I profess the greatest possible respect for the Cape Colony Blue Book and for its compilers. I feel when trusting to it that I am standing upon a rock against which waves of statistical criticism may dash themselves in vain. Such at least is my faith as to 968 out of the 969 folio pages which the last published volume contains. But I would put it to the compilers of that valuable volume, I would put it to my particular friend Captain Mills himself, whether they, whether he, can get a European man-servant for £30 a year, or a European damsel for £16 4s.! Double the money would not do it. Let them, let him, look at the book;--Section v. page 3;--and have the little error corrected, lest English families should rush out to the Cape Colony thinking that they would be nicely waited upon by white fingers at these easy but fabulous rates. The truth is that European domestic servants can hardly be had for any money. NATAL. CHAPTER XIV. NATAL.--HISTORY OF THE COLONY. The little Colony of Natal has a special history of its own quite distinct from that of the Cape Colony which cannot be said to be its parent. In Australia, Queensland and Victoria were, in compliance with their own demands, separated from New South Wales. In South Africa the Transvaal Republic,--now again under British rule,--and the Orange Free State were sent into the world to shift for themselves by the Mother Country. In these cases there is something akin to the not unnatural severance of the adult son from the home and the hands of his father. But Natal did not spring into existence after this fashion and has owed nothing to the fostering care of the Cape Colony. I will quote here the commencing words of a pamphlet on the political condition of Natal published in 1869, because they convey incidentally a true statement of the causes which led to its colonization. “The motives which induced the Imperial Government to claim Natal from the Dutch African emigrants were not merely philanthropic. The Dutch in their occupation of the country had been involved in serious struggles with the Zulus. The apprehension that these struggles might be renewed and that the wave of disturbance might be carried towards the Eastern frontier of the Cape influenced to some extent the resolution to colonize Natal. But whatever may have been the prudential considerations that entered into their counsels, the Government were deeply impressed with the wish to protect the Natives and to raise them in the scale of humanity.”[14] From this the reader will learn that the British took up the country from the Dutch who had on occupying it been involved in difficulties with the Natives, and that the English had stepped in to give a government to the country, partly in defence of the Dutch against the Natives,--but partly also, and chiefly in defence of the Natives against the Dutch. This was, in truth, the case. The difficulties which the Dutch wanderers had encountered were awful, tragic, heartrending.