Had not the English
interfered and taken over the Boer country, we should have wasted it
from end to end; and they knew it well, and begged your Shepstone to
hoist your flag and protect them. Ah, he should have stayed there then!
The natives, our friends in the plain, still talk of that happy time
when you were masters, and the Boers dared no longer shoot them down as
if they were wild beasts and treat them as slaves, and the towns grew
up, and your people paid for work with money and not with the lash of a
whip or a bullet. All of us have mourned over the time when the English
bent their knee to the Boers, and gave them all they wanted,--the
mastery of the land, and the right to kill and enslave us at their
will."
"That was not quite so," Chris said. "They promised to give good
treatment to the natives; that was one of the conditions of the treaty."
"And you believed them!" the chief said scornfully. "Did you not know
that a Boer's oath is only good so long as a gun is pointed at him?
Perhaps it will be like this again, and when you have conquered them you
will again trust them, and march away. But they tell us, it is not you
who will conquer them, but they who will conquer you. They tell our
people that they will be masters over all the land, and that your people
will have to sail away in your ships.
Pages:
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218