Meanwhile in Natal mischief was brewing. A certain chief in the north of the colony was supposed to be in a very rebellious frame of mind, and it was rumoured that force of arms would prove necessary in order to bring him to his senses. This chief was one Langalibalele, who, with his tribe, the Ama-Hlubi, had been driven out of Zululand by Umpande in the year 1848, and had taken refuge in Natal. He was located by the English Government in the country below the Draakensberg Mountains, with the duty imposed upon him of defending Natal against the attacks of the predatory hordes of Bushmen who, in the early days of the colony, made perpetual and destructive raids over the mountains. From this point of view it would seem reasonable that the Hlubi tribe should be permitted the use of firearms, prohibited, except under certain restrictions, to the natives of Natal; inattention to which prohibition was the ground upon which the original suspicions concerning Langalibalele’s loyalty were based. The law, however, by which this prohibition and these restrictions were made was one of those enactments which, even when theoretically wise, are often practically impossible, and to which new communities are so prone. Theoretically no native can possess a gun in Natal which has not been registered before a magistrate. Practically, in every kraal, in every part of the colony, there were, and doubtless still are, many unregistered guns, bought by natives, or given to them in lieu of wages by their masters (a common practice at the Diamond Fields), with very vague comprehension or total ignorance on the part of the native that any unlawful act had been committed. This would be more especially natural when the masters who thus furnished their men with the forbidden weapon were themselves in some way connected with the government of the country (Natal), whose sanction would therefore be looked upon by the natives as an equivalent to the permission of Government itself. But in point of fact the law had always been enforced in such an extremely lax way, the evasions of it were so easy and numerous, and so many white men of position and respectability in the colony were party to the infraction of it, that it is no wonder that its reality and importance was but lightly engraved upon the native mind. The special accusation, however, brought against Langalibalele to prove his rebellious tendencies was that young men of his tribe were in possession of unregistered guns, which, in addition, had not been brought in to the magistrate, when demanded, for registration. The reason for this unwillingness (on the part of the young men) to comply with the above demands, appeared afterwards in the fact that other guns which had been properly produced for registration, had, after considerable delay, been returned to their owners in an injured condition, rendering them unfit for use.