On the following day, a Saturday, we travelled 50 miles, and, with our horses very tired, reached a spot across the “Maquasie Spruit,” at which a store or shop is kept and where we remained over the Sunday, hospitably entertained by the owners of the establishment. Here we were on land which has been claimed and possessed by the Transvaal Republic; but which was given over to the Batlapin natives by a division generally known in the later-day history of South African affairs as the Keate award. The Batlapins are a branch of the great Bechuana tribe. Mr. Keate in 1871 was Lieut.-Governor of Natal, and undertook, at the instance of the British Government, to make an award between the Transvaal Republic and the Batlapin Kafirs, whose Chief is and was a man called Gassibone. I should hardly interest or instruct my readers by going deeply into the vexed question of the Keate award. To Europeans living in South Africa it is always abominable that anything should be given up or back to the natives, and whatever is surrendered to them in the way of territory is always resumed before long by hook or crook. There is a whole district of the Transvaal Republic,--a county as we should say,--lying outside or beyond the “Maquasie Spruit,”--called Bloomhof, with two towns, Bloomhof and Christiana, each having perhaps a dozen houses,--and this the Transvaal never did surrender. Governor Keate’s award was repudiated by the Volksraad of the Transvaal, and a Dutch Landroost,--or magistrate,--who however is an Englishman, was stationed at Christiana and still remains there. This was a matter of no great trouble to us while the Republic stood on its own legs. Though a Governor of ours had made the award we were not bound to remedy Dutch injustice. But now what are we to do? Are we to give back the country with its British and Dutch inhabitants,--a dozen families at Bloomhof and a dozen more at Christiana,--and the farmers here and there to the dominion of Gassibone and his Batlapins? I think I may say that most certainly we shall do nothing of the kind,--but with what excuse we shall escape the necessity I do not see so clearly. In the meantime there is the Landroost at Christiana,--now paid with British gold, who before the annexation was paid with Transvaal notes worth 5s. to the nominal pound. When I talked to him of Keate’s award and of Gassibone’s line, he laughed at me. Annexation to British rule with all the beauties of British punctuality was a great deal too good a thing to be sacrificed to a theory of justice in favour of such a poor race of unfighting Kafirs as the Batlapins! I have no doubt that he was right, and that the Transvaal Colony will maintain a Landroost at Christiana as long as Landroosts remain in that part of South Africa.