The Colony of Natal. An account of the characteristics and capabilities of this British Dependency. Published under the direction of the Government Immigration Board. ... Compiled and edited by R. J. M

Preface

During the year 1858, the Government Immigration Board of Natal (appointed by His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor, in 1857) proposed, by public advertisement, to give three prizes for the three best Essays, on practical matters relating to the characters of the colony, as a field for Emigrants ; reserving to the Colonial G overnment the right to use the material thus furnished in compiling a book for publication. It was the object of the Immigration Board, in taking this course, to elicit from practical and experienced men, reliable information, which, after due authentication and care, might be authoritatively placed before the British public, in a form adapted to convey a simple and truthful picture of the actual state of things. Four Essays were sent in to compete for these prizes, and three gentlemen, — Mr. Barter, Mr. Babbs, and Dr. Mann, were appointed by His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor, to act as examiners and judges of the merits of the Essays.

Two of the treatises proved to be irrelevant to the object contemplated, and not within the terms of the competition. The first prize, of £50, was ultimately awarded conjointly and equally to the other two Essays, upon the ground that the judges found difficulty in determining that either of these was actually and absolutely, superior to the other. One of the Essays bore the obvious character of being the work of an old and experienced colonist, who had seen with his own eyes, and accom plished with his own hands, much that he wrote about. The other was as manifestly the contribution of a younger hand, but comprised a large mass of very useful and valuable information. Mr Arbuthnot, of the Umzinto, was the author of the successful Essay first alluded to. Mr. John Eobinson, of Durban, was the author of the second.

His Excellency, the Lieutenant-Governor, was ultimately pleased to request Dr. Mann to prepare a kind of Guide Book to the resources and capabilities of the colony, froni the subject material of these Prize Essays, and from other sources. His Excellency's commands have taken effect in the following pages. A considerable portion of the more practical material is derived from the contri butions of Mr. ArUbthnot and Mr. Eobinson. For other matters, the editor and compiler is himself responsible. It has also been the editor's especial care to verify and authenticate all the statements of the book, by reference to various competent and reliable authorir ties. The work is consequently presented to the world under these guarantees of accuracy and truthfulness. It is hoped that many readers in England will form, from the perusal of its pages, a correct notion of :'The Colony of Natal" as it exists, in the 16th year of its own age as a settled British dependency, and in the year of grace, 1859.

Maritzburg, Natal, September, 1859. TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGF I. The Position and Physical Characters of the Colony of Natal 1 II. The Early Days of Natal 10 III. The Kafir Races in Natal 33 IV. The Climate of Natal 47 V. The Coast Lands and Tropical Produce ; Cultivation of Sugar, Arrow-root, and Coffee... ... ... ... ... ... 7Q VI. The Uplands; Sheep Farming ... . 112 VII. The Midland Districts and their Capabilities 128 VIII. The Natural Productions of Natal 152 IX. The Commercial Progress of Natal 173 X. A Few Words to Emigrants ... 180 Appendix — Hints "to Emigrants' Wives ...

Chapter I. The Position And Physical Chabactees Op The Colony Op Natal

fHE British Colony of Natal lies on the south-eastern horder of Africa, ahout eight hundred miles beyond the Cape of Good Hope, and looking out on to the Indian Ocean, between the 29th and 31st parallels of south latitude. A limited tract of independent country, inhabited by friendly tribes, divides it from the other British possessions known as Kafraria and the Cape Colony. Natal, in common with the general range of this portion of the great African continent, is mainly composed of a confused intermingling of the rocks known as Granite, Gneiss, Sandstone, Trap, and Shale. It is, therefore, of the ingredients of some or other of these, loosened and pulverized by the decomposing action of the atmosphere and of energetic subtropical, vegetable life, that the soils which come under the hands of colonial agriculture are made.

The hard granite and gneiss constitute a kind of irregular floor to the district, and this floor is then pavemented with sandstone. But both the floor and the pave ment have been broken up into fragmentary slabs by earthquake shatterings, and through the cracks and fissures yawning between the slabs, molten stone from beneath has been poured, so that upon cooling and hardening, it has set into broad swelling slopes und ridgy hills. These outpoured masses form the "Trap." n : The granite, the sandstone, and the trap are distributed through the land in the most unmethodical way, as if they had aU been cbaotically tumbled together again and again, and then left to fall into their permanent positions of rest by accident. The trap is however, on the whole, the most abundant, constituting in some places wide undulating plains, and long staircase-like ridges, and often strewing the surface for miles with gigantic boulders of dark grey, compact, uncrystalline rock.

Where the granite shows itself above the compact grey trap, it is moulded into the form of broad, low, and smoothly-rounded hills. The gneiss, which is a streaky variety of the granite, mostly wears the form of more abrupt and knobby prominences, which are not unfrequently tipped and surmounted with little bonnets of sandstone. The trap itself occasion aUy protrudes from the edge of the more level ridges as bold truncated cones. The sandstone chiefly appears as broad tables, with precipitous faces and sides. These tabular masses of sandstone, which are, indeed, the slabs of the shattered pavement, constitute one very remarkable feature in the scenery of Southern Africa. They form the table-mountains so common in this region. The base of these table-mountains is composed of green accessible slopes, made rugged by projecting buttresses and props.

Upon the top of these green-buttressed slopes there rises a perpendicular wall of bare, reddish-grey rock, ridged vertically with rain-washed and wind-worn pillars and furrows. The verdant base is, for the most part, moulded of granite. The bare tablets above are shaped of horizontal layers of sandstone ; and upon the top thei-e is a wide expanse of level pasture, often many square miles in extent, which thus presents the curious spectacle of a large tract of land, isolated from the rest of the world by a circumvallation of downward-dipping precipices, with perhaps only one or two narrow, rocky staircases, by which the heights above can be scaled. Tlie adventurous explorer who has climbed one of these rugged paths, and has afterwards pushed on through the thick, coarse, Ixia-studded grass which he encounters, aU of a sudden comes to a gentle slope, and then to the edge of a perpendicular descent, which dips down from beneath his feet, aud discloses, hundreds of yards below, a mound-encumbered chasm, or valley, with a silver stream winding its serpentine way in the midst of the rocky wilderness, and on the further sides of the ravine and in the far distance, hills melting into soft purple shadows.

The Table-mountain Sandstone, which is generally connected with the granite by ties of close relationship, is a coarse-grained rock of great geological antiquity. It seems to be older than terraqueous life, being altogether destitute of fossilized traces of organic forms. It belongs properly to the mineral group which the geologist names " Silurian," because its congeners are found in the western districts of England, where the old " Silures" lived. A finer-grained sandstone, of younger age, occurs here and there in patches of limited extent. This younger sandstone contains impressions of vegetable remains, and is often associated with coal-bearing " Shales" (Jiardened clay), the coal, the shale, and the sandstone being distributed in alternate layers. Shale generally appears also at the border of trap-beds.

Wherever trap rests in an inclined position upon the slopes of lower beds, its surface has been washed, and the surface-washings have been deposited in layers, which have subsequently dried and hardened into shale. The abundant trap of South Africa is itself of various degrees of antiquity. In some places it cuts through, and overlies the granite ; in other places it has cracked and penetrated the old Silurian sandstone as well ; in yet others, it pierces the younger sandstones, and shales, and coal-bearing strata, and then covers them up in overlying masses. This remark applies also, in a more measured degree, to the granite. The granite and gneiss have been upheaved again and again before the existing bold and undulating contour of the land was completed and fixed. There are spots in which even the compact trap seems to have been fractured and penetrated by the granite.

The trap and the granite appear to have divided between them the labour of moulding the valleys and hills of the South African land. Between twenty-seven and a-half degrees, and thirty degrees, of south latitude, and at a varying distance from the sea of from one hundred to two hundred and fifty miles, the high land of South-eastern Africa makes a sudden step-like descent. The b2 _ top of this ledge is some six thousand feet above the ocean ; its perpendicular face is several hundred feet high, and from the lower land wears the aspect of a magnificent mountain chain, sloped and buttressed below, and pillared and walled above by bare rock, something like the sides of the Table-mountains. The ledge itself runs in a zig-zag course, and bears the name of the " Drakenberg,"* or " Kathlamba" range of mountains.

In twenty-seven degrees and a-half of south latitude a stream flows from the lower slopes of the Drakenberg ledge, and sets south-eastwards in an almost direct course towards the sea. For the first half of its downward progress, this stream is called the " Umzinyati," or " Buffalo River ;" and through the remaining portion of its length, the " Tugela," (i. e. " Startling River.") The Buffalo and Tugela Rivers together are about two hunched miles long. Near to twenty-nine degrees aud a-half of south latitude another stream starts from the slopes of the Drakenberg, also flowing south-eastwards to the sea. This stream is called the " Umzimkulu" (Great River). The strip of land which lies between the Drakenberg ledge and the sea, and which is inclosed by the Buffalo and Tugela Rivers to the north, and by the Umzimkulu to the south, comprises within itself an area of twelve million and a-half of acres (about equal in extent to Scotland), and has a sea-board upon the Indian Ocean of one hundred and fifty miles.

This area constitutes the colony of Natal. t Beyond the Tugela and Buffalo Rivers, to the north, the colony is neighboured by the Zululand of King Panda. J Beyond the Umzimkulu, on the south, lies the independent territory of the Kafir Chief Faku. Above the steppe of the Drakenberg stretches the territory of the Transvaal Republic, of the Orange River Free-state, and the Basuta country of the Chief Moshesh. The north-western boundary wall of the colony, — the mountainous ledge of the Drakenberg, — does not * " Drakenberg" (Dragon's Mountain), among the Dutch ; " Kathlamba," among the natives. f The boundary of the colony, towards the south-west, is, however, not very accurately defined at present in the uplands. I There is a small Dutch settlement also beyond the Buffalo, and below the Drakenberg. run in a straight line.

It makes a bold zig-zag, and is very much what might have been formed if some upland race of giants had thrown up there a mighty bastioned rampart to prevent the further encroachment of colonization and civilization. Towards the northern end this rocky line of fortification juts into the territory of the Free-state as a re-entering, or retiring angle ; towards the southern end it projects as a salient angle into the colony, and in the direction of the sea. The upper, or northern stretch of the colony thus possesses a much broader range than the region towards the south. Nearly three-fourths of the Drakenberg boundary is bent into the retiring angle, and gives the wide elbow-room to these upland districts. From the extreme depth of the retiring angle of the Draken berg, a mountain -stream pitches down over the precipitous ledge, nearly two tKbusand feet in a direct fall, and then flows on towards the east, receiving tributary after tributary on either hand.

It is in this abrupt way that tlie supreme river-potentate of Natal, the Tugela, makes its entrance into colonial life. For nearly two-thirds of its course, it runs through the midst of colonial territory, fed by rivers which issue from the sides of the retiring angle of the Drakenberg. The " Klip," or Stone River, the Sunday River, and the Buffalo River, on the one hand ; and the Little Tugela, the Great Bushman's River, and the Mooi ("beautiful") River, on the other hand. For the remaining and lower third of its course the Tugela is the boundary of the colony. The land which, lies on either bank of the Upper Tugela, between the sides of the retiring angle of the Drakenberg and the fork where the Buffalo, Upper Tugela, and Mooi Rivers meet, comprises a very considerable upland district, which is termed the Klip River County on the north, and Weenen County, or the County of Weeping, on the south of the Tugela.

The salient angle of the Drakenberg is finished by a bold, three-peaked outwork, which presents a remarkable battlemented front to the lower lands, and is thence called " The Giant's Castle."* The left flank of this outwork sends down feeders to the Great Bushman's River and the Tugela. From the right flank, a distinct watershed originates, which supplies a river that * Named by Captain Gardiner. THE COLONY OF NATA L . flows down to the sea, parallel with the Umzimkulu, but some thirty or forty miles further to the north. This stream is the Umkomanzi (" Standing Ricer"). About thirty miles seaward of the salient angle of the Drakenberg and the Giant's Castle there rises a bold range of eminences, known under the designation of the " Spijoen kop (spying-top) Hills." From the lower declivities of these hills a second-class river issues, to become, in its downward progress, the central stream ofthe colony.

This is the " Umgeni" (River of the Entrance), which empties itself into the sea, four miles to the north of Durban, the port of Natal. Around the upper feeders ofthe Umgeni, and between it and the Umkomanzi, stretches the county of Maritzburg, having the metropolitan city of the same name in its midst. The strip of coast-land, lying between the Umgeni and the Umkomanzi, *and extending some twenty miles inland, constitutes the county of Durban. Two comparatively small streams, the Rlovo (glare) and the Umlazi (Ricer of Whey), drain through the midst of these counties. Between the Umgeni and the Tugela the land is divided into the upland county of the Umvoti and the sea-coast county of Victoria, The river Umvoti (Soft River) descends to the sea through these counties. These broad features of the distribution and arrangement of tlie rivers and land are roughly placed before the eye in the accompanying map.

Tlie most thickly settled parts are left white in the plan, and the portions of the colony reserved for the native are coloured most deeply. The land which lies at the immediate foot of the Drakenberg ledge is between three and four thousand feet above the level of the sea. From this the country slopes continuously downwards, towards the ocean. The descent is, however, made in the main by three abrupt steps, so that the colony is distributed into four irregular terraces, or more properly into three terraces, and a sea-coast basement or floor. Of these terraces, the highest or " Upland" one stretches from the Drakenberg to within fifty miles of the sea. The intermediate or " Midland" terrace has an average breadth of about twenty miles, and an average height of about two thousand feet. The city of Maritzburg stands at the northern extremity of this central terrace, in the midst of undulating green slopes, with the declivities of the higher steppe immediately overhanging it towards the north-east.

The lower terrace is fifteen miles wide, and eight hundred feet high, and from its edge the eye roams over the luxuriantly" foliaged region which intervenes between the bottom of its ledge and the sea, and which constitutes the Littoral, or " Sea-coast" district. It is one happy consequence of this peculiar arrangement of the face of the country, that the small colony of Natal enjoys a surprising range of climate within its comparatively narrow dimensions. The Sea-coast lands comprised within the Littoral strip, and many sheltered spots on the terrace immediately above, ripen the sugar cane, the coffee berry, the arrow root, the banana, the pine apple, and the orange, in almost tropical luxuriance, and are green with never-failing foliage throughout the year. In the Midland and Upland terraces frost is seen on the ground in the early morning, and snow upon the hill-tops, during the season of midwinter ; and corn, with other familiar productions of the English soil, readily make themselves at home.

In these regions, horses and cattle also thrive, and flocks are just making their appearance among the herds. The natural terraces of Natal have not, however, been smoothly finished, and evenly laid. Nature does not work like the mason, because her object is an altogether different one. The traveller who climbs these steps can hardly make out the facts of their general plan by the eye-glance. He has to deduce the notion from a series of isolated positions and reflections. Tlie land, as has been already intimated, has been disturbed again and again, and the terraced steps have been heaved this way and that ; they are consequently now battered and bent, traversed by cracks and notched by deep gorges through which the insinuating water finds its way, carving rugged channels for itself among the fragments of rock, and ever and anon making some bold leapto gain the lower level.

Water-falls in Natal are almost as plentiful as blackberries. Even where the streams hold the more quiet tenor of their way across the floor of the steppes, they flow with great force and rapidity, surging along stony ground through a wilderness of half-worn boulders. The sides of the ravines, or "kloofs" (clefts) as they are provincially THE COLONY OF NATAL: termed, are for the most part clothed with dense masses of foliage, from the midst of which lofty evergreens rear their heads. The edges of the terraces are also more or less lipped, or turned up ; the ascending traveller goes down into shallow valleys after he has mounted steep hills. The more open slopes are invariably covered by a coarse pasture, and here and there are dotted over by dwarf flat-topped bushes of the thorny mimosa. This pasture in the early spring is emerald green, and variegated by the white and gaily-coloured blossoms of aloes, amaryllids, and other bulbous plants.

In the autumn the hill-sides and valleys are russet brown, and in places look almost like English corn-fields at the approach of harvest, in consequence of the abundant crops which they bear of the tall tainboti grass, — the staple resource of the thatcher. In the dry months of winter, they are hieroglyphiced at night by the flame-characters of the fires which are continually set going at that season, to do the work of the scythe in the removal of the coarse growth ; and by day they are mottled with the resulting sable, which adds to, rather than detracts from, the picturesque ness of the scenery, by the ever-varying diversity of its shades and tints. It is one highly important consequence of the way in which the terrace steps of the land are broken and bent, that little oases of tropical luxuriance are introduced into the heart of the uplands.

There is a nook of this kind at Weenen, seventy miles further from the sea than Maritzburg, where the orange is ripened to perfection. Indeed, there are in the higher upland two vast valley districts, with the water-shed running opposite ways (in the one towards the Umkomanzi and in the other towards the Tugela), in which it is confidently anticipated the sugar-cane will be yet found to succeed. There have not at present been any trustworthy observations made as to the actual height of the floor of these upland valleys above the sea-level, or as to their actual mean temperatures. There is, however, no doubt that much of the effect is due to the depressions being sheltered from the influence of the most chilling winds, and to the rays of the fierce sun, therefore telling continuously and powerfully in sustaining a warm temperature in the ground.

Where valleys of these uplands run in the direction of the cool winds, the same result is not found. At any rate, this peculiarity of the conformation of the land, promises to increase very largely the field for successful enterprize within the colony. Water courses and running streams are abundant throughout Natal, and during the summer period of thunder-storms their channels are kept constantly and copiously charged. The coast land is a perfect fringe of rivers. Twenty-three distinct streams empty therhselves into the sea along the hundred and fifty miles of coast. Of these rivers three, the Umzimkulu, the Umko manzi, and the Tugela, have courses of from one to two hundred miles, and are Drakenberg born. Three others, the Umlazi, the Umgeni, and the Umvoti, have their sources in the upland terrace.

The rest are altogether confined to the lower terraces and to the coast-lands. There is no navigable river among them. Excepting at the period of highest flood, even the Tugela may be forded on horseback. This defect is, however, amply compensated for by the more abundant irrigation that is furnished everywhere throughout the land, compared with what would be, if there were one main or central valley of drainage in the place of the myriad of partial ones. The water is lower in the rivers in winter than in summer time, but the channels of the large streams are never dry. In the rainless season, these streams are fed by the heavy dews which are necessarily evoked from the combined influences of the warm days and cold nights. To the abundance of running water, and to the rapid slope of the land from the Drakenberg to the sea, leading to the rapid movement of the streams, Natal is, in a great measure, indebted for its healthiness, unquestionably great when this colony is compared with other lands, possessing a position similar to itself in latitude.

Chapter II. The Early Days Op Natal

{j:)N the eighth day of July, in the year 1497, Vasco de Gama, the renowned navigator and future "Admiral cf the Indian, Persian, and Arabian Seas," set -sail from Lisbon upon an important expedition, having a squadron of three small ships under his command. Ten years previously, his country man, Bartholomew Diaz, had reached and rounded the " Stormy Cape" (Cabo Tormentoso) of Southern Africa, afterwards better known as the Cape of Good Hope. Five years previously Columbus had put the maritime enterprise of Portugal upon its mettle, by the discovery of America. The Portuguese navigators had on these accounts become doubly anxious at this time to achieve the task which the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope seemed to have placed within their power ; namely, the reaching of India, previously known through the adventurous over-land journeys of the Venetian and Genoese traders, by what was conceived to be the eastern sea route.

King Emanuel, of Portugal, under the influence of this combination of incitements, commissioned Vasco de Gama to proceed round the " Stormy Cape" of Diaz, and push on until the desired land of silk and of ivory was gained. The bold adventurer, in pursuance of his instructions, accomplished the first portion of his task on the 19th of November, 1497, and rounded the Cape of Good Hope in a tempestuous sea, his combined force of sixty men being hardly kept in heart for further progress after their rough handling, by the firmness and intrepidity of their commander. For several months after this the little squadron pushed on towards the North-east, through the Indian Sea, touching at one Moorish settlement on the main African coast, by the way. On the 25th day of December, the Portuguese mariners were in sight of a beautiful shore, backed by undulating verdant slopes, and according to some accounts were actually off the inlet of smooth water, now forming the harbour of the colony.

The pleasant-looking land was at once named, in honor of the sacr*d day, "The Land of the Nativity" (" Terra Natalis.") The squadron of Vasco de Gama, pursued its voyage to a successful end. On the 20th of May. 1498, the anchors were dropped before the Moorish port of Calicut, on the western shore of the Deccan, and Indian land was stretched before the eager and admiring eyes of the adventurers. Natal was thus first seen by Europeans during the voyage of discovery which opened out the Eastern sea-route to Hindostan. It is a note-worthy faot that upon old maps, two promonto ries are marked, nearly upon the 31st and 32nd parallels of south latitude, and far to the south of the present boundary of the Natalian territory, as the "first and second points of Natal." Between them there appears another Cape, bearing the name of " The Point of Natal."

It is a fair inference from these facts, that the Portuguese " Land of the Nativity" extended over a very large range of coast, if it were not really altogether to the south of the existing British Colouy. This region was also known to the early Portuguese navigators as the Land of Smoke, ( Terra di Fumo) in consequence of the fuliginous clouds which were constantly seen rolling sky-wards from the burning grass. The historically appropriate name selected by the Portuguese discoverers is now, however, restricted to considerably narrower limits. The old points of Natal now lie upon the shore of thc independent territory further to the south; and "Natal" is the British dependency which is included between the rivers Umzimkulu and Tugela. Durin"- the two centuries which followed the discovery of the Natalian coast by the Portuguese, it was occasionally visited by parsing mariners.

Its soil was first pressed by British feet, in the year 1683. An English ship was -wrecked in that year further to the north, near the indentation known as Delagoa Bay. The shipwrecked crew of 80 men made their way _ along the land, and through Natal, to the Cape of Good Hope, and carried with them to that settlement, an interesting account of tbe regions they had travelled over. Three years subsequently the Dutch ship ; Stavenisse' was wrecked in what is now the bay of Natal, and its stranded crew spent twelve months, near the present site of Durban, in building a small vessel from the fragments of the wreck. The little vessel ultimately sailed for Table Bay ; but wheu it did so, it left four Englishmen and a Frenchman behind. Three of these men were afterwards taken on board a Dutch vessel visiting the coast, and were of course able to communicate much exact information concerning the locality in which they had sojourned.

Tlie commander of the Dutch ship purchased land, near the Bay of Natal, of a native chief; at a subsequent period the land was claimed on behalf of the purchaser ; but the chieftain who had made the Bale was dead, and his successor declined to ratify the bargain. The Dutch made a settlement at Port Natal, in 1721, but soon after abandoned the spot. In the year 1823, Lieutenant Farewell, an officer ofthe Royal British Marines, visited St. Lucia and Natal, during the progress of an exploring voyage, upon which he was engaged. Having returned to Cape Town after his voyage, with a very favourable impression as to the character of Natal, he endeavoured to organize a scheme for its colonization. He gathered together a company of about twenty individuals, who agreed to engage in the enterprize. The British Government declined to recognize or aid the scheme ; but the little band, nevertheless, proceeded in its work.

Mr. Fynn preceded the rest of the adventurers. to open negociations with the powerful Zulu chief, Chaka, who at the time exercised supreme sway over the land. He erected huts, for the reception of the party, upon the site of what is now the Market-square of the borough of Durban, and soon after he was joined by Lieutenant Farewell and his associates, who arrived there by sea. When the Portuguese and Dutch first visited the territory which is now recognized as Natal, they found the country thickly peopled by a friendly and gentle race, living in orderly com munities under the rule of then' chiefs. When Lieutenant Farewell's expedition landed in 1824, matters were greatly changed. A warlike chieftain from the north had then sub jugated the land, and had either carried away the broken remnants of the conquered tribes, to incorporate them in small bodies among his own followers, or had dispersed and driven them as fugitives into other lands.

Many of the descendants of these fugitives are now settled as residents within the Cape colony, where they are known under the distinctive name of " Fingoes," a designation that originated in a derisive epithet ("Am afengu"), with which they were greeted by the frontier Kafirs. But the aboriginal tribes of Natal thus ceased to have a separate and national existence. They are now either exiles, or transformed into subjects of the Zulu king by amalgamation with his older followers. Before the beginning of the present century, the now powerful Zulu tribe seems to have been scarcely known in South-Eastern Africa. It was at that time located somo distance to the north of the Tugela, under its chief, Senzagakona, and was but a small and unimportant clan. A son of the chief was driven away from the tribe, when but an infant, with his mother, and both were received and protected by the large and strong neighbouring tribe of the Umtetwas.