITS ORIGIN 92 VII. TSHAKA AND THE SETTLEMENT . , .III VIII. DINGANA AND THE SETTLEMENT .... I40 IX. THE MISSIONARIES AND THE VOORTREKKERS ARRIVE . 1 73 X. THE UPHEAVAL 21 XI. THE OVERTHROW OF DINGANA 232 XII. THE CONFLICT BETV^EN THE VOORTREKKERS AND THE BRITISH—NATAL ANNEXED 260 XIII. THE AMERICANS IN NATAL 302 APPENDIX : TABLE OF AUTHORITIES . .331 INDEX . 335 ix LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE FRANCIS GEORGE FAREWELL, LIEUTENANT R.N., FOUNDER OF PORT NATAL Frontispiece From a miniature in the Durban Museum THE KIND OF COUNTRY TRAVERSED BY THE PORTUGUESE . 22 AN OLD ZULU MAN 32 (' So may the African of 1497 have regarded the Fleet of Vasco da Gama ') TSHAKA 102 ' From Isaacs' ' Travels in Eastern Africa HENRY FRANCIS FYNN, FAREWELL'S RIGHT HAND . , 107 From a photograph in the Durban Museum A YOUNG ZULU MAN . I18 (The stuff of which Tshaka's warriors were made) THE HANDWRITING OF NATHANIEL ISAACS , . 126 From a letter in the Author's possession THE SITE OF FAREWELL'S CAMP TO-DAY . I30 THE GRAVE OF JAMES SAUNDERS KING 144 THE TYPE OF ZULU GIRL THAT ISAACS SAW . 162 A MODERN DESCENDANT OF THE WITCH-DOCTOR . 164 ALLEN FRANCIS GARDINER, COMMANDER R.N. ' THE PATA- ' GONIAN MARTYR 1 73 ' From Marsh's ' Memoir of Allen Gardiner DINGANA 175 ' From Gardiner's ' Journey to the Zoolu Country PORTIONS OF A LETTER WRITTEN BY OWEN ON THE ' COMET ' 222 From the original in the Durban Museum * ' THE RETIEF MONUMENT ON THE HILL OF SLAUGHTER . 234 Photograph taken when representatives of the 24th Regiment, which suffered at Isandhlwana in 1879, toured Zululand fifty years later xi xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE A. W. J. PRETORIUS 244 From a photograph of a contemporary sketch in the Voortrekkers' Museum ADULPHE DELEGORGUE 248 From his own book MPANDE IN 1848 258 ' From Angas' ' Kaffirs Illustrated ' DICK king's ' STATUE AT DURBAN 276 ' ' CHRISTOPHER JOSEPH CATC OF THE MAZEPPA . .278 From a photograph in the Durban Museum MAJOR T. C. SMITH 286 From a photograph in the Durban Museum THE FIRST NATAL NEWSPAPER 292 From the copy in the Natal Archives THE REVEREND ALDIN GROUT 302 ' From Tyler's ' Forty Years among the Zulus A MODERN ZULU WOMAN 3 10 THE CRADLE DAYS OF NATAL THE CRADLE DAYS OF NATAL CHAPTER I THE DISCOVERY Christmas Day 1497 Vasco da Gama's fleet of three ONsmall vessels plunged slowly along the coast of South- East Africa in search of " Prester John and the King of Calicut " by command of Dom Manoel, King of Portugal, afterwards called " The Fortunate." Dom Manoel believed that in the dark heart of Africa or India there was a mighty Christian State whose monarch bore the dynastic name of Prester John. He was not in this respect original. His ancestors had for centuries nursed the same belief with a praiseworthy insistence, for which the Infidel Turk was in the main responsible. The Kings of Portugal yearned to find this Prester John, so that they might ally themselves with him. Once this was achieved they could engage the same Turk upon his front, while Prester John fell heavily against his unprotected rear. It seemed that only by some such manoeuvre could the Holy Places find themselves again in Christian hands. This queer obsession had emerged from a letter which Prester John was alleged to have written in the twelfth century to the Greek Emperor Manuel the First. It was widely circulated through Europe in the year 1 165, and took the credulous by storm. In it Prester John described in convincing detail the glories of his Asiatic kingdom, and recorded his consuming desire to recover the Holy Sepulchre by means' of his countless armies. He had monstrous ants that dug for gold, kept fish that produced the famous purple dye, and collected pebbles that not only cured blindness but made their possessors invisible. What is more, he bred salamanders, 2 THE DISCOVERY from whose unconsumable excretions his royal robes were fashioned, to be laundered only in flame. These were but a few of the amazing figments of this preposterous document. He had, so the letter said, a sceptre fashioned from a single emerald, crosses of gold and blazing gems for battle standards, and a mirror in which he could miraculously observe the activities of his teeming subjects. The humblest of his courtiers was a bishop. He was surrounded by adoring archbishops, counts, dukes, and—it was whispered—even kings. His chief cook was an abbot, and his master of the horse an archimandrite. And yet amid this fantastic fabulous splendour, whose very contem- plation made one like to swoon, the monarch was content with the title of naught but a simple presbyter or priest. This was proof of a humility so exquisite that the devout proceeded to hug themselves in an ecstasy of fervour. Nobody asked why Prester John, with such illimitable resources, had not simply fallen upon the unregenerate Turk and incontinently obliterated him. The answer would no doubt have given general satisfaction, but it is unhappily not on record. In later days Prester John was, still rather nebulously, located in Africa rather than Asia as the " Patriarch of Nubia." He finally turned out to be the important but prosaic Christian Emperor of Abyssinia, who could hardly in his most inspired moments have claimed a tithe of the mythical glories once the fervent belief of Europe. So that it was in fact a less fabulous, but still potentially useful. Christian emperor, somewhere in North-East Africa, that the Portuguese of the late fifteenth century set out to discover. He still bore, of course, the name of Prester John. The King of Calicut, who was also an object of Vasco da Gama's quest, was a much less grandiose figure than Prester John. He was presumed to be merely the King of the Indies —an opulent but heathen ruffian who, when run to earth, was to be well trounced and converted. No greater difficulty was expected in discovering him than in finding Prester John. All Vasco da Gama had to do was to sail round Africa and ask for " Sofala and the Island of the Moon." There pilots would guide him to the coast of Malabar and Calicut. After this simple preliminary the rich and exotic products of THE DISCOVERY 3 those realms were to find their way to Europe by way of Portugal. What had led Dom Manoel to pass from a state of quiescent belief to one of active exploration was this. Dom John, who succeeded his father King Alfonso upon the throne of Portugal in 1481, was much intrigued with the exploration of Western Africa, stimulated no doubt by the fact that the revenue from that region had been assigned to him during his father's lifetime. His interest was augmented when one of his captains brought back from Benin an ambassador from the king of that place, who disclosed the existence of a " Powerful Prince " with the significant name of Ogane some two hundred and fifty leagues to the eastward of his country. To this prince even the ruler of Benin himself paid tribute. According to the ambassador, each new King of Benin was bound to acquaint Ogane of his accession, and received in return a large Maltese cross of brass, which he retained as a symbol of his vassaldom.