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And then with a lurch for the motion was still considerable I came back from the land of dreams to reality and the hideous fact that Natal is invaded and assailed by the Boer. The little steamer reached Durban safely at midnight on November 4, and we passed an impatient six hours in a sleeping town waiting for daylight and news. Both came in their turn.
He is inspector of schools, and his history is a text-book whose purpose is the instruction of the Natal English youth. After the seizure of the Transvaal and the suppression of the Boer government by England in 1877, the Boers fretted for three years, and made several appeals to England for a restoration of their liberties, but without result.
In July Natal had taken alarm, and a strong representation had been sent from the prime minister of the colony to the Governor, Sir W. Hely Hutchinson, and so to the Colonial Office.
There can be no doubt that, as everyone said there, it was a mistake to send General Symons forward here, as it was almost certain that with four regiments, three batteries of artillery, a regiment of cavalry, and a few hundred of the Natal police and volunteers, he could never maintain himself here.
Combined they only numbered a hundred and nine men, but here, as always, they were men who could never be replaced. Those who had followed the war with care, and had speculated upon the future, were prepared on hearing of Botha's movement upon Natal to learn that De la Rey had also made some energetic attack in the western quarter of the Transvaal.
The fugitive Boers made northwards in the Middelburg direction, while Buller advanced to Standerton, which town he continued to occupy until Lord Roberts could send a force down through Heidelberg to join hands with him. Such was the position of the Natal Field Force at the end of June. From the west and the south-west British forces were also converging upon the capital.
Well, it was only one more disappointment; he must go back to Natal and take his chance. At the worst he could always earn his living as a transport-rider, and at the best he wearied of this search for wealth which was to build up their family afresh. Then of a sudden Leonard remembered what he had promised to go on seeking till he died. Very good, he would keep the promise till he died.
The news of the reverse created a tremendous sensation throughout Natal, where it had been confidently anticipated that the army would brush aside without difficulty the opposition of the Boers, relieve Ladysmith and, advancing sweep the invaders out of the colony.
He had encountered a bad week or two, and there had been days in which, as has been said, he thought of Natal, of ecclesiastical censures, and even of annihilation; but no real punishment seemed to fall upon him.
Neither is it necessary to refer here to the policy which led our government afterwards to extend its authority over the lands thus conquered and settled by the emigrants, or to the manner in which this authority, at first resisted, was finally established. Natal was thus made a British province in 1842.
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