Lieutenant-Colonel Cloete replied on the same date, deploring the melancholy prospect of continued war, which would doubtless be complicated with such barbarities as the native savages might be expected to perpetrate. But he maintained that the Africanders were themselves responsible for that prospect, because of their determined acts of hostility to the British government. He intimated that, if they were sincere in the professed desire to avert the coming bloodshed, there would be nothing degrading in giving in their submission to her Britannic Majesty’s government, and assured them that there was every disposition on the part of the British authorities to make the final adjustment of affairs both just and generous toward the emigrant farmers. He also expressed much regret that they had allowed themselves to be deceived with regard to the intentions of the King of Holland by a person possessed of no authority to act in the matter. He should be happy, he added in closing, to use his best efforts to prevent acts of violence by the Zulus and Kaffirs, but felt his inability to do much in that respect as long as the Africanders continued in arms against her Majesty’s authority, and thus gave these tribes reason to think that whatever injury done to her rebellious subjects must be pleasing to her government. The diplomatic correspondence was prolonged into 1843, when a meeting between Mr. Pretorius and other Africander leaders and Lieutenant-Colonel Cloete attended by three or four advisers took a place at Pietermaritzburg. The outcome of the conference was a treaty by which Natal was declared a British colony, but it was remarkably indefinite as to other particulars. The Africanders were to acknowledge themselves British subjects, but were not required to take the oath of allegiance to the queen. The guns they had captured, as well as all their own ordnance, were to be given up. All public and private property was to be restored to the rightful owners or custodians. All prisoners were to be released, and a general amnesty was to be proclaimed to all persons who had been engaged in hostilities against her Majesty’s troops and authority, with the exception of four persons, among whom was Mr. Pretorius. By a subsequent article in the treaty the lieutenant-colonel included Mr. Pretorius in the amnesty in consideration of his valuable services and co-operation in arranging the final adjustment of the terms of surrender. The Volksraad of the little Africander republic submitted to the terms of the treaty, and to the British administration, in much bitterness and wrath, protesting vehemently but without effect against a certain leveling up process, introduced soon after the transfer of authority, by which the savage blacks were given equal civil rights with the whites. How the Africanders of Natal in general received the new regime, and how they acted under it, will be the subject of another chapter.