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at home as to defy alike official inquiry and individual complaint. So strong had become this conviction, that whoever was discovered to be a complainant to the Commissioners, or supposed to have furnished them voluntarily with any information respecting abuses, was immediately set down as a 'marked and ruined man*.' And even the Commissioners themselves, (though unquestionably as honourable men as England ever intrusted with a difficult and delicate public duty,) began to be very generally suspected of being either the mere puppets of Earl Bathurst, or the blind dupes of Lord Charles Somerset; an unworthy surmise, arising from the extreme caution which their instructions constrained them to observe in regard to all complaints which related to the personal conduct of the Governor. Those who, strong in a better faith, had dared to vindicate their claims to the privileges of British subjects, and who by doing so had become 'obnoxious' (such was the specific term) to the Colonial

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* The influence of such impressions in deterring the inhabitants, and espe cially persons in office, from giving information to the Commissioners, even respecting the most notorious abuses and oppressions, may be partly estimated, in spite of the official cautiousness of the language, from some remarks in their Report upon the Administration of the Government at the Cape of Good Hope." "Notwithstanding," observe the Commissioners, "the favourable disposition manifested towards us by the head of the Government, we soon had reason to be convinced that impartial or unsolicited disclosures upon the mode in which the Government had been administered, or even explanations of the particular instances in which the exercise of its authority seemed questionable, were not to be expected from the civil servants who at that time held official situations."-"We have reason to believe that a general understanding existed at that time, and which has since been more distinctly pronounced, that any civil servant who should venture to make disclosures to us of circumstances in his department without having previously communicated them to the Colonial Government, would be liable to dismissal from office."-" We think it right to notice it as an impression in some degree prevalent, and which may therefore partly account for the reluctance of individuals to afford us voluntary information." (See Parliamentary Papers for 1827, No. 282).-The real fact is, that persons in the service of Government, while they were ostensibly invited by public proclamation to afford every informatian in their power to the Commissioners, were privately given to understand, and even in some instances officially threatened, that they would be 'instantly dismissed from office' if they should dare to make any gratuitous communication.' I do not make this assertion without adequate evidence of the fact. A person in office showed me a letter to this effect, addressed to himself from the Colonial Office, at the very period of which I am writing.

Government, were now looked upon as persons under a sort of civil proscription, with whom it was no longer safe to associate, or even to hold casual intercourse*. Many illustrations, at once ludicrous and humiliating, of the pusillanimous prostration of the public mind at this crisis, remain vividly in my recollection; but I refrain from giving pain to individuals, otherwise respectable, by recording them. Nor were people's apprehensions apparently without foundation. I shall notice only one instance. A clergyman of the Church of England, a friend of mine, was informed by a functionary of high rank, then the chief adviser of the Governor, that he was regarded at Government House as one of the 'disaffected,' because it was observed that he still continued to associate with Mr. Pringle and Mr. Fairbairn.' It would, however, be harsh, and probably unfair, to ascribe without qualification the whole of this persecution to the Governor personally. Tyrannical and vindictive as he was, I have little doubt that much of what was then said and done, and of which Lord Charles Somerset got the credit, was said and done without his knowledge or beyond his intention. But such will ever be the case under a system of government such as he had organised, and to which he pertinaciously clung till it crumbled beneath his grasp and crushed him in its ruins; a system where integrity and inde

If any reader should fancy that I may have drawn this picture of colonial servility too strongly, I would beg to refer him to the statement of a gentleman well qualified, from his intimate knowledge of the Cape, and from the station of Government Secretary which he so long and ably filled there, to give a correct judgment on the subject. In a pamphlet published at Cape Town in 1827, this officer makes the following remarks:

"It would be to suppose persons very ill informed of the state of society in colonies" [Col. B. should have added, under an arbitrary government], "if it were thought necessary to prove the great extent of influence the opinions of Government House command. To be in disgrace at Government House is nearly to be banished society-to offend a Governor is nearly to become an outlaw. No one dares to look at, or to greet the individual, who has incurred viceroyal displeasure; few venture to give opinions not consonant with those of the arbiter of wisdom, who presides over the fortunes of every member of a Colonial community." -Observations on the Letter addressed by Sir R. Donkin to Earl Bathurst, by Lieutenant-Colonel Bird. Cape Town,

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pendence found no soil to grow in, where truth could not with safety be spoken, and where the servile and the selfish, basely solicitous to recommend themselves in the eyes of their patron, could scarcely fail to carry insult and persecution towards the objects of his dislike in many cases beyond the bounds he himself may have purposed.

Such is a faint picture of the state of things at the Cape in the beginning of October, 1824. Before this period I had become convinced that, whatever the final result might be as regarded the system of Government, my personal prospects in the colony were for the present entirely blasted, and that to continue the struggle longer would only sink us deeper in ruin. I began therefore to prepare seriously for returning to England, where, though my prospects were precarious enough, I should at least be once more under the protection of British laws, and at liberty to follow whatever course Providence might open to me, regardless alike of the favour or the frown of men 'drest in a little brief authority.' With this view, I resolved to make a hasty excursion to the eastern frontier, in order to see once more my relatives at Glen-Lynden; leaving my wife meanwhile in Cape Town; and my friend Fairbairn continuing to superintend our little academy, which now looked like a consumptive patient whose recovery is quite hopeless, though dissolution may be for a brief space protracted.

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CHAPTER XI.

Excursion to the Interior-Accident near Genadendal-Return to Cape Town-State of Affairs-Second Journey to the Eastern Frontier-State of the Settlers in Albany; their Calamities and Privations; their Treatment by the Government; Subscription for their Relief; their Progressive Advance, and present Prosperous Condition.

On the 8th of October, 1824, I set out on my projected excursion to the interior, in company with my esteemed friends, Mr. W. T. Blair and Captain Miller, of the East India Company's Service, who were bound on a journey of benevolence to the British settlement in Albany, and to the principal missionary stations that lay near our route. Travelling on horseback, we passed rapidly through the wellpeopled district of Stellenbosch, and the vine-cultured vale of Franschehoek; and having crossed by the magnificent pass of that name the great range of Drakenstein mountains, we reached on the 11th the Moravian settlement of Genadendal, or Vale of Grace.

It was Sunday morning when we approached the village; and the voice of sacred songs was ascending from the rustic chapel, in the midst of its venerable grove of oaks, harmonising finely with the quiet sabbath-like seclusion of that beautiful spot. We sat down under a tree near the door of the chapel, and enjoyed the sweet repose of the scene, till the service was concluded. We were then welcomed by the good missionaries with their characteristic courtesy, and spent the rest of the day most pleasantly among them and their Hottentot disciples.

We left Genadendal the following morning; but had not proceeded above seven or eight miles, when I met with an accident which effectually interrupted my journey. My horse

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being bit, or snapt at, by an ill-mannered cur, in passing a boor's place, gave a sudden spring to one side, by which I was thrown violently from my saddle to the ground, and had one of my thigh bones fractured *. There was no alternative but to be carried back to Genadendal, which I was fortunately still so near, and where I was certain of experiencing every kind attention in the power of the benevolent brethren to bestow. And it is with feelings of pleasing remembrance I add that my anticipations were in that respect most fully realized. The kindness of all, and especially of the Rev. Mr. Hallbeck the superintendent, during my inevitable detention there, deserves my most grateful commemoration.

I returned to Cape Town early in December, and spent that and the following month in winding up my concerns there.

* Owing to my lameness from a hurt received in childhood, I may, perhaps, be considered peculiarly liable to such accidents as the one here mentioned. Nevertheless, though I was almost daily on horseback during my residence in South Africa, and frequently made long journeys in that mode, I never met with any other serious accident of this sort, except once at Glen-Lynden, when I had another bone broken. An inconvenience of the country of more general application is the difficulty, in remote situations, of procuring surgical or medical assistance. The remarkable salubrity of the climate, in which contagious diseases are almost unknown, renders the latter, perhaps, of inferior importance; but my own experience may serve to show how awkwardly many of the inhabitants are situated in regard to surgical aid on sudden emergencies. On the other occasion referred to, I dispatched a messenger to Roodewal, distant forty miles, for the military surgeon, there being at that time no other medical gentleman within more than 100 miles. But when my messenger reached the Great Fish River, he found it in a furious flood; and as there is not a bridge from its source to the sea, there was no alternative but to wait a few days till it became fordable. On the present occasion the case was different-but not better. There was a surgeon resident at a country town about thirty miles distant. But when my messenger arrived he was lying drunk-had been drunk for ten days and was expected to be drunk for ten days to come. Not choosing to trust my limbs in the hands of such a sot, I wrote next to Cape Town for a surgeon: but before my medical friend there could leave his other patients and get out to me, more than a fortnight had elapsed; and by that time I had no longer need of his aid, for with the help of good brother Stem, one of the missionaries, I had managed to get the fracture reduced-the inflammation had abated-and all was doing well.

I was detained at Genadendal nearly two months by this accident; but my wife came out from Cape Town to me, and brought with her a few of my favourite books, so that the time passed away swiftly and pleasantly. The repose and seclusion we here enjoyed were peculiarly delightful after the harassing turmoil to which we had been recently subjected.