History of South Africa

Excerpt
IN this volume the history of the Emigrant Farmers is traced from the abandonment of the Orange River Sovereignty to the reversal by Great Britain of the policy of withdrawal from the interior of South Africa. Most of the chapters were prepared several years ago. The part that relates to the wars between the Orange Free State and the Basuto tribe was printed as a pamphlet, for the sole purpose of obtaining criticism from actors and partisans on both sides in those struggles. Comments upon it were very freely made, but as nearly all were favourable, there was no occasion to alter more than a dozen sentences. Of course it did not please everybody, for it is not possible to write a history that would. A few individuals would have liked to see the faults and failings of the Basuto brought out more promi uently, and a few others wished the same with regard to the Boers. But fully nine-tenths of the comments, whether from individuals in the form of letters or as reviews in the South African press, gave me credit for having performed my work without bias. That is all I claim to have done, except that I spared neither time nor expense to obtain all the material that was in existence in printed books, the archives of the Cape Government, the archives of the Orange Free State, and the missionary records of Basutoland.