THE NATAL SOCIETY OFFICE BEARERS, 1973-74 President Miss P. A. Reid Vice-Presidents Prof. A. F. Hattersley M. J. C. Daly, Esq. A. C. Mitchell, Esq. Trustees A. C. Mitchell, Esq. Or. R. E. Stevenson M. J. C. Daly, Esq. Treasurers Messrs. Dix, Boyes and Co. Auditors Messrs. R. Thornton-Dibb and Son Secretary and Chief Librarian Miss U. E. M. Judd, B.A., F.L.A. (resigned June, 1974) Chief Librarian Mr. Anthony S. C. Hooper, B.Sc. M.S. in L.S., A.I.Tnfi. Sci. (appointed October, 1974) COUNCIL Elected Members Miss P. A. Reid (Chairman) M. J. C. Daly, Esq. (Vice-Chairman) Dr. J. Clark P. K. Moxley, Esq. Mr. D. D. Croudace Dr. F. C. Friedlander Mr. R. Owen Mr. D. H. Patrick Mrs. S. Evelyn-Wright Mr. W. G. Anderson EDITORIAL COMMITTEE OF NAT ALIA Professor C. de B. Webb Dr. J. Clark Miss U. E. M. Judd Miss J. Farrer A Natalia 4 (1974) Copyright Natal Society Foundation 2010SA ISSN 0085 3674 City Printing Works, Bank Street, Pietermaritzburg Contents Pages EDITORIAL 5 BIOGRAPHIES Farewell - Fynn - King - Tsaacs - Cane - Ogle Halstead - Ross 8 UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT Captain Alien F. Gardiner: A Memoir by his wife, written for his grandson AlIen 28 ARTICLES Discovering the Natal Flora - A. W. Bayer 42 Natal Land and Colonization Company in colonial times - A. J. Christopher 49 SERIAL ARTICLE The Origins of the Natal Society: Chapter 3, 1847-1849 - U. E. M. Judd 55 NOTES AND QUERIES J. Clark, C. de B. Webb 61 REGISTER OF SOCIETIES AND INSTITUTIONS U. E. M.Judd 68 REGISTER OF RESEARCH ON NATAL J. Farrer . 72 SELECT LIST OF RECENT NATAL PUBLICATIONS U. E. M. Judd 74 The editorial committee I ~ deeply indebted to the Secretary of the Natal Branch of the Historical Association, Mr. J. Sellers, for his assistance in assembling material for this issue. 5 Editorial A year of commemoration and assessment DURING the past year attention has been focussed on the planting of the English language and English traditions in this country. In Grahamstown the 1820 Settler Monument (a great cultural and conference centre dedicated to the enrichment of the lives of all who share this country) was opened in July to the accompaniment of a superb programme of activities, including a challenging, at times conscience-searing, conference on the role of the English-speaking South African. Here ill Natal, exhibitions and a variety of festive and cultural activities were staged in May to commemorate the arrival in 1824 of Captain Farewell's company of traders and hunters, whose coming marked the beginning of a continuous white presence in Natal. We, in this issue, offer a series of biographical sketches of some of the leading figures among the white pioneers in Natal. As promised in Natalia No. 3, we also publish a memoir of Captain Alien F. Gardiner, the first Christian missionary to the Zulu. Written for a grandson by Gardiner's widow, Elizabeth, the memoir is published here for the first time. To preserve the "flavour' of the original, it is reproduced with minimal editorial interference. The Albany Connection: Natal alld the Eastern Cape 150 years ago The almost simultaneous commemoration of the 1820 Albany settlement in the Eastern Cape, and the planting, four years later, of a white trading post at Port Natal is a nice coincidence, for the links between the two were close. When Farewell arrived in Natal in 1824, his financial backing came very largely from the Cape Town merchant, J. R. Thompson, whose interest in the venture derived from a trading expedition he had made up the east coast to Delagoa Bay in 1822 on board the Orange Grove, a ship owned by an immigrant, Henry Nourse, who had come to Cape Town in 1820. Thus even in the preliminaries to white pioneering in Natal, the immigration of 1820 made a contribution. With the years, the contribution was to grow. Of the five companions who remained behind with Farewell at the Bay at the end of 1824, two (Henry Ogle and Thomas Halstead) were youths who had first set foot on southern African soil four years previously as 1820 settlers, and these youngsters, were joined, in time, by other Albany men. Names such as Coli is, Cawood, Biggar, King, Stubbs and Hulley, which feature prominently in the records of the early settlement at the Bay, are all to be found in the lists of immigrants who arrived in South Africa under the 1820 scheme. Some of these men sojourned briefly, then drifted away; others remained to earn fame in Natal. Such (to mention two who do not feature in the biographical articles published in this issue) were Robert Biggar who died bravely, if rashly, in 1838, after the native force under his command had been trapped by the Zulu, and Richard ('Dick') King, who in 1838 covered 140 miles on foot in four days 6 Editorial in an attempt to save the emigrant Boers from the impis of Dingane, and then, having tried to save the Trekkers from the Zulu, set out four years later to save the British from the Trekkers by a heroic ten-day ride from Durban to Grahamstown, Albany (to make a leap forward to space age analogies) was the Cape Canaveral and Houston Control of Natal pioneering combined into onc-the launching place for expeditions, and the chief intelligence centre about the fate of those expeditions and their activities, While ships making their way to and from Natal used Port Elizabeth as a place of call, it was in Grahamstown that the overlanders fitted out their expeditions from 1829 onwards. Moreover, it was the Graham's Town Journal that carried news of the hunters and traders of Natal, and it was to the authorities in Grahamstown that the early Natalians sent their missions and their appeals for aid, when the need arose. But while the links between Albany and Natal were close, there were also striking differences between these two pioneer English-language communities. The immigrants who landed on the shores of Algoa Bay in 1820 were intending settlers come to plant a new society. Farewell and his companions, by contrast, were men bent on hunting and fortune from the ivory trade; and for many years, those who followed them to Natal were cast in the same mould. Thus, although from 1824 onwards there was continuous white occupation at the Bay, it remained, until the coming of the Trekkers in 1837, occupation by a fluctuating band of free and easy adventurers, more intent on excitement and gain than on taming the wilderness and carving out patrimonies to pass on to their sons. And those were not the only differences. Whereas the Albany community was to be numbered in thousands, and included from the start men, women and children, the white community in Natal numbered no more than two or three dozen souls throughout the pre-Trekker period - at moments far fewer than that; and except for a brief eighteen-month spell when Elizabeth Farewell joined her husband, it remained, until the coming of missionary families in tht mid-thirties, an exclusively male society. Ten years after the arrival of the 1820 settlers, the soil of the eastern districts had been broken, and farmhouses, byres, mills, schools, shops and churches were appearing across the face of the countryside; ten years after the arrival of Farewell, the best that Port Natal could boast was scratch agriculture in small clearings in the bu"h, and a scatter of flimsy shelters, adequate for the needs of birds of passage, but holding no promise of permanence. When Captain Gardiner came to the Bay in March 1835, he found that: With the exception of Mr. Collis's house, constructed of reeds and mud. there was not a single dwelling of European fashion in the whole settlement .. ; and to a stranger, unacquainted with the localities, the whole had a most wild and deserted appearance ... every ... hut carefully concealed among the woods with so much ingenuity ... that in threading the narrow and winding avenues leading to some of these jungle fastnesses, I ... often fancied J was approaching the dismal abode of some desperate buccaneer. There were other differences, too - differences not of character but of circumstance. For while both communities faced formidable black neighbours, and while both were established on land to which tho now held by the Natal Archives would certainly thrO\\/ light Oil it. One intriguing question to which an answer might be found is why in 1845 the Cape Governor, Sir Peregrine Mailland, passed over Fynn for appointment to the post of diplomatic agent in Natal, the position which went to Theophilus Shepstone. Aged 42 at the time, Fynn was fourteen years older than Shepstone and, with twenty-six years of frontier experience behind him, including ten spent in Natal, must have appeared an obvious candidate. Fynn's post among the Thembu fell away in 1848 when Sir Harry Smith scrapped the frontier treaty system. Once again he was sent among the Mpondo, this time as Resident Agent to Faku. This period of his life is slightly better known than the preceding one: 7 all that can be said here is that he did not make a success of hi:; oiflce. By inciting a Mpondo attack on some suspected Bhaca cattle thieves, Fynl1 was resronsihle for sparking off a series of incidents which eventually involved not only the local chiefdoms but a number of Wesleyan missionaries and the Capc and Natal Governments. By the time affairs had been smoothed out, Fynn's long-standing reputation among the Mpondo was in tatters. In 1852 his post was abolished, and after an absence of eighteen years he returned to Natal, which si nee 1843 had been a British colony. He joined the government service as a magistrate, and was stationed first in Pietermaritzburg and then in what later became Umzinto. Ill-health forced his retirement in 1860, and on 20th September 186 I he died in Durban at the age of 58. One hundred and thirteen years after his death, Mbuyazi weTheku, as he was called in Zulu, still awaits a biographer. In assessing his career, white historians have so far tended to see him as one of a band of courageous 'pioneers' who cleared the way for the coming of civilization to Natal. Black historians of the future may well see him as one of a band of alien intruders who opened the way for the destruction of the established Zulu order. Perhaps the fairest comment that can be made at t h i ~ stage is that in accommodating as he did to life in an African society, at least for part of his early career, Fynn showed a pragmatism and courage, even perhaps a humility, that have been all too rare in the history of European immigrant peoples in southern Africa. His failure to exhibit a similar flexibility in his later career is a measure not simply of his own weak17 Henry Francis Fynn nesses but of the strength of forces which, throughout his life, were operating to convince the white colonist in southern Africa that he was master in the land that he had occupied. J. B. WRIGHT Notes: I. See H. F. Fynn, The Diary of Henry Froncis Fynn, edited by James Stuart and D. McK. Malcolm, Pietermaritzburg, 1950; N. Isaacs, Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa, 1st ed. 1836, Cape Town, 1970. 1. See Isaacsp. 18; also Fynn, p. 117. 3. Stuart Papers (Killie Campbe.Jl Africana Library), File 58, notebook 33, pp. 2-3 statement ofWilliam Lcathcm, 23.5.1910. 4. See his own statement, Diary, p. xv; and J. W. Colcnso, Ten Weeks in Natal, Cambridge, 1855, p. 216. 5. Diary, p. 56. 6. See for instance Stuart Papers, File 65, item 4, pp. 85-7, statement of WilIiam Bazley, 25.6.1907. 7. See J. B. Wright, Buslzman Raiders of the Drakensberg 1840-1870, Pietermaritzburg, 1971, ch. 6; and also unpublished thesis by D. G. L. Cragg, 'The relations of the amaMpondo and the colonial authorities (1830-1886) with special reference to the role of the Wesleyan missionaries', Ph.D .. Oxford, 1959. B 18 lames Saunders King Du RING the Napoleonic wars James Saunders King served as a midshipman in the British navy in American waters and, thereafter, in the British merchant navy passed himself off as a lieutenant. He came to the Cape at the end of the year 1820 on board the Salisbury which transported an independent group of settlers to the colony. By 1822 he had obtained command of this ship which plied between Cape Town and Algoa Bay. On one occasion he sailed with F. G. Farewell up the east coast of southern Africa to St. Lucia. Shortly afterwards the ship was forced by contrary winds into the lagoon at Port Natal where he promptly took the opportunity to make a detailed survey of the Bay. For his trouble he thought himself entitled to a lieutenant's commission in the British Navy, but the authorities did not agree with his contention. The incident brought renewed notice of the Bay of Natal and it was this which caused Farewell to consider the possibilities of trade with the Zulu through the port. With Nathaniel Isaacs, King sailed for Port Natal from Cape Town in the Mary. h!.lt bad luck dogged the two men and they were wrecked on the bar at the pan. King determined to settle where he found himself and he became a firm favourite with the Zulu chief Shaka. In April 1826 King left Natal on the sloop Hehcon but returned six months later only to engage in a serious financial quarrel with Farewell. In February 1828, Shaka sent King on a mission to negotiate an alliance between the Zulu and British government bllt Ilothing came of this plan. King returned to Natal in a state of great depression and, contracting dysentery at Port Natal, died there in September 1828. He lies buried in the Lieutenant King Park on the Bluff near Durban. He had an impractical nature and although he contributed to the foundation of the white settlement in Natal, he remains one of the more obscure figures in that venture. Perhaps his greatest contribution was a diary which was much used by Nathaniel Tsaacs in his Tral'e/s and Adventures in lIastern Ajfrica. B. J. T. LEVERTON 19 N athaniel Isaacs TEN YEARS before the annexation of Natal by the British Government in 1843, the principal merchants and prominent citizens of Cape Town were signatories to what has come to be known as the Merchants' Memoria!. It was a petition to the king 'to take measure5 for the occupation of Port Natal and the depopulated country in its vicinity'. For corroboration of its statements concerning the desirability of this measure, the text of the memorial referred to Sir G. Lowry Cole, the late Governor of the Cape, and to 'the various documents on the subject transmitted to England by the Colonial Government, particularly to that which has been received from Mr. N. Isaacs.' It was sent to the Secretary of State in London by the Governor of the Cape, Sir Benjamin D'Urban, with his recommendation. After the lapse of nine months it was politely refused. The reference is to Nathaniellsaacs who had spent several years in Natal and Zululand at a time when the sight of a white man was still a source of wonder to the inhabitants. a 'monster from the sea'. He had explored the land and kept notes of his observations of its nature, its climate, its resources for commerce and agriculture and its people. He had been deeply impressed with the desirability of Natal as a country for colonisation, and was eager to persuade the British Government to extend its protection and authority over it. This proposition he had lost no opportunity of propagating in public and in private, through official and unofficial channels, and in the columns of the S.A. Commercial Advertiser. He had determined to return to Natal and settle there if it should become British. His observations of the country, together with his remarkable personal adventures, were the substance of two volumes published in London in 1836, entitled Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa, descriptive of the Zoolus, their manners, customs. etc. etc. With a sketch of Natal. 1 Isaacs arrived at the Cape from St. Helena in 1825, then a youth of seventeen. He was born in Canterbury, England, of an Anglo-Jewish family. His first cousin, Saul Solomon, is famous as the Liberal leader for 30 years in the Cape House of Assembly. Isaacs's father died when Nathaniel was still a small child, and it was agreed by the family that he should join his maternal uncle, Saul Solomon, the principal shipper and merchant on the then flourishing island of St. Helena, and he trained there for a commercial career. His journey was, however, delayed for some years, entry permits being withheld whilst Napoleon was a prisoner on the island. But in 1822 he departed from England and was kindly received in the home of his uncle Sau!. Nathaniel refers with affection to his good uncle, but he found that office work bored him; or, in his own rather stilted style: 'the insipidity and monotony of the counting-house became insupportable'. In short, he longed for adventure; and in the event he got it in good measure. He made friends with Lieutenant James Saunders King, R.N., master of the 20 NathanielIsaacs brig Mary, who took him, with his uncle's consent, to the Cape. Here King learned that his friend Lieutenant Farewell was lost in east Africa, and decided to go in search of him. Young Isaacs delightedly accepted the captain's invitation to join the expedition. The Mary reached Port Natal in October, 1825, but was wrecked in the Bay. All but one member of the crew survived the shipwreck; but they found themselves in an untamed land with no means of returning to civilisation. The sparse popUlation, remnants of Shaka's conquests and massacres, was friendly, and Isaacs was soon in touch with the other white men in the country: among them Henry Francis Fynn, Lieutenant Farewell, his ship's carpenter, John Cane, and Henry Ogle. The crew of the Mary recovered tools and some of the timbers from the wreck and with the addition of what they felled locally, succeeded in building, in the course of nearly three years, a new vessel in which they returned safely to the Cape Colony. Isaacs and King hunted and fished and cultivated the soil with the aid of natives whom they taught to use pick and hoe. Isaacs determined to visit Shaka with whom Farewell and Fynn had already established friendly relations. He trekked 130 miles inland with Thomas Halstead, a ship's boy about his own age. They were civilly received. Isaacs has left a lively account of that warrior monarch and of his unpredictable, oftcn brutal methods of government. Shaka declared friendship for 'his white people', as he styled them, but it was quite clear that their lives and safety depended on his caprice. One incident particularly roused the king's wrath; and Isaacs was in imminent danger of a violent death. Finally Shaka decreed that all the whites must assemble and form a company to engage in one of his campaigns. Though this adjunct to the Zulu army was a body of less than a dozen men, they were armed with muskets the fire from which was sufficient to create panic in the enemy's ranks and ensure victory. Isaacs who received an assegai wound was able to plead successfully for the lives of the defeated enemies who would all have been slaughtered. Shaka honoured him, made him a chief and granted him by deed (a fantastic document) a vast tract of country, which Isaacs and King designed to develop; and Isaacs tells how they surveyed their estate and, selecting a conspicuous mound, planted thereon a Union Jack. King died of disease, and Shaka's assassination in 1828 put an end to Isaacs's plans. He travelled to the coast where he met an old friend, an American sea captain, and embarked with him on a voyage of exploration of the islands in the Mocambique Channel, assessing and recording the commercial possibilities of each. Back at the Cape and St. Helena, he recovered his impaired health and pursued his propaganda for British annexation of Natal. On his return to Natal he became acquainted with Dingane who confirmed Shaka's grant of land to him. But subsequently Dingane's ill-will towards the whites was kindled, partly by the malice of Hlambamanzi, the king's rascally interpeter, and Isaacs and his partner, Fynn, withdrew from Zululand, Isaacs returning to England. Here he joined as a partner C. G. Redman who owned ships trading with Sierra Leone. He still nourished the hope of settling in Natal, and made over to Redman Shaka's grant of land. Until 1844 they were both publicly urging the annexation. Isaacs took up residence in Sierra Leone representing the firm. In 1844, apparently abandoning his hopes, he realised all his assets and launched out on his own account. He bought the little island of Matacong off the west coast, 21 Nathaniellsaacs part of the colony but outside the jurisdiction of the cLlstoms. Taking advantage of this anomaly. he built wharves and stores and carried on a flourishing shipping trade with England. He was in good standing with the authorities ulltil 1854 when he incurred the displeasure or the new governor, Captain Arthur Kennedy, who accused him of slave-trading. He got early knowledge of the charge and left Matacong for Liverpool. Governor Kennedy. about this lime was appointed to New South Wales. He set sail, carrying with him the papers relating to the charge against lsaacs. His ship was wrecked and the papers lost. Consequently the English courts refused to proceed with the case. Isaacs retired to Liverpool in 1868. He died at Egremollt in Cheshire in 1872. Matacong went to his heirs, but was in 1882 declared to be French territory and the then owners were excluded by the French authorities. Nathaniel Isaacs, says Graham MacKeurtan in his Cradle Days of Natal 2 ... must rank along with Farewell. Fynn and King as a founder. His book is a vivid, detailed and accurate record of the birth of a great r-ettlement. and he deserves the acclamation of every inttrested historian. He was hardy. bold, keen in perception and resourceful in action. He came to Port Natal a mere boy; he departed almost a stripling; but he left a vivid impress on its nascent years. The only trace of him today is the name of 'Cape NathanieI' opposite the Bluff Point on a few faded maps. As time goes on, however, he will come into his own. LOUIS HERRMAN Notes: I. Republished in two volumes with biographical sketch and notes by L. Herrman, Van Riebeeck Society, Cape Town, 1936 and 1937. Republished in a single quarto volume, with notes and an extended biography, ed. by L. Herrman and P. R. Kirby, Struik, Cape Town, 1970. 2. MacKeurtan, G., Cradle Days oj'Natal, London, etc., 1930, pp. 157-8. 22 John Cane AN EARLY death was the fate of many Europeans who were pioneers of Natal and John Cane was among those who came to a violent end. Little is known of his origins except that he came from Britain to South Africa during the time of the Napoleonic wars. Like many sailors on the trading route between England and the Far East, Cane saw the advantages of settling in South Africa and on a trip to Batavia in 1813 he decided to make this country his home. He first laboured as an assistant to a Cape Town wine merchant and then, moving to the eastern parts of the colony, became a carpenter to the famous Landdrost J. G. Cuyler. It was in this fashion that he heard of the trading venture of Francis George Farewell to Natal and beyond, and became a carpenter in the service of that entrepreneur. Cane thus became one o f t h ~ first whites to settle in Natal and, like the rest, came into close contact with the Zulu king, Shaka. In 1828 Shaka sent Cane on an errand to the Cape to obtain macassar oil among other assignments. It is said that this early journey overland to the Cape inspired A. G. Bain and J. B. Biddulph to undertake their journey to Natal in 1829. Cane's mission to the Cape proved to be a failure, as did a diplomatic mission sent by Dingane to the Cape in 1830, which he also accompanied. Cane's failure to report to the Zulu king on his return to the Bay was a factor in the worsening relations between the Zulu and the whites at the Bay. Later Cane took part in Dingane's forays against the Swazi chief Sobhuza. In June 1836 Dingane stopped trade between the Bay and Zululand, and Cane took the initiative in opposing him in the plan. The whites at the Bay organised themselves and their black followers into a militia under the command of Robert Biggar, and Cane was one of the 'captains'. In the fighting that followed the Zulu massacre of the Trekkers, Cane and Robert Biggar led a force of fifteen whites and some eight hundred black followers against Dingane's impis. The rashness of this almost irresponsible collection of fighters led to a great number of casualties and Cane was one of those who were killed in the battle of Ndondakusaka on the 17th of April] 838. Here was a stormy petrel of early Natal whose life was recklessly expended for little advantage. B. J. T. LEVERTON 23 Henry Ogle H. F. FYNN'S diary describes Ogle as a 'mechanic'-one of three who arrived on the Julia in May l. This party organised by Francis Farewell consisted of some HottentN servants and Cl crew of about 20. The mechanics were to build a 'factory' in readiness for the later arrival of Farewell and other members of the party. At t h i ~ , time Ogle was 20 years old and one of the only three Englishmen in the party. the others being Fynn and Cane. Ogle had come to the Cape as an 1820 settler of the Mouncy party. Fynn tells the story of the first night's camp in the rain, when in spite of a smoky fire, they were attacked by 'wolves" and Ogle had to fight to recover from the enemy al! but one leg of his leather trousers with a Dutch 60 dollar note in the pocket; thereafter he helped to beguile the tedium of the long night with his singing. They built a l2-foot 'factory' of wattle and daub where the Durban Post Office now stands. Ogle's and Cane's huts being close by. After the July 1824 attempt on the life of Shaka and Fynn's share in his recovery. Fynn urged the llewly arrived Farewell to visit Shaka to congratulate him on his recovery. Ogle was one of the party who visited the royal capital near the Mhlatuzi. They perslILtded Shaka to grant them the land called 'Bubolango' about the port, extending LOO miles inland and 25 miles along the coast. A copy of this grant, signed on 71h August 1824. can be seen in the Local History Museum in Durban. Gradually Ogle and lhe others built up protected refugee areas on the Bluff and around the Bay -- from being empty territory it had by 1827 an estimated population of 4000. When Gardinerarrived in 1835, Ogle lIrgedhim to start the Berca mission overlooking the Bay. He was a member of the first Christian congregation at the Port. Together with Gardiller, James Collis. F. J. Berkin and John Cane he was elected to the first town committee of what was named D'Urban, but as they kept no records we do !lot know the extent of their work. Ogle was also a signatory of the petition of 30 residents of the Port, to request the British to annex the area between the Umzimkulu and Tugela Rivers as 'Victoria Colony'. Ogle accompanied Gardiner on the interesting journey to the Cape in 1835, together with Dick King. George Cyrus. John Wyngart and their servants. As the route along the coast was cut off beyond Faku's country by the generally disturbed conditions resulting from the frontier war of 1834-5, Gardiner's party initially tried unsuccessfully to cross the Drakensberg. After traversing the area now known as U nderberg and then striking southwards they returned to the Mpondo country of Faku. and finding that the hostilities had ceased followed the recognised route. Back at the Port. Ogle was a signatory to the welcome address to Piet Retief, approving of Trekker settlement in Natal. 24 Henry Ogle After the murder of the Retief party in February 1838, Ogle accompanied Cane's Locusts on a commando expedition of 2000 Durban natives to march against Dingane. Instead they raided a minor chief to retrieve stolen cattle and there was no fighting. Later in the year Ogle refused to participate in Alexander Biggars' second commando expedition though he had been created 'captain' over a contingent of 700 friendly Tuli warriors of Chief Umnini on the Bluff. Without his leadership they defected before the disastrous battle which resulted. Tmmediately afterwards Dingane's impis attacked the Port in April 1838, occupied it and for nine days spread destruction while the settlers sought refuge on ships or on Salisbury Island in the Bay. When the Comet Icft for Delagoa Bay on the 11th May, only eight or nine men remained to build lip the settlement again. One of them was Henry Ogle. Soon they were reinforced by groups or refugee Trekkers who under Kare1 Landman established three laagcrs around the Bay. When a small British force under Major Charters briefly occupied Natal in 1838-9 to endeavour to restore peace between the T rekkers and Dingane, and perhaps prevent the formation of a separate Trekker government, Captain Jervis who was left in charge succeeded, through Ogle, in opening negotiations with Dingane. An agreement was reached that the Tugela was to be the recognised boundary between the Zulu and the Trekkers, but the arrangement was never effective because of the Battle of Blood River and the subsequent withdrawal of the British force. Ogle would have met thc young Theophilus Shepstone who was a member of the expedition. The rest of Ogle's life was quieter and less eventful. He was destined to become the oldest white settler in Natal- the only one of the original settlers to make a permanent home in Natal. Hc died on February 20th, 1860, the anniversary of the day on which he first set foot on Natal soil. R. E. GORDON REFERENCES FYNN, H. E, The Diary of Henry Francis Fynn, ed. by lames Stuart and D. McK. Malcolm. Pietermaritzburg, 1969. LUGG, H. C., Historical Natal and Zululand. Pietermaritzburg, 1949. SHIELDS, C., Young South Africa. RUSSELL, R., Natal. The Land and its Story. Pietcrmaritzburg, 1911. BROOKES, E. H. and WEBB, C. de B., A History of Natal. Pietermaritzburg, 1965. 25 Thomas J-Jalstead I N AN era when boy" became men at an early age, Thomas Halstead was preeminent in Natal. He was the son of Richard Halstead of the 1820 settler Hayhurst party, and Thomas came to Natal with F. G. Farewell when he was yet in his early 'teens. Hunting buffalo for skins and elephants for their tusks, Halstead roamed the length and breadth or Natal and Zululand. and he was coincidentally on the beach at Port Natal when the also youthful Nathaniel Isaacs was shipwrecked there. Isaacs's first impression was that Halstead was a dullard, but events did not bear OLlt this estimation and it would appear that Halstead had more commonsense than Isaacs was willing to credit him with. With Isaacs and John Cane. Halstead took part in Shaka's expedition against the rebellious followers of Chief Beje. Halstead was on a very good footing with the Zulus. and Dingane came to trLlst him possibly more than any of the other Europeans in Natal at the tim8. In O:tober 1837 Halstead was again on hand when Piet Retief arrived at the coast, and he and the Voortrekker became finn friends. After Retief's visit to Dingane, Halstead was engaged as interpreter to go with the Trekkers to Sikonyela, from whom stolen cattle had to be retrieved. Halstead apparently also acted on behalf of Dingane who wished to see that the agreement with the Trekkers was fully carried out. In due course Halstead reported to Dingane what had transpired, but Halstead nevertheless remained under some suspicion. It 1V0uld appear that Halstead received prior information as to the intentions of Dingane in regard to the Trekker posse, but it seems as if Retief did not credit Halstead's tale. When the blolV against the Trekkers fell, Halstead tried to remonstrate with Dingane, but his protestations were in vain, and he perished with the others. At the time of his death Halstead was not yet in his thirties but his role in the unfolding story of Natal was notwithstanding a significant one. B. J. T. LEVERTON 26 John Ross HIS REAL name, he said, was Charles Rawden Maclean and he had run away to sea at the age of 12. He arrived in Nat,:\ with Lieutenant J. S. King's party as an apprentice on the ISO ton brig Marl' Oil 30th September 1825. This was an eventful introduction for, on crossing the notorious bar, the ship was wrecked off Point Fynn (the Point, Durban) fortunately without loss of life. King, lsaacs, Ross. H utton the master of the Mar)'. M orton the mate, and 13