_The Cape Argus_ of December 12th, 1876, remarks: “Through the whole course of this Republic’s existence, it has acted in contravention of the Sand River Treaty;[53] and slavery has occurred not only here and there in isolated cases, but as an unbroken practice has been one of the peculiar institutions of the country, mixed up with all its social and political life. It has been at the root of most of its wars.... The Boers have not only fallen upon unsuspecting kraals simply for the purpose of obtaining the women and children and cattle, but they have carried on a traffic through natives, who have kidnapped the children of their weaker neighbours, and sold them to the white man. Again, the Boers have sold and exchanged their victims amongst themselves. Waggon-loads of slaves have been conveyed from one end of the country to the other for sale, and that with the cognizance and for the direct advantage of the highest officials of the land. The writer has himself seen in a town situated in the south of the Republic the children who had been brought down from a remote northern district.... The circumstances connected with some of these kidnapping excursions are appalling, and the barbarities practised by cruel masters upon some of these defenceless creatures during the course of their servitude are scarcely less horrible than those reported from Turkey, although they are spread over a course of years instead of being compressed within a few weeks.” This passage is taken from a letter to _The Argus_ (enclosed in a despatch from Sir Henry Barkly to the Earl of Carnarvon, December 13th, 1876), which, with other accompanying letters from the same source, gives an account of Boer atrocities too horrible for repetition. [C. 1776]. A single instance may be mentioned which, however shocking, is less appalling than others, but perhaps shows more plainly than anything else could do what the natives knew the life of a slave in the Transvaal would be. The information is given by a Boer. “In 1864,” he says, “the Swazies accompanied the Boers against Males.[54] The Boers did nothing but stand by and witness the fearful massacre. The men and women were also murdered. One poor woman sat clutching her baby of eight days old. The Swazies stabbed her through the body; and when she found that she could not live, she wrung her baby’s neck with her own hands, to save it from future misery. On the return of that commando the children who became too weary to continue the journey were killed on the road. The survivors were sold as slaves to the farmers.”