Sir Henry Bulwer was too honest to carry out this recommendation, even had he not had the sense to know that Cetshwayo was accustomed to the passing of merchantmen, and was not to be thus taken in (supposing him to be likely to fear attacks from “foreign foes”). But the fact remains that, an English official of Sir Bartle Frere’s rank has put on record, in an official despatch under his own hand, a deliberate proposal that the Zulu king should be tranquillised, and his well-founded suspicions allayed by—a “figure of speech,” shall we say? Every possible objection was made by Sir Bartle Frere to the decision of the Commissioners, and it was with the utmost difficulty that he was at last persuaded to ratify it, after a considerable period employed in preparing for a campaign, the idea of which he appears never for a minute to have relinquished. Sir T. Shepstone protested against the decision, which, however, Sir Henry Bulwer upheld; while Sir Bartle Frere finally decides that “Sir H. Bulwer and I, approaching the question by somewhat different roads, agree in the conclusion that we must accept the Commissioners’ verdict.” Their report was made on June 20th, 1878, but it was not until November 16th that Sir H. Bulwer sent to Cetshwayo to say that “the Lieut.-Governor is now in a position to inform Cetshwayo that His Excellency the High Commissioner has pronounced his award, etc.,” and to fix twenty days from the date of the departure of the messengers carrying this message from Pietermaritzburg, as a convenient time for a meeting on the borders of the two countries at the Lower Tugela Drift, at which the decision should be delivered to the king’s indunas by officers of the Government appointed for the purpose. But before this conclusion was arrived at another attempt had been made to bring accusations against Cetshwayo, who said himself at the time (June 27th, 1878): “The name of Cetshwayo is always used amongst the Boers as being the first to wish to quarrel.” Alarming accounts reached the Natal Government of a fresh military kraal having been built by the king, and notices to quit being served by him upon Boers within the disputed territory, in spite of his engagement to await the decision of the Commissioners. The farmers complained of being obliged to fly, “leaving homes, homesteads, and improvements to be destroyed by a savage, unbridled, revengeful nation.”[84] Sir T. Shepstone re-echoed their complaint (2220, p. 27), and Sir Bartle Frere comments severely upon the alleged Zulu aggressions. The matter, however, when sifted, sinks into insignificance. Some squabbles had taken place between individual Boers and Zulus, such as were only natural in the unsettled state of things; and Cetshwayo’s explanation of the so-called “notices to quit” placed them in a very different light.