homes by Bushmen or Kaffirs, were to hold their farms free of rent for the next six years, provided they would return and resume occupation within four months. If the landdrost should consider it necessary to call out a commando against Bushmen, the farmers were ordered by proclamation to obey. The marauders were then to be driven into the great interior plain, where they were to be left unmolested, and, if possible, a boundary was to be fixed between them and the colonists, over which neither party was thereafter to be allowed to trespass. Such a scheme was really impracticable, but the governor, being without experience in dealing with a race of savages, could not know that.[1]
- ↑ He was quite ignorant that the Bushmen were the real aborigines of the country. But his instructions regarding their treatment were given in a spirit of humanity that, considering the views prevalent everywhere in the civilised world at the time, were most creditable to him. In the instructions to Mr. Bresler he wrote:
"With the Bushmen, who are perfect savages, it will be always difficult to maintain, at least without much bloodshed, the limits to be fixed, still good order requires that they also should be forced to remain in their own country. Amicable endeavours must be used to oblige these savages to leave the country which they have overrun, or if these should fail then the inhabitants of those districts which they at present occupy must unite and use force. After which no better boundary can be found between the Bushmen and the inhabitants than the Zeekoe river situate behind the Sneeuwberg, the Karree or Roodeberg behind the Camdeboo, and the Zak river, forming the one with the other a half circle from the east to the west. The principal duty of the landdrost is … and afterwards by ordering regular expeditions to protect the other inhabitants in their possessions against the Bushmen.
"But as the landdrost is bound to protect the inhabitants against the savages, so is he to keep a watchful eye that the inhabitants do not encroach beyond the places granted by the former government in loan. The said grants and the rents thereof being enjoyed by government has authorised the possession of those places, although in itself very unjust and originating in the oppression of the natives, but all further enlarging of this colony would be an absolute cruelty with respect to the natives, who thereby
