tines, who were cumbering the ground that might be occupied by God's favored people.1
But the settlers were phlegmatic and peaceful by nature, content with
their bare living, and with no ardor for extending their bounds by
conquest. An extraordinary impulse was needed to convert them into
adventurers and wanderers in the desert.
This
impulse was given by the capture of the Cape, the influx of jostling
immigrants from Great Britain, new and vexing legislation, and
disasters to crops which exalted the comparative value of pasturage
lands.'2 At the opening of the administration of Lord
Charles Somerset there was a marked effort on the part of the Home
Government to promote the growth of the Colony. A regular mail packet
service was established between England and the Cape, and ^50,000 were
voted by Parliament in 1819 to be disbursed in aid of emigration to
South Africa. This contribution was a powerful stimulus, and it is
estimated that nearly 5,000 new settlers of British birth were added to
the population of Cape Colony from March, 1820, to May, 1821.
Unfortunately
the South African climate in 1820 and the years immediately following
was peculiarly aggravating. In 1819 there had been a heavy wheat crop
and the consequent temptation to farmers to extend their wheat
growing. So they did, but the crop of 1820 throughout South Africa was
fatally blighted. The next year's crop fared no better, and thousands
of farmers were ruined and brought even to the verge of starvation.
Rations were distributed by the Colonial Government in the fall of 1821
to those who had no means to buy food, but the unrelieved suffering was
widespread. Following hard on this scourge of blight came the
prodigious floods of October, 1823, when it seemed to the colonists in
the eastern districts as if the heavens were open for another deluge.
Rain fell in torrents for days without ceasing, and overflowing rivers
ran foaming to the sea, carrying millions of tons of earth in their
turbid floods as well as the shattered houses of settlers who had
barely time to fly for
1 " Impressions of South Africa," James Bryce. "South Africa," Theal.
2 " Annals of Natal," John Bird, p. 505.
