The Cape and the Kaffirs: A Diary of Five Years' Residence in KaffirlandWard, Mrs.
History
The Cape and the Kaffirs: A Diary of Five Years' Residence in Kaffirland
Ward, Mrs.
South Africa -- History -- Frontier Wars, 1811-1878
One ordinance of the Lord High Commissioner was important, and doubtless
had a great effect on the Kaffirs, especially at the opening of the
South African winter. All traffic was forbidden "between her Majesty's
subjects (whether residing within or without the boundaries of the
Colony) and the different Kaffir tribes who were still in arms, or had
been recently so, against Her Majesty's paramount authority and
dignity." Instructions to this effect were given to Mr Calderwood,
(Commissioner for the Gaika tribes) on the 25th of March, 1847, but
"that no persons may plead ignorance of, or want of information with
respect to the said notice," Sir Henry Pottinger again announced that
"any of her Majesty's subjects who might attempt, under whatever plea or
pretence; to evade it, would do so at their peril, and would be held to
be in treasonable intercourse with her Majesty's enemies." The
withdrawal of the traders from Kaffirland must have worried the enemy
considerably. The Kaffir is miserable without tobacco; men, women, and
children indulge in smoking to an extraordinary degree; and as the
winter advances they will feel the loss more and more. Snuff is another
luxury with which they have become fairly infatuated--they will even
_eat_ it, frequently swallowing it in the shape of a ball; and the
English blanket is now one of the necessaries of life. They carry their
love of ornament to such an excess, that they have certain fancies
relative to their beads, which have as much sway over the fancies of the
sable belles of Kaffirland, as any fiat, or caprice, from the divan of a
Parisian modiste, or the penetralia of a Mayfair beauty. One year the
leathern bodice of a Tambookie bride is _parsemented_ with beads of a
dead white; another season, the I'Slambie girls will quarrel for a
monopoly of bright blue, and the Gaikas set up an opposition in
necklaces of mock garnet and amber. Birmingham buttons ornament the
skin cloaks of the women of Kaffraria, and brass bangles, from our
manufactories, conceal the symmetry of their arms, which are models for
sculpture.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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