of the Cape Colony had to suffer the heavy and bitter penalties of this extraordinary ignorance and fatuity. The course of events from first to last has been very simple. It must be borne in mind that the South African Kafir wars constitute _one_ tragedy in various acts, with intervals of unequal duration. The war with Cetywayo is identical in principle with those waged with Gaika, T'Slambie, Dingaan, Kreli, and Sandilli. By immense exertions the tide of savagery has been periodically rolled back, and if wise counsel had been followed, the war of 1835 would have been final; but Downing Street intervened, and it is to the disastrous fatuous policy then adopted that we owe the wars of 1846 and 1852. It is to this intervention, and to this policy, that we desire in this article, and in others that are to follow, specially to draw attention, because the part taken by Sir Benjamin D'Urban in 1836 is now filled by Sir Bartle Frere in 1879; and the character of Lord Glenelg, who declared that "the Kafirs had ample justification in the late war," seems likely to be attempted by the gentleman who is at present her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies.—_April 22, 1879._ II. The Kafir war of 1835 was exceedingly disastrous to the colonists. Shortly after it had commenced Colonel Smith (afterwards Sir Harry Smith) wrote: "Already are 7000 persons dependent upon the Government for the necessaries of life. The land is filled with the lamentations of the widows and the fatherless. The indelible impressions already made upon myself by the horrors of an irruption of savages upon a scattered population, almost exclusively engaged in the peaceful occupation of husbandry, are such as make me look on those I have witnessed in a service of thirty years as trifles to what I have now witnessed." The Kafirs were on this occasion, as on every other, the aggressors, and plunder was the principal motive of the war. Fifteen years previously Great Britain had taken the responsibility of settling 5000 of her subjects in the frontier districts of the Cape Colony, and then defence and protection became both the duty and the interest of the home country. With great exertions and after immense loss the war was brought to a close. As a glorious trophy of the war no fewer than 15,000 Fingoes were literally saved from cruel captivity. The Moses who led them out of their house of bondage was Sir Benjamin D'Urban, and it was this wise and enlightened Governor who annexed the province of Queen Adelaide, and determined that the liberated people should be placed in this territory, so as to form "the best barrier against the entrance of the Kafirs into the great Fish River jungle." This extensive bush was the "quadrilateral" of the Kafirs, and it was only acquired by the best blood of the British and colonial troops.