Small wonder if the oppressed and persecuted people and their chief at last resented such treatment, or that some of them should have shown that resentment in a manner decided enough to call for military proceedings on the part of the new Government of the Transvaal. In point of fact, however, it was not Sikukuni, but his sister—a chieftainess herself—whose people, by a quarrel with and raid upon natives living under our protection, brought on the second or English “Sikukuni war.” Turning to the other chief pretext for the annexation of the Transvaal, the disturbed condition of the Zulu border, we find precisely the same policy carried out. When it was first announced that the English had taken possession of the country of their enemies, the Zulus, figuratively speaking, threw up their caps, and rejoiced greatly. They thought that now at last, after years of patient waiting, and painful repression of angry feelings at the desire of the Natal Government, they were to receive their reward in a just acknowledgment of the claims which Sir T. Shepstone had so long supported, and which he was now in a position to confirm. But the quiet submission of the Boers would not have lasted, even upon the surface, had their new Governor shown the slightest sign of leaning to the Zulu side on the bitter boundary question; and as Sir T. Shepstone fancied that the power of his word was great enough with the Zulus to make them submit, however unwillingly, there was small chance of their receiving a rood of land at his hands. He had lost sight of, or never comprehended the fact, that that power was built upon the strong belief which existed in the minds of the Zulu king and people with regard to the justice and honesty of the English Government. This feeling is amply illustrated by the messages from the Zulu king, quoted in our chapter upon the Disputed Territory, and elsewhere in this volume, and need therefore only be alluded to here. But this belief, so far as Sir T. Shepstone is concerned, was destroyed when the Zulus found that, far from acting according to his often-repeated words, their quondam friend had turned against them, and espoused the cause of their enemies, whom, at his desire, they had refrained these many years from attacking, when they could have done so without coming into collision with the English. The Zulus, indeed, still believed in the English, and in the Natal Government; but they considered that Sir T. Shepstone, in undertaking the government of the Boers, had become a Boer himself, or, as Cetshwayo himself said, his old friend and father’s back, which had carried him so long, had become too rough for him—if he could carry him no longer he would get down, and go to a man his equal in Pietermaritzburg (meaning Sir Henry Bulwer, Lieut.-Governor of Natal), who would be willing and able to take him up.