South Africa v 1 - Colonial History Author:Anthony Trollope Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. English History. I Have to say that I feel almost ashamed of the headings given to these initiatory chapters of my book as I certainly am not qu... more »alified to write a history of South Africa. Nor, were I able to do so, could it be done in a few pages. And, again, it has already been done and that so recently that there is not as yet need for further work of the kind. But it is not possible to make intelligible the present condition of any land without some reference to its antecedents. And as it is my object to give my reader an idea of the country as I saw it I am obliged to tell something of what I myself found it necessary to learn before I could understand that which I heard and saw. When I left England I had some notion more or less correct as to Hottentots, Bushmen, Kafirs, and Zulus. Since that my mind has gradually become permeated with Basutos, Griquas, Bechuanas, Amapondos, Suazies, Gaikas, Galekas, and various other native races, —who are supposed to have disturbed our serenity in South Africa, but whose serenity we must also have disturbed very much,—till it has become impossible to look at the picture without realizing something of the identity of those people. I do not expect to bring any readers to do that. I perhaps have been filling my mind with the subject for as many months as the ordinary reader will take hours in turning over these pages. But still I must ask him to go back a little with me, or, as I go on, I shall find myself writing as though I presumed that things were known to him, as to which if he have learned much, it may be unnecessary that he should look at my book at all. The English began their work with considerable success. The Dutch laws were retained, but were executed with mitigated severity; a large military force was maintaine...« less