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subject even to the shadow of wrong or injustice, are rapidly disappearing, from the effects of their own profligacy and misconduct, from which no human agency appears able to redeem them.

In the language of a Wilberforce, "All the colonies which the world has seen for centuries past have flown forth from Christendom; and they have settled amongst tribes, who knew not the Lord or his Christ, and who, as the plain result of that ignorance, have been weak and uncivilized, and (which is a most awful feature in this picture) who have been in almost every case, even before the stronger race of Christian Europeans came amongst them, wasting away in power and number; who through the natural working of their own vices, which by degrees had eaten out the national character amongst them, though they had once been great, had now begun to waste away. So that in almost every instance, when we have come to these lands, we have found traditions amongst them, that they were much more numerous than they are now; shewing that God, in the fulness of time, and just when their ignorance of Christ and their servitude to the things of the world was beginning to work out its accomplishment, when the time of these Gentiles was fully come,when God's hand was already laid upon them in judgment, just at that time it was, that by the dispensations of His secret will He so ordered it, that this nation should come to their shores, with the message of that Gospel which is able to lift them up again from this debasement, and to give them back again to strength and to national existence, and to knit them up again as a nation, out of which they were slipping, and to build them up again as a people, from which they were falling. And this, observe, agrees exactly with the whole apparent plan of God for the spreading of His truth, and that especially since the cessation of the power of working miracles in His church. For by the natural law of God's appointment, Christian nations must be the colonizing nations. The greater value of human life in every Christian land, the greater purity of manners of every Christian people, the greater kindliness of man to man, and so the greater shelter for the weak and infirm amongst us-all these which follow in the train of Christianity, and which abound so in this land of ours, naturally make Christian people the most numerous, and so lead to their being the nations which naturally throw off

their swarms into the less peopled districts of the earth. Again: the higher moral and intellectual tone of Christendom will naturally lead it to be thus the source of the great sowing of the earth with the seed of man, because it naturally leads to the patient daring, to the untiring effort, to the wise plans, through which all of these great works of sowing new people can only be brought to a proper effect; and Christianity, moreover, and Christianity only, is that which furnishes a land which it leavens with the resources of wealth and power, which make such enterprises possible, or even desirable in men's eyes. So that here we see a whole series of appointments of God's providence, by which it is evidently intended by Him, that Christian people should be the great founders of colonies, in order that by this natural law of His appointment, Christian nations may spread the truth of His Gospel throughout the world. It is only by making our colonies the outposts of the Christian faith that it can fulfil the universal law, 'Increase and multiply, and replenish the earth,' consistently with justice. It is only thus that it can knit into one the race to which it comes with the race which it pours forth and settles. It is only thus that this great problem can be solved which, because we have never perhaps endeavoured to solve it in full faithfulness, has never yet been fully solved-how civilization and barbarism can be brought together, without the barbarous people being destroyed by the Christian people. And thus only, no doubt, can the two races be brought together. Instead of the stronger preying upon the weaker, as it has been too often, thus only can they be wedded together as one people. By sowing through Christianity the seed of national revival of life in a dwindling people, into which the stronger element is thus inserted; by this, and by this only, can the destruction of the weaker be prevented."

Thus speaks Archdeacon Wilberforce. It is the language of truth and true philanthropy, attested by daily experience; for lamentable as has been the loss of human life among the South African aborigines, in consequence of the emigration of the Dutch farmers from the Cape Colony to Natal, it is trifling compared to the devastation occasioned by native wars. There is great reason to hope, as soon as the Boers are firmly seated under the British, that their presence will repress the murderous inroads of the savage tribes upon each other.

The following list, compiled by an intelligent Christian Missionary, long resident in the interior, beyond the Colonial Boundary, "of the population and position of the Bechuana tribes, before their extirpation by the Zoolahs in 1822, and long before any white people had settled among them, and few had visited their territories," will shew that white aggression cannot be alleged as the reason of the awful destruction which fell upon so large a portion of the human family.

The comparatively high state of civilization of these victims to native barbarity, and their interesting manners, &c., may be seen in the travels of Campbell and Burchell.

List of the Bechuana Tribes (their Population and Geographical Position) destroyed by the Zoolah incursions of 1822 and subsequently.

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TOTAL: 28 tribes of 384,000 souls dispersed and destroyed, and whose destruction cannot be attributed to white aggression upon their territory, or the influence of the accursed traffic in slaves, but from mere native restlessness and ambition.

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Table Mountain, the Lion's Head and Rump. (Taken from the Eastern Side of Table Bay.)

SECTION II.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE COLONY OF THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.

THE extensive colony comprised under the inappropriate name of the CAPE OF GOOD HOPE is confined within somewhat irregular limits, but may generally be defined as bounded by the meridians of 17 deg. 40 min. and 27 deg. 20 min. E. longitude, and the parallels of 29 deg. 40 min. and 34 deg. 50 min. of S. latitude, containing an area of about 150,000 square miles, or 96,000,000 acres, inhabited by a population said to amount to 161,484 souls, (but really by 220,000,) who are dispersed over this, one of the largest possessions of Great Britain, at the rate of little more than one individual to the square mile. These boundaries, which enclose pretty nearly a square figure, will be best understood by the map attached to this work.

The surface of this extensive country is intersected by considerable mountain chains, whose mean average elevation is from 1000 to 4000 feet, some peaks attaining the height of from 7000 to 9000 feet, and, perhaps, in one or two instances somewhat more.

The two principal ranges nearest to, and which run nearly parallel with the sea board of the colony, are the Kamiesberg and Cedarberg, extending along the western shore, and the Zwartbergen, a continuation of the Cedar Mountains, skirting the southern coast, gradually falling off and losing themselves near the mouth of the Kromme River, in St. Francis Bay. Immediately behind this ridge is that of the Great Zwartbergen, also originating in the Cedarbergen; this, following at varying distances the direction of the southerly Zwartbergen, proceeds to the Chamtoos River, where, dropping a portion of its height, and spreading out into innumerable ridges, it continues its course to the Winterbergen, on the confines of Kaffraria; at this point again shooting up into several splendid elevations, it enters that country, forming a line along the south-eastern coast, subsidiary to the great dividing range which separates the country of the coast from the central regions of the continent.

The chief mountain system, however, begins to rise about one hundred miles from the west coast in the Roggevelden (anglice, rye-fields), and first pursuing a southerly, then a south-easterly, and ultimately a north-east direction, under the successive appellations of the Nieuwveldt, Snieuweldt, Zuure and Bamboo Bergen, penetrates the country of the Kafirs, under the name of the Stormbergen, keeping at an average distance from the ocean of about ninety miles: it then passes behind Natal as the Quathlamba, and can be traced even beyond the Bay of Dela Goa. The southern or exterior spines of this magnificent vertebral column give birth to all the large rivers running through the colony and Kafirland into the Indian Ocean, while its interior or northern slopes supply the great basin of that beautiful collection of waters called the Great Gariep, or Orange River, whose estuary is on the shores of the Atlantic.

These mountain chains may be considered as a series of steps or terraces, successively rising from the sea, and attaining, as they retreat, a gradual increase of altitude, and they enclose natural districts or divisions of the country, varying considerably in extent, climate, and productions.

The first range is that formed on the east by the Cedarbergen, containing the rich valley of the Oliphant's River and the Konde Bokvelden (Cold Goat Pastures), which continue along the

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