And the frugal, hard-working Dutchmen, an excellent ingredient in the population of a young country, finding themselves deprived of their slaves, insufficiently compensated, and in fifty ways prejudiced and inconvenienced by the clumsy and injudicious manner in which the emancipation had been carried out, brooded over the injustice done them, and began to migrate across various branches of Orange river towards the north-east corner of the colony, and finally beyond its boundary, preferring constant warfare with the Kaffirs, entailed upon them by the change, to submission to the new and vexatious ordinances, and to the enactments of the Stockenstrom treaties. These were in the highest degree absurd, although their framer was rewarded by a pension and title, as if he had done the state some service, instead of having actually been the main cause of the last Kaffir war. A ridiculous report got abroad, credited largely by stay-at-home philanthropists, and heartily laughed at by all who had any real knowledge of the subject, that the Kaffirs were a mild, peaceable, and ill-used people--in Exeter-Hall phrase, "a pastoral and patriarchal race." "It was imagined," says Mr Nicholson, "that they possessed a strong sense of honour and probity, and only desired to be guaranteed from the tyranny of the colonists, (poor lambs!); and a determination was accordingly come to, to make treaties with the chiefs, the performance of which could only be secured by their honourable observance of what was detrimental to the interests of themselves and their people, as they understood it." Now the truth of the matter is, that a more vicious and treacherous race than the Kaffirs would be sought in vain upon the face of the inhabited earth. They unite every evil quality. "The stalwart Kaffir," says Mrs Ward, "with his powerful form and air of calm dignity, beneath which are concealed the deepest cunning and the meanest principles. Some call the Kaffir brave. He is a thief, a liar, and a beggar, ready only to fight in ambush; and although, to use the common expression, he 'dies game,' his calmness is the result of sullenness." Cunning is the most prominent characteristic of this pleasing savage. "It makes them," says Lieutenant Barnard, "fully aware of the humanity of the English character, which prevents us from killing an unarmed man; so, when they find themselves taken unawares, they throw their arms into the bush, pretend to be friendly Kaffirs, and, in all probability, fire on our troops when they get to a convenient distance." It also taught them, during the former war, that they had no chance against Europeans unless they could procure firearms; to have time to get these, they joyfully concluded a treaty, and would have done so on far less favourable terms, never intending to abide by them. But those made were not sufficiently stringent to keep even civilised borderers in check. Some were laughed at, others evaded, whilst a third class defeated their own object.