OCR Rendition - approximate

Relations between Civilized and Savage Life. 337 So far from the movement being encouraged by the English authorities, every effort was made to check it. At first, before the Colony was formally declared British territory, the threatening remonstrances of the Zulu ruler were met by the promises of extradition. But the shocking fate which was found tc await returned fugitives speedily led to a refusal by the British officials to give them up, and had it been otherwise the vast extent of open waste and forest would have made it practically impossible to follow up fugitives. But up to a very recent period no man was allowed to bring over any property : he could only be received as he stood, and if he brought cattle with him, they were sent back by the British officials to the Zulu king whenever demanded. The new comer was required at once to find some older resident in Natal to answer for him, as not being an habitual vagabond, and within a very short period he 'must find the means of paying an annual hut-tax. That under such discouragements the migration should have assumed very large proportions, shows how great must have been the desire of the Zulu population to escape from the military service and arbitrary rule of their own king. If I may judge from the cases in which I was able to examine the Zulu immigrant personally, there was no temptation to move other than the greater security of life and property. Such wages as the immigrants might earn in Natal would have been equally paid had they remained Zulu subjects with a home in Zululand, and other temptation there was none. In one case an old headman who had been contrasting the charms of his old life in Zululand with the humdrum laborious life he led in Natal, in reply to my question, " Why did he remain in Natal, when he was free to go back, and had acquired ample cattle wherewith to propitiate the king ? " answered, " Here in Natal I sleep in peace with my wives, children, cattle, fowls, and mealie store about me, and when I have paid my but-tax, no one asks me for more. I don't awake if the dogs bark. In Zululand, if the dogs barked at night, I ran and hid myself in the bush, for I did not know whether it was not a message from the capital to take an ox, or a girl, or to kill me because I had been smelt out by the witchloctors." The extent of these emigrations from Zululand is a sufficient proof of the extraordinary vitality of the races which form the population. There has been little foreign conquest or absorption of outside tribes since Moselekatze left Zululand to form with his followers the nation of Matabele Zulus. The Fingoes are now numbered by tens of thousands, and the native population of Natal has increased, mainly by immigration, to probably close on 400,000.