“On the court’s reassembling, he was informed that five-and-twenty Boers had visited two of the stores in the town, and had seized gunpowder there, gunpowder being a forbidden article of sale. The following day a much larger attendance of Boers made their appearance at the court. Seventy of them held a meeting, at which they bound themselves to protect those who had seized the gunpowder, and their attitude was so threatening that the Landrost, on the application of the public prosecutor, _adjourned the case sine die_. A fresh case of powder seizing was reported on the same day. Colonel Lanyon has already gone to the scene of disturbance, which will be dealt with purely, _at all events at present_, as a civil case of violence exercised against the owners of the stores. At the same time a troop of dragoons will be there about the day after to-morrow, and a company of infantry in a few days more, while a considerable number of the 90th Regiment will in a short time be, in regular course, passing that way. The spark will therefore no doubt be stamped out quickly where it has been lighted. The only danger is in the tendency to explosion which it perhaps indicates in other directions.” CHAPTER IX. THE DISPUTED TERRITORY. We must now look back and gather up the threads—hitherto interwoven with accounts of other matters—connected with what has been rightly called the “burning question” of the disputed territory, which led eventually to the Zulu War. The disputes between the Boers and Zulus concerning the boundary line of their respective countries had existed for many years, its origin and growth being entirely attributable to the well-known and usually successful process by which the Dutch Boers, as we have already said, have gradually possessed themselves of the land belonging to their unlettered neighbours. This process is described by Mr. Osborn, formerly resident magistrate of Newcastle, now Colonial Secretary of the Transvaal Government, September 22nd, 1876 (1748, p. 196).