it is probable that even the territory beyond the Vaal River might in like manner have been subjected to British control. But Downing Street for eighty years after the cession of the Cape of Good Hope persistently mismanaged South African affairs, now blowing hot with undue heat, now blowing cold, and nipping wise enterprise in the bud. The action of the Governor was repudiated, and the Sand River Convention unratified. In the most formal manner the Boers north of the Orange River were accorded absolute independence, subject to certain provisions about slavery; and the like privilege had been previously accorded to those who had further trekked across the Vaal River at a time when the Orange River State was likely to become a British Colony. So, from 1852 and 1854 respectively[94], the South African Dutch formed two states entirely independent of British rule in their internal affairs, and very slightly in their external relations. The Orange Free State, which contained a considerable British element dating from the period of British sovereignty, had latterly an uneventful career of steady prosperity[95], due in large measure to the wisdom of its chief magistrates. When the diamond fields were discovered on its borders towards the end of the “sixties” it had some cause for complaint against the British Government, since, taking advantage of the undefined rights of a Grikwa (Bastard Hottentot) chief, the British extended their rule over this arid territory north of the Orange River, which was suddenly found to be worth untold millions of pounds. But the amount of territory under dispute was relatively small; and, if the British had transgressed their rightful borderland to some slight degree, they atoned for it by paying the Orange State an indemnity of £90,000. Great Britain also intervened several times to prevent the warlike Basuto (who dwell in that little African Switzerland between the Orange Free State and Natal) either from raiding the Orange Free State, or from being themselves raided and conquered by Boer reprisals. Eventually (1882) Basutoland, whose affairs had been somewhat mismanaged by the Cape Parliament, was taken under direct imperial control; and ever since there has been a complete cessation of trouble in that quarter with the Orange Free State.