But we must go back for a moment to the Kafir war of 1835,--the third Kafir war, for there was a second, of which as being less material I have spared the reader any special mention. Of all our Kafir wars this was probably the most bitter. There had been continual contests, in all of which the Kafirs had undoubtedly thought themselves to be ill used, but in all of which the evils inflicted upon them had been perpetrated in punishment and reprisal for thefts of cattle. The Kafir thefts were in comparison small but were often repeated. Then the Europeans sent out what were called “Commandos,”--which consisted of an armed levy of mounted men intent upon seizing cattle by way of restitution. The reader of the histories of the period is compelled to think that the unfortunate cattle were always being driven backwards and forwards over the borders. During the period, however, more than once cattle were restored by the colonists to the Kafirs which were supposed to have been taken from them in excess of just demands. In December 1834 this state of things was brought to a crisis by an attempt which was made by a party of Europeans to recover some stolen horses. Some cattle were seized, and others were voluntarily surrendered, but the result was that in December a large body of Kafirs invaded the European lands, and massacred the farmers to their hearts’ content. They overran the border country to the number of ten or twelve thousand, and then returned, carrying with them an immense booty. It all reads as a story out of Livy, in which the Volsci will devastate the Roman pastures and then return with their prey to one of their own cities. The reader is sure that the Romans are going to get the best of it at last;--but in the meantime the Roman people are nearly ruined. Sir Benjamin D’Urban was then Governor, and he took strong and ultimately successful steps to punish the Kafirs. I have not space here to tell how Hintsa, the Kafir chief, was shot down as he was attempting to escape from the British whom he had undertaken to guide through his country, or how the Kafirs were at last driven to sue for peace and to surrender the sovereignty of their country. The war was not only bloody, but ruinous to thousands. The cattle were of course destroyed, so that no one was enriched. Ill blood, of which the effects still remain, was engendered. Three hundred thousand pounds were spent by the British. But at last the Kafirs were supposed to have been conquered, and Sir Benjamin D’Urban supposed to be triumphant.