“The following graphic description of this process (of Boer encroachment) is extracted from a letter in the Transvaal _Advocate_ of a few weeks ago: ‘Frontiers are laid down, the claim to which is very doubtful. These frontiers are not occupied, but farms are inspected (“guessed at” would be nearer the mark), title-deeds for the same are issued, and, when the unlucky purchaser wishes to take possession, he finds his farm (if he can find it) occupied by tribes of Kafirs, over whom the Government has never attempted to exercise any jurisdiction.’ ‘Their Chief,’ it adds, ‘is rather bewildered at first to find out that he has for years been a subject of the Transvaal.’ ‘The Chief in question is one Lechune, living on the north-west of the Republic. But the account is equally applicable to the case of Sikukuni, or Umswazi, or half-a-dozen others, the entire circuit of the Republic, from the Barolongs and Batlapins on the west, to the Zulus on the east, being bordered by a _series of encroachments disputed by the natives_.’” A memorandum from Captain Clarke, R.A., Special Commissioner at Lydenburg, dated April 23rd, 1879 (C. 2367, p. 152), also gives an account of the way in which the Boers took possession of the Transvaal itself, highly illustrative of their usual practice, and of which the greater part may be quoted here, with a key to the real meaning of phrases which require some study to interpret. “On the entrance of the Fou Trekkers into the Transvaal, they were compelled against their hereditary instincts to combine for self-defence against a common foe.” (That is to say, that, having forced themselves into a strange country, they necessarily combined to oust those they found there.) “External pressure was removed by success, and the diffusive instinct asserted itself”—which being translated into ordinary English simply signifies that, having conquered certain native tribes, they settled themselves upon their lands, and returned to their natural disunited condition. “Isolated families, whose ambition was to be out of sight of their neighbours’ smoke, pushed forward into Kafir-land” (as yet unconquered). “Boundaries were laid down either arbitrarily or by unsatisfactorily recorded treaty with savage neighbours. The natives, forced back, acquired the powers of coalition lost by the Boers, and in their turn brought pressure to bear on their invaders and whilom conquerors; farm after farm had to be abandoned, and many of the Boers who remained acknowledged by paying tribute that they retained their lands by the permission of neighbouring chiefs. The full importance of this retrograde movement was not at once felt, as a natural safety-valve was found.”