' They dug up roots, and they strove for the supplies which the
Governor threw into the country, when famine drove Nongkause's nostrum
out. Desperate crowds of the hungry surged over hill and plain, while
strength lasted, and then lay down to die. No question remained of
keeping a mad Kaffraria at bay. The whole effort was to rescue, as far as
was possible, the Kaffirs from death by want.
Civilisation drove forward in a mortuary cart; but it was civilisation.
The spirit of Kaffraria had been quenched; it was a last wild stand. Sir
George Grey meditated on the means, so unexpected, so beyond man's
control, which had enhanced the securities for peace in South Africa. He
could do that, believing Providence to be an all-wise, if often
inscrutable ruler, and at the same time declare: 'There was a heroic
element in the action of the Kaffirs, for we see what they were willing
to endure at the bidding, as they believed, of their ancestors, and in
the interests of themselves as a people.'
It was in Sir George's mind that Nongkause, by a queer irony, was the one
member of her family who survived the visitation.
XIV A SAVIOUR OF INDIA
It touches the imagination to have a dark Africa put forward as light for
a Bible scene; namely, that where Jacob, instructed by Rebekah, obtains
the blessing which the blind Isaac thinks himself to be conferring on his
eldest son Esau.
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