THE NATAL SOCIETY OFFICE BEARERS 1990-1991 President M.J.e. Daly Vice-Presidents Dr F.e. Friedlander S.N. Roberts Prof. e. de B. Webb Trustees M.J.e. Daly Miss P. A. Reid S.N. Roberts Fellow of the Natal Society Miss P.A. Reid Treasurers Messrs Aiken & Peat Auditors Messrs Thomton-Dibb, Van der Leeuw and Partners Director Mrs S. S. WaUis Secretary P.e.G. McKenzie COUNCIL Elected Members M.J.C. Daly (Chailman) S.N. Roberts (Vice-Chairman) W. G. Anderson Prof. A. M. Barrett T.B. Frost J.M. Deane Prof. W. R. Guest Prof. e. de B. Webb G.J.M. Smith Ms P. A. Stabbins City Council Representatives CUr 1. Balfour CUr G.D. de Beer CUr R.L. Gillooly (died January 1991) ClIr Mrs J. Rosenberg EDITORIAL COMMITTEE OF NATALIA Editor T. B. Frost Dr W.H. Bizley M.H. Comrie IM. Deane G.A. Dominy Miss J. Farrer Prof. W. R. Guest Mrs S.P.M. Spencer Dr Sylvia Vietzen D.J. Buckley (Hon. Secretary) Natalia 21 (1991) Copyright Natal Society Foundation 2010Cover Picture The first four professed Augustinidn sisters of Estcourt with Bishop lolivet and Frs. Murray and Le Bras (Photograph: Prof. .I.B. Brain) SA ISSN 0085 3674 Published by Natal Society Library. P.O. Box 415, Pietennaritzburg 3200, South Africa Typeset by the University of Natal Press Prillted by The Natal Willless Priming alld Puhlishillg CO/llpallY (Pty) Lld Contents Page EDITORIAL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 NATAL SOCIETY LECTURE The Early Chinese Mariners, Natal and the Future David Willers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 REPRINT Colenso Letters Brenda Nicholls 17 ARTICLE The Tradition of Hindu Firewalking in Natal Alleyn Diesel .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 ARTICLE The Influence of the Geology of Durban on the Supply of Water from Wells to Early Settlers T.E. Francis .......................... 40 ARTICLE The Centenary of the Augustinian Sisters in Natal Joy B. Brain .......................... 54 OBITUARIES Neville James . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 John McGregor Niven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Mhlabunzima Joseph Maphumulo . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 NOTES AND QUERIES Moray Comrie ......................... 73 BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTICES ................. 85 SELECT LIST OF RECENT NATAL PUBLICATIONS ..... 92 REGISTER OF RESEARCH ON NATAL ............. 94 INDEX: NATALlA NOS. 1-20 .................... . D.J. Buckley and M.P. Moher/y 96 5 Editorial With this issue Natalia enters its third decade. It is no reflection on the merit of the articles in Natalia 21, however, to suggest that perhaps one of its greatest values will prove to be the Index to the previous twenty volumes. A decade ago we engaged in a similar exercise for the ten issues which had appeared at that time. With the wondrous aid of the computer, that Index has now been enlarged and updated. Even the most cursory perusal of it will reveal how extraordinarily wide has been the range of material covered by this journal. The foundations of the Index were laid by David Buckley of the Natal Society. The update has been most generously done as a labour of love by Margery Moberly, until last year a member of its Editorial Board, and still a very good friend of Natalia. Future researchers will be much in their debt. The 1991 Natal Society Lecture by the Editor of the Natal Witness, David Willers, took most of his hearers into the quite unknown field of the voyages of Cheng Ho, the Columbus of ancient China, to the shores of eastern Africa in the early fifteenth century. We are glad to be able to make it more widely available in these pages. For its previously unpublished piece, Natalia returns, for the third time in twenty years, to the corpus of Colenso material, in this instance letters from the Colenso daughters on the death of their famous father and the subsequent disastrous fire at Bishopstowe (the latter theme not unfamiliar to a Natal ravaged by fires in 1991). For the meticulous transcription and editing of these documents we are grateful indeed to Miss Brenda Nicholls of Rhodes University who, after a lifetime of study of the Colensos, is undoubtedly better placed than anyone else to perform such a service. Any suggestion that Natalia might be regarded as a purely historical journal is countered by the nature of two of the three articles which we publish this year: the influence of the geology of Durban on the supply of water from wells to the early settlers, written by Dr Tim Francis of the Durban City Engineer's Department, and the tradition of Hindu Firewalking in Natal, written by Ms AlIeyn Diesel of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg. We are grateful to them for their contributions, as we are to Professor Joy Brain, who retires at the end of 1991 as Head of the Department of History at the University of Durban-Westville, and who has written the history of the Augustinian sisters and the sanatoria which they founded and ran in Natal as the latest offering to Natalia from her ongoing research into Catholics and Indians. In its Obituaries Natalia notes ~ i t h sadness the passing of Justice Neville James, a distinguished former Chief Justice of Natal. The piece is written by Michael Daly who, were he not President of the Natal Society and a successful professional man in Pietermaritzburg, could undoubtedly have been an obituary writer for the Times in London. The sudden passing of Professor Jack 6 Niven, for whose Obituary we are grateful to Professor Robert Muir, Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg, came as a profound shock to his many friends, and not least to two members of the Editorial Board who were colleagues at the Natal College of Education and who had been at tea with him shortly before he was found dead on the floor of his office. Chief Mhlabunzima Maphumulo was highly esteemed in the black community, if the crowd which attended his funeral is any yardstick. His assassination, disquieting as it was, was rendered doubly so in as much as it has given rise to allegations, unproven at the time of writing, of involvement by agencies of the state in instigating it and other incidents of violence. Natal is the poorer for the passing of these of its most distinguished sons. In the place of Ms Moberly, the Editorial Board has been joined by Dr Sylvia Vietzen, Headmistress of Pietermaritzburg Girls' High School. Like Graham Dominy, whose service began last year, she is a past contributor to Natalia and their willing giving of their time and talents, busy schedules notwithstanding, is much appreciated. June Farrer has been replaced as Minutes Secretary by David Buckley. The regular features of the journal, Notes and Queries, Book Reviews and Notices, Select List of Recent Natal publications and Register of Research on Natal appear as usual. We are grateful to the many who have contributed to them, and trust that our readers will continue to find Natalia interesting fare. T.B. FROST 7 The Natal Society Annual Lecture Tuesday, 26 March 1991 The Early Chinese Mariners, Natal and the Future This is not a tale that aspires to any great scholarship, but rather the drawing together of a few threads that have interested me. Natal comes into it, but not only Natal; so do the Portuguese and so does the naval diplomacy of Cheng Ho, the 'Columbus' of the Ming Chinese, whose ships visited southern Africa in the first decades of the fifteenth century, fifty years and more before the Portuguese discoverers. apparently rounding the Cape before Diaz. The story of the seven Chinese sea voyages in the early 1400s, with Africa as an objective, when the Indian Ocean became a virtual Chinese lake. gives us a glimpse of an epic golden period before the European depredations and wars which gave rise to centuries of colonialism. the last vestiges of which are only now finally being erased with the end of apartheid. It was not always peaceful in olden times in Africa of course; competition for food and land and to get away from tropical raiders must have been behind the original migrations of African people southwards from the equatorial rain forests more than two thousand years ago. These migrations gradually moved across the savanna until they reached what is today southern Africa. The Matola tradition tells us that early iron age people were settled in Natal near the coast by the third century AD as far south as modern Scottburgh. They were pastoral and agricultural folk. trading peacefully with stone age hunter gatherers. otherwise known as Bushmen or San people who lived in the hinterland. The early iron age came to an end, stylistically speaking, around AD900. Then the late iron age commenced, and in Natal the coastal-dwelling Africans began to penetrate the grasslands, sometimes supplementing the defences of their villages with stone walls, choosing their environment more carefully, practising slash and burn agriculture and moving around quite a bit, possibly living in summer and winter grazing camps. The economy was typically agro-pastoral, and from 1400 onwards the late iron age people of Natal were culturally, linguistically and physically the direct ancestors of today's black population. Their lives were essentially similar to the Nguni of the last century, but they shared broad links culturally and linguistically with other black southern African communities including those further north with whom the Ming Chinese mariners had their first recorded contact in 1415. So to that extent, and because Natal as a concept didn't exist, it is enough to think of coastal east and southern Africa as part of the same seamless web with common traditions and a similar language base; and in beaching on the coast at Malindi before moving south, the Chinese had touched a nerve in a shared world where news of these contacts would have reached the periphery by word of mouth. 8 Early Chillese Mariners By 1400, Natal was already fairly well populated with villages along the coast made up of hemispherical huts of thatch and poles; presenting clusters of human settlement on the green hillsides visually the same as the Natal countryside of the nineteenth century; and Chinese ships sailing along this coast would have looked at a landscape little different to that witnessed by the early British settlers. But the peaceful character of Natal was not destined to last forever. It changed with the arrival of the Europeans, albeit over two or three centuries, when the competition for resources grew fiercer, (conflict over grazing lands being a typical aggravation, e.g. the decline of the Delagoa Bay ivory trade and the rise in the trade in cattle) and the politics of southern Africa became charged with patterns of oppression and counter oppression, occupation and disoccupation, by both black and white, that last to this day. Now that the European era is symbolically coming to an end, it would be tempting, although simplistic to conclude that southern African history can pick up as it were, where it was before the Portuguese ships, with sails like knives, visited the continent. But even if it cannot, it could mark a philosophic return nonetheless to that gentler age when the only pre-European contact southern Africa had experienced was with the early Chinese whose extraordinarily peaceful seaborne embassy in Africa left abiding memories, instilling in African coastal communities a sense of trust towards foreign elements which contrasted strongly with the brutalities of the Portuguese as they sailed up the African coast pillaging and looting in their primary effort to drive a dagger through the soft underbelly of the Muslim world, whose Turkish leaders had, through their closure of Constantinople, so recently and effectively blockaded the overland spice routes to the East that had been followed since Marco Polo's time. Today it might be argued that the inevitable African majority rule that will follow F. W. de Klerk's policy changes must result in the 'disembarkation' of the European presence that began not only when Vasco da Gama mapped Natal, but when Bartholomew Diaz was claimed by the Europeans to be the first man to sail around the Cape in 1488. In fact modern scholarship suggests he was not. Thanks to the new accessibility of Chinese archives after decades of having been closed to Western scholars, it now appears we can go beyond all the speculation about Arabs, Phoenicians and the like (which gave rise among others to fanciful stories about the origin of the Brandberg White Lady) and state with some certainty that the first non Africans to clap eyes on the famed Table Mountain were the crew of a junk of the Chinese Imperial fleet who doubled the Cape of Good Hope, not later than the seventh Ming expedition of 1431-3 to Africa, under the command of Admiral Cheng Ho, Grand Eunuch to his Imperial Majesty, Emperor of the Great Ming, Yung Lo. Recent scholarship by Dr Joseph Needham, sometime master of Gonville and Caius college, Cambridge, and one of the most respected sinologists in the world, suggests that the Chinese rounded the Cape, picked up an ostrich egg on the way back for good measure and confirmed the only Chinese-produced and accurate map of the east and west coasts of South Africa then in existence. This was 57 years before the European discovery of the Cape and could have been even earlier, perhaps during the four voyages made by Admiral Ho between 1409 and 1425. His research suggests that that lone junk could have been driven down to the Cape and beyond by a storm, the Aghullas ferociousness with which we are all 9 Early Chil1ese Maril1ers familiar. It conjures up an extraordinarily vivid picture; the slatted sails furled, the nine masts bare, the great ship, because they were great - some I 500 tons as opposed to the tiny 300 ton Portuguese caravels - heaving and rolling in the spume-tossed sea with, in the distance, the flat cloud-covered brow of old Tafelberg. Until at last, far out in the Atlantic off the shores of the south western coast of Africa they were able to bring the great craft about, probably with difficulty (although ships of Cheng Ho's fleet were able to sail much closer to the wind than modern junks), and work their way back, perhaps with the help of a following north westerly wind. After such an epic encounter with the elements they would doubtless have made a landfall to make good their craft, perhaps to reconnoitre the terrain and obtain fresh water and food, although most of the Imperial junks grew their own vegetables on board and had their own livestock for slaughter. The Chinese knew all about scurvy and even cultivated limes at sea. What must the local Hottentots have made of such a leviathan off the coast, the Emperor's crimson dragon banner streaming.in the wind! The mind boggles. Given such a long journey down the east coast of Africa by a single ship of the fleet, with the main Imperial presence at anchor at various times off what is today Mozambique, it seems likely that others of Cheng Ho's complement would have touched the Natal coast somewhere on this and previous expeditions, where their contact with the locals, given what we know of Cheng Ho, would have been peaceful and entirely in keeping with the Confucian ethic. Certainly current scholarship is confident enough of this likelihood to have included precise route maps showing a landfall in Natal close to where Vasco da Gama landed. The difficulty has always been one of deciphering the Chinese texts and the vagueness of their description of the coast south of Sofala in Mozambique, but the premise is that landfalls were made somewhere along this coast. Longer routes, such as the voyage to the Cape, have been easier to establish by virtue of the navigational details provided. The details of specific contacts with any indigenous Natalians are relatively unimportant; what is important is that the Chinese between 1405 and 1433 were making contact with these Indian Ocean and African people united locally from Great Zimbabwe down to Natal by common languages, skills and traditions; iron age migrants who were commonly established when the Chinese made their first African landfalls at Malindi and Mombasa, and later Sofala, of which more later. The point about the Natal Africans with their shared kinshi ps with cousins not far to the north is that their very presence in this part of the world ensured that what we know as South Africa today cannot be immune from the diplomatic impact of the early Chinese expeditions. The coastal people of Natal were distant hosts to those Chinese, and. the saIt from their table falls through the centuries to our own time. Theirs was the relatively serene lifestyle described earlier, and it was matched by life in China itself where the Ming period during the early decades of the fifteenth century saw a dramatic flowering of the arts, the consolidation of the Middle Kingdom and the most amazing feat of scholarship the world has ever witnessed: the compilation of the Yung Lo Encyclopaedia. Between 1403 and 1407 some 2000 scholars compiled 22000 chapters in over II 000 volumes. Only three copies were made and the last of these was largely destroyed by British troops during the sack of the Summer Palace in 1860. It was during this amazing period, with a scientific, intellectual and tolerant political revival in China that Admiral Cheng Ho turned the Indian Ocean into his Chinese backwater for thirty years until 1433 when the era of 10 Early Chinese Mariners maritime expansion came to an end with the drawing in of the Ming empire after the reverses in Annam in 1427 caused the occupying Chinese forces to withdraw and the northern frontier to shrink to the line of the Great Wall. The great ships of Cheng Ho's fleet were destroyed and no junk with more than two masts was henceforth permitted to sail off China, But for three decades, and fifty years before the arrival of the Portuguese, east and southern Africa knew an extraordinary window of diplomacy (though from about the eighth or ninth centuries Islamic traders were regularly visiting the east coast). The principal power in the Indian ocean was China and when China left the region the Portuguese sailed into a classic power vacuum, but one still marked by the footprints of Cheng Ho. When the Portuguese arrived, people still remembered the Ming Chinese, whose Indian Ocean story had begun with the appointment of Admiral Ho as commander of the Chinese fleet by Emperor Yung Lo, who wished to revert back to a state-controlled overseas trading system similar to that practised in the period of the Two Sungs. Cheng Ho, a physically and intellectually impressive man well over six feet tall, was chosen to be admiral not only because of his extraordinary native talents as an ambassador and mariner, but also because he was a eunuch, and would as such not pose a threat to the Emperor by threatening usurpation. He could, in other words be trusted with a powerful fleet. Cheng Ho, born in Yunnan about 1371 of Mongol Muslim parents, (Ho himself remained a Muslim all his life) had already made his name during the campaigns in defence of the Great Wall against the Mongols during the 1390s and in the Civil War of 1398 to 1402 against Yung Lo's nephew, Hui Ti, who had been appointed Emperor by his Grandfather Hung Wu, founder of the Ming dynasty. The war started in the first place because Hui Ti had been ill advised by his court elders against his uncle, Yung Lo, of which more later. We've already got a picture in our minds of the pastoral simplicity of the Africans along the Natal coast and farther north. They would shortly be meeting the emmisaries of a country, China under the Mings which, by 1404 was the most technically advanced in the world. A greater contrast cannot be imagined. It is as though benevolent explorers from outer space had set foot on another planet which, although not neccessarily backward, was technologically out of step by a millenium or so. Although it is fashionable to say that China was civilized when the rest of Europe was still in skins, and the invention of gunpowder is frequently advanced as an example of the disparity in knowledge, we are often not aware of just how developed the Chinese were. A good example of the advanced state of Chinese technology can be gauged by the fact that by the ninth century already the Chinese had invented a manufacturing process allowing for the reduction of zinc oxide and the consolidation of small particles of zinc. Pure zinc does not occur in nature and can be obtained only by gasifying one of the zinc ores and then condensing the gases in a separate container. The processes can have an application in gold mining and Chinese zinc technology only became known in the West as late as the eighteenth century. This is advanced chemistry known by the Chinese nine hundred years before the Europeans. Cheng Ho was instructed to build a fleet suitable for long-range ocean-going voyages. He drew liberally on the vast technical expertise and wealth at his disposal, and began construction of the first order for 250 ships on the Yangtze river near Nankin. The nucleus of the fleet consisted of 62 junks, the likes of which had never before been seen. They were so big that contemporary Early Chinese Mariners 1 1 accounts of their size have been disbelieved by modern scholars until the discovery in 1962 of a rudder post of one of these ships buried on a beach near Nankin. It is twel ve metres long and is capable of steering a vessel of 160 metres long. The 62 flagships were 134 metres in length and 55 metres in beam, with four decks, a hull divided into watertight bulkheads and buoyancy chambers and nine masts. They were as big as modern cargo ships. Their sails were technologically speaking brand new, being made from bamboo slats, which allowed these huge craft to sail against the wind, something traditional junks then and since have al ways found difficult. In fact the technology was very similar to the multi-masted computer-controlled ships which are under construction on an experimental basis in Europe today; their sails are also rigid, being made from slatted alloys, and arranged in a fixed fashion junk rig sty le. The money for this immense exercise, equivalent to the Chinese of putting a man on the moon for the Americans today, came from history's first known privatization exercise when Yung Lo sold off the imperial hunting grounds to farmers and landlords. In this way he was able to avoid financing the fleet by raising taxes which could have been an unpopular move. In a sense he was little different from a shipping magnate of today, an Aristotle Onassis of old China. Each ship had a crew of 500 men and displaced 1 500 tons, and the smaller junks that accompanied this nucleus were in themsel ves marvels of construction. As I've already mentioned, food was grown on board and livestock bred and slaughtered. Under sail the fleet could maintain a speed of six or seven knots, and were so finely balanced that oars were only necessary in absolute windstill conditions. Compasses and stellar navigation ensured that they were never lost, except when exploring completely unknown territory, and unlike the Portuguese the Chinese had the courage to strike out of sight of land for weeks at a time. In fact one suggested route for the Cape voyage shows a more or less direct trip from Galle on the tip of India, skirting Madagascar, but probably visiting Mauritius. Cheng Ho was not exactly entering uncharted seas. The Ming Chinese had a shrewd idea of what lay beyond the horizon because of earlier Chinese Mongol voyages which were also remarkable in themselves and although it is not recorded, could easily have explored the African coastline a century before Cheng Ho. For example Ibn Batutah, [he great Arab traveller, described 13 junks of the Chinese Mongol navy anchored off Calicut midway up the West coast of India in 1330, manned by a thousand men. The route from Calicut to Malindi on the East African coast was already well known to Arab sailors by then. and it takes little imagination to contemplate that a Mongol fleet could have made the crossing at some time. Be that as it may, the early voyages starting in 1404 saw Cheng Ho visit South East Asia, Ceylon, India, Persia, the eastern coast of Africa as far south as Zanzibar and Arabia. Champa. Java, Malacca and various Indian Ocean islands were also visited during the third voyage from 1409 to 1411 (30 000 troops, 48 big junks), During these voyages Cheng Ho traded for precious foreign goods including rhinoceros horn and gold with the only currency then permitted in China to be used to pay for imports, namely silk, brocades and porcelain. Porcelain was prized everywhere and details are recorded of porcelain being used as a medium of barter in places as far apart as East Africa and Borneo. This is one of the reasons why so much early Ming porcelain has been discovered in the Indian Ocean basin including the Zimbabwe ruins. It 12 Early Chinese Mariners was simply used as an alternative currency. Indeed porcelain, much of it of good quality, remained a major item of trade around the Cape until the nineteenth century. In 1415 a singular event occurred when the Sultan of Malindi, the ruler of the Zinz empire centered around what is today Mombasa, sent an embassy to China with the fourth fleet with various gifts including a magnificent giraffe and what are thought to have been a zebra and an oryx. So touched was Emperor Yung Lo that the ambassadors were escorted all the way home on the fifth voyage of Cheng Ho of 14l7-19, which is believed to have been the voyage which saw the Chinese fleet move farther south to Sofala and beyond, very possibly to Natal. As one Chinese author put it: How different the Ming expeditions were from those of the Portuguese. Instead of pillaging the coastline, slaving, seeking to establish colonies and monopolize international trade, the Chinese fleets were engaged on an elaborate series of diplomatic missions, exchanging gifts with distant kings from whom they were content to accept formal overlordship of the son of Heaven. There was neither intolerance of other religious beliefs nor the search for one's personal fortune in the discovery of Eldorado. A stele dated February 15, 1409, in Chinese, Persian and Tamil was set up by Cheng Ho at Galle in southern India (from where one of the ships was thought to have set off for the Cape). It reads in part: His Imperial Majesty, Emperor of the Great Ming, has despatched the Grand Eunuchs Cheng Ho, Wang Ching Lien and others to set forth his utterances before the Lord Buddha, the world-honoured one ... Of late we have despatched missions to announce our Mandate to foreign nations, and during their journeys over the oceans they have been favoured with the blessing of thy beneficient protection. They have escaped disaster or misfortune, journeying in safety to and fro, ever guided by thy great virtue. What an extraordinary thing to pay homage in this way, one religion to another, all those years ago. What depth and maturity of understanding of other people's cultures this shows. And so we have a picture in our minds of the Chinese arriving in Africa, bearing gifts, behaving courteously and being well received. In the new year 1498, Vasco da Gama forged on from Natal to Malindi, arriving at the exact spot visited by Cheng Ho fifty years before. Everywhere the Portuguese heard puzzling tales of earlier visits by strange ships with many masts, crewed by people with strange clothes speaking in a language totally unknown. After Malindi an Arab pilot guided da Gama on to India where he made a landfall at Calicut in May 1498. He sailed for Portugal laden with spices and returned by the same route in 1502 (a year after Bartholomew Diaz drowned in a storm off the coast of South Africa) to pillage African and Indian ports, ostensibly in revenge for the ill-treatment of Portuguese traders, but in reality because the Portuguese national resources were so run down they had nothing worth trading with. Without manufactured goods to exchange for the desired spices and silks, in contrast to the beautiful goods the Chinese imperial envoys were able so freely to distribute, the Portuguese were obliged to seize by force what they wanted. 13 Early Chinese Mariners Terror was fundamental to their authority; however it was justified as righteous contlict with the heathen. No quarter was given in combat and treatment of prisoners was ruthless. The conquistadores pursued scope for personal riches, a potent drive to acquire an adequate return for the enduring dangers of battle and voyage that the distant authorities in Lisbon were unable to control. Vasco da Gama has a reputation as a cruel man. The landscape was blasted by his cannon; a favourite trick of the Portuguese captains was to fire the severed limbs of captured Africans into villages along the coast as an inducement to subservient behaviour. To those areas brought under Christian rule the Portuguese transplanted the awful symbol of their rejection of other creeds and beliefs: the Holy Inquisition. What a juxtaposition this tyrannical behaviour was with that of the Chinese Admirals who made a positive point of discoursing about the religious beliefs of the people of the southern countries without foresaking the basic teachings of the Chinese sages. It is difficult to convey the gravity of the closure of the land spice routes in the fifteenth century to a modern audience that thinks of pepper as something to put on one's Avocado Ritz. But to the meat-loving Europeans it was a crisis equi valent to, say, the cutting off of petrol today, and in a sense the Americans are doing in the Gulf only what Vasco da Gama set out to do five hundred years ago. And in the same way that the UN allies have triggered off Islamic fundamental perceptions of a colonial Western occupation of the heartland of the Islamic world that must needs be brief, so the arrival and now symbolic departure, given tangible shape through capital divestment, of the Europeans in Africa, is the end of a precise chapter which leaves the Africans to get on with lives otherwise interrupted by this interregnum. As modern European scholars are increasingly wont to say about Africa, we came, we saw, we conquered and now we're buzzing off! The Chinese chapter in Africa marked the end of a willingness by the Mings to interact with the wider world; for centuries, ever since Cheng Ho's last voyage, China was closed, and out of step with the world. The northern frontier retreated to the Great Wall after military reverses which made it very difficult for travellers from w ~ s t e r n latitudes to reach China overland. In China itself the Grand Canal and other inland waterworks were completed and absorbed shipbuilding capacity, and the era of Chinese maritime reconaissance came to an end after only thirty years. It is only comparatively recently that China is again reaching out, and it seems to me entirely logical that we should pick up the threads of the Chinese rediscovery of Africa today from the hem of those last years of the Ming experience in the Indian ocean. Why did the Chinese decide to undertake their naval expeditions in the first place? Was it to ward off Mongol invasion by sea? Or to develop sea trade routes now that land trade routes had dwindled? Or to import drugs and other precious items including gold? Or to puff up the Emperor and show people what a fine fellow he was? The economic reasons we know were connected with Yung Lo's intention to reassert Chinese authority in the southern ocean after the Mongols and to return to the state-controlled trading system of the Two Sungs. But we also know now that another primary motive was to search out the Yung Lo's emperor's nephew Hui Ti, who disappeared after his uncle had sacked Nankin and defeated his armies. For years people believed Hui Ti, the only Ming emperor not to have a tomb, to have lived a secret life as a monk. In fact 40 years after the fall of Nankin a 14 Early Chinese Mariners monk did emerge and claim to be the deposed emperor; he was imprisoned in comfort for a year and then died. But Dr Needham has produced evidence showing that Hui Ti may have fled Nankin by ship and disappeared into the vastness of the Indian Ocean. Trade with the Arabs and Persians had already taught the Chinese much geography as we have seen, and the adoption of the compass by the Chinese long before the Europeans enhanced their navigational skills, so Hui Ti could well have had a junk equipped with Arab guide and competent crew. Since we know the political motive for Cheng Ho's voyages was in part to 'search for his traces' and because we know the frightened twenty year old boy was prepared to go to the ends of the earth to escape death at the hands of his usurping uncle, although in truth he probably had little to fear; and since both modern technology in the form of ships, charts and navigation knowledge of the coasts of Africa as far as Sofala, gateway to Great Zimbabwe was available to his advisors, there was no reason why he should not have eventually fetched up at the southernmost points of the compass, including those visited in southern Africa by Cheng Ho. A few words about Hui Ti are necessary to allow our imagination to fill out the human gaps. Our story really begins in 1369 when the first of the great Mings, Hongwou, became emperor a year after the Mongols were driven from China. Hongwou had fought a brilliant campaign with the trusted General Suta at his side, igniting in the Chinese people a form of early nationalism and driving a spike into Mongol morale, already sapped after the death of the greatest Khan of all, Kublai. The great palace at Xanadu had rapidly decayed, although Hongwou refused to permit its destruction by the victorious Imperial troops. But it was symptomatic nonetheless of the temporariness of the Mongol occupation of China that its walls, without attention, were soon eroded by the relentless icy blast of the winds from the northern plain. Hongwou was an inspired leader of his people after the barren corruption, degeneration and Lama lawlessness of the Mongol Yuan dynasty. The Yuans had promoted military rule as the centrepiece of their system of government and for more than a century the Chinese people lived under what amounted to martial law. Hongwou was determined to restore civil government. He downgraded the status of the army, which had exalted the military class, and although he would continue to need his troops to maintain order, Hongwou would not make his army the sole prop of his power and basis of his authority. This was why he and indeed his ultimate successor the Yung Lo emperor dealt only through the kind of men that every nation throws up from time to time, men of the highest integrity and ability, like General Suta on land and Admiral Cheng Ho later at sea. Above all the Emperor was keenly aware that, at bottom, he was dealing with a nation of shopkeepers who desired only peace in order to return the country to prosperity. To retain the affection of his subjects he was to introduce impartial justice and fair taxation and restore standards of education, neglected during the Mongol occupation. He was the first ruler ever to introduce modern state care for the elderly . he new Ming emperor decided to isolate his country from external influence even more than the Mongols had done. His motive was principally economic but also partly political. The Mongol government had stopped Chinese merchants from travelling abroad to trade. The ban was later extended to dealing with foreigners who visited China. When Hongwou took over from the Mongols he converted this system into one in which foreign trade would be 15 Early Chinese Mariners permitted only with countries acknowledging China's sovereignty. In other words, tributary trade. Gradually, as the years passed a general philosophy was formulated that granting trade to Barbarians was a favour and that trade should be engaged in only when it could be used to manipulate foreigners in order to control them. Although Hongwou was not to know this, it was this perception of the limits of China's ability to control the Barbarians through trade alone, the further Cheng Ho's voyages enlightened the Ming Court as to the extent of the known world, which undermined whatever Chinese enthusiasm there may have been to continue the voyages after the seventh, when the principal sponsor, the Emperor Yung Lo, was already dead. Again, as we examine some of the other problems which were to confront Hongwou, we are struck by the sophistication of Chinese society and economy when compared with the pastoral simplicity of coastal Natal, a good paradigm for much of east Africa which the Chinese would soon be visiting. During this period, for example, it is difficult to contemplate currency and inflation problems preoccupying the good folk of Natal overmuch in the late fourteenth century. Yet this was one of Hongwou' s most pressing problems, and his position and indeed response was little different from that of a modern central banker. The nub of the problem was that the Mongols had recklessly issued inconvertible notes and insisted that only paper money be used in commerce. Contract prices could only be determined by Mongol paper money and traders were forbidden on pain of death from using gold, silver, silk or other precious barter goods to effect a means of exchange. Economic crimes were taken as seriously then as they were during the worst excesses of the Communist Chinese reign. But there was little to back this paper money up, nothing in the Mongol reserves, and with paper money losing its value day by day, the average trader began using silk thread as an alternative money, but because the value of the thread was dependent upon market conditions, ultimately, unlike gold and silver, lawsuits were frequent. When Hongwou came to power he was confronted with a good old fashioned liquidity crisis, with inadequate stocks of gold and silver in the central vaults to buttress the value of the new paper money he began issuing to replace that of the Mongols. The shortage of gold and silver led to a geological search on a grand scale for new mines and new technologies, for example zinc making as a refining process in gold extraction, were developed. But the deficiencies in gold and silver were very definitely one of the reasons why the Yung Lo emperor was prepared to invest so much in Cheng Ho's voyages. It was his hope that gold would be discovered abroad. China in those days had a population of sixty million people, some fifteen percent inflation annually and a war-ravaged economy. Through fiscal prudence inflation was eventually reduced somewhat, the currency gained value as a result and the coffers were further replenished through wise tax policy. Peace returned to China and prosperity gradually filtered down to all classes of the population. But the Mongols continued to be a problem even after their defeat. It took twenty years of unprecedented slaughter before General Suta finally defeated the cruel Mongol general Arpuha. In the meanwhile Chinese authority was gradually consolidated for the first time beyond the Great Wall over the wilderness approaches to the principal trade route with Turkestan and the West. It was a mediaeval version of defence in depth. The Mongols left their mark on history. In Hochow, a city of tens of thousands, rather than allow its 16 Early Chinese Mariners citizens to live under the advancing Chinese, the retreating Mongol army slaughtered every man, woman and child. Confronted with these thousands of rotting corpses, the eerie wastelands around them, the desert winds howling through the ramparts of the ghost city, the Chinese army almost lost heart, but eventually stilyed on to repopulate the once prosperous centre. In 1389, general Suta returned to Nankin as Governor to the Prince Imperial. There he died when he was only 54 years old, thirty of them spent under arms, a Generals general. He had conquered a capital, three provinces, several hundreds of towns and his departure was keenly felt, not only by Emperor Hong Wou, then 63, but also by an eight year old boy, Hui Ti, son of Hong Wou's eldest son and natural heir who had died of a sudden disease. After these events the heart seemed to leave the old man, but he ruled on for another nine years before dying in 1398. At this point the seventeen year old Hui Ti (also known as Chu Yun Wen) became emperor in accordance with the Ancestral Admonition, the dynasty's house law. At this point enter the uncles. Without going into detail, it was clear from old Hong Wou's instructions that Hui Ti, the grandson, was also his preferred heir because the old man was afraid his surviving sons would squabble over the empire. In fact they accepted Hui Ti initially until it became clear that the young man was being ill-advised by his father's old court retainers who had ambitions of their own. Against his will Hui Ti was persuaded to arrest some uncles, bankrupt others and so on until eventually he found himself locked in a civil war with his eldest uncle Chu Ti, who later became the Yung Lo emperor responsible for Cheng Ho's voyages. Hui Ti's uncle wrote to him frequently warning him against his advisers, but the letters were either intercepted 'or the boy was overawed by them because eventually there was nothing for it but to prosecute the civil war in a manner which devastated China. Finally Hui Ti's uncle cornered the boy Emperor in Nankin which was besieged and burnt. Hui Ti disappeared as we already know, but what we assume, because of the correspondence between uncle and nephew, is that the new Yung Lo emperor, while wishing to apprehend Hui Ti because he still provided a potential rallying point for dissenters, also had his well-being at heart. Certainly Cheng Ho would have been part of the picture ... hence the admonition to search the oceans everywhere until the young man was apprehended. So in conclusion, we can see in our mind's eye a time not long before the arrival of the Europeans when southern Africans, and those in Natal, going by the research of scholars in Pietermaritzburg, lived peaceful lives, coexisting in a seamless web of interaction with their fellows to the north in what is present day Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Tanzania; and being touched in turn by the Chinese whose story from 1395 to 1435 when the Mings destroyed their great fleet, permitting no junk at sea with more than two masts, is both riveting and poignant. For the Chinese it was an extraordinary lapping at the edges of another world they had yet to know, thirty brief years which saw them criss-cross the Indian ocean and leave their foot prints on the shores of Africa, as discreet as visitors from outer space, to be found fifty years later by the first European explorers who had rounded the Cape. REFERENCE Needham, Joseph. Science and Cil'ili:ation in China, Vol.4 Part 3. DA VID WILLERS 17 Colenso Letters I ntroductioll The letters selected for publication deal with two events of crucial significance for the Colensos as a family: the death of Bishop Colenso in June 1883 and the destruction of the family home at Bishopstowe/Ekhukanyeni in September 1884. Two letters are written by Frances Ellen Colcnso (1849-1887) who died at Vent nor, on the Isle of Wight, and the third by Harriette Emily Colenso (1847-1932). the eldest and the longest-lived of the Colenso family. None of the Colenso children was horn at Bishopstowe. Four were born in Britain while /\gnes Mary. Ihe youngest. was born in Pietermaritzburg, shortly before the newly-arrived family of Natal's first bishop moved into the newly-built home at Bishopstowe. Some memories of Forncelt in Norfolk lingered. among them of strawberries tossed by their father to the young Frances ElIen and her liltle brother Robert as they stood obediently on dry ground in the garden; but Bishopstowc was the family home where the Colensos grew up. It was from the quaint house here that they rodc into Pietermaritzburg for visits to Government House. balls and bazaars or, in the case of the boys, lessons from one of their father's clergy. while the Bishop himself rode into town at least once a week for services at St Peter's, or left Bishopstowc to travel about his diocese. For all there were picnics on Table Mountain and visits further afield. Childhood in Natal was interrupted when their father, taking his family with him. went to Britain to seek support for his theological views and ecclesiastical position. The visit was important for all the Colensos. For the older girls there was the experience of school days at Winnington Hall where John Ruskin taught art and where friendships were formed. In England Charles Bunyon, their maternal uncle, was the main representative of Colenso interest until the Co1enso sons went to England to study and then to settle. Charles Bunyon was relatively prosperous and helpful. but the Colensos realized that there were limits to the affection between the wealthy, evangelical and London-based Bunyons and the rather more straitened. unorthodox and colonial Colensos. Mrs K. M. Lyell, sister-in-law of the geologist Sir Charles Lyel!. and a woman of talent and means, was probably the most important of their English friends both to the Bishop and his wife and to their children. Many distinguished people supported Colenso in the 1860s when significant judicial decisions were made, and the family was drawn into the social life of some of the intellectual elite of London. The Colensos returned to Natal in 1865. A few years later the family began to disperse. In 1869 the sons, Frank and Rober!. went to England for higher education at Cambridge and Oxford respectively, and for professional training, Frank as a lawyer and Rober! as a doctor. They were away for ahout a decade. Each returned to Natal, hoping to remain permanently. But Frank's fiancee would not come to Natal, and he returned to Britain to marry. carve out a career as an actuary, and rear his own family. Robert John did not establish himself successfully either in Natal or on the Witwatersrand and he returned to Britain in about 1890, Franccs Ellen accompanied her brother to Britain in 1869 hut only for a short visit, for she returned in 1870, being chaperoned by Bishop Wilkinson, the Church of the Province of South Africa Bishop of Zululand. She visited Britain again in 1879 accompanying Frank on his return from Natal. She at)ended some classes at the Slade School and paid a visit to Rome. returning to Natal in 1881. She went back to England in 1886 where she died after a short stay. Harrielle. for all her intellectual gifts, did not receive the opportunities for higher education afforded her brothers: family resources were too limited for so radical a step to he considered. But, since both her brothers were away from home, it was natural th1t she should draw closer to her father, accompanying him on his episcopal visitations. and supporting him in his political confrontations with the authorities over the fate of Langaliba1ele anclthe injustices of Britain's Zulu policy. Agnes Mary Colenso was throughout her 18 Colenso Letters life the loving and able supporter of those in the family who played a more public role. while ready to take the initiative herself when necessary. For Frances Ellen the years I RR3 and I R84 belonged to a very unhappy period. There had been an early close friendship that ended in separation, and by 1873 she was in love with Col. Anthony William Durnford who. committed to an unhappy marriage. could not give her the fulfilling relationship she sought. As . Atherton Wylde' she wrote My Chief and I in honour of Durnford when. as commander of the force sent to pursue Langalibalele, he was blamed for the colonial deaths that occurred in the Bushman's River Pass. Isandlwana was a tragic turning point in her life. Her physical strength was eroded by the tuberculosis contracted while nursing a sick soldier in Pietermaritzburg and she grieved deeply for Durnford. But she devoted energy. emotional intensity and intellectual concentration to defending his reputation from what she believed was the unjustified blame for Isandlwana. With Anthony's brother Edward. she wrote A History of the Zulu War and its Origin, and she collaborated with him in the composition of A Soldier's life in south east Afri('a, a memoir of the latc Col. A. W. DUr1!ford. Her friendship with Edward. himself a married man. grew too intense for comfort. She undertook her last book. the two-volume The Ruin of Zululand. on her father's suggestion and it contains many references to Isandlwana. Convinced that Durnford was the victim of a conspiracy of silence and calumny, Frances Ellen believed that Offy Shepstone had stolen papers from the body of Durnford which. if recovered. would show quite clearly that Durnford had not received specific orders to take command. of the camp. She pursued tangled, probably inconclusive and possibly irrelevant evidence on this point, and did so with a frightening intensity until her death. Allusions to political and ecclesiastical matters occur in the text. At the time the letters were written Zululand was in a state of chaos and uncertainty as civil conflicts continued after January 1883 when Cetshwayo returned to a mockery of his former position, and the situation was exacerbated after Cetshwayo's death in February 1884 by the intrusion of white landgrabbers. In regard to Church affairs the death of Bishop Colenso raised the formidable questions of a successor to him and of how the property he had held was to be controlled. These three letters are among the papers of Frank Colenso which. having been preserved by his widow and his daughter. were donated to the Rhodes House Library. Oxford. in 1967. The permission of the Librarian to publish these letters is gratefully acknowledged. I have also to thank members of the Editorial Board of Natalia. Mrs Shelagh Spencer and Dr Sylvia Vietzen. for specific information incorporated in the footnotes. Alterations to the text have been kept to a minimum. Changes to punctuation are so slight that they have not always been indicated and. in the interests of easy communication. the ampersands and the Colenso abbreviations have been replaced by 'and' and the full version of the words abbreviated in the original text. For the 1110st part. however. the Colensos speak for themselves. BRENDA NICHOLLS Bishopstowe June 24, 83 My poor darling Brotherl I am thinking a great deal of you through this almost unendurable time of sorrow for us all. It is so hard on you to be away, and I know how much you will feel that besides the grief and loss which we all share. Still I almost think that it was harder still for me to have been so near and yet too late. I see Mama has said something of that - but in point of fact it must have been just her own feeling that I had been 'wronged' and therefore must feel it so, for I never said a word of the sort and if I blame anyone it is Dr Scott2 and the man in town who is paid to post our letters daily and apparently does it at his own convenience. I must tell you just what I know for you will wish to hear all that can be said about our dreadful loss. For the last 6 months we seem each to have been secretly anxious about him. All the while I was painting him I used to feel as though the lovely soul was daily shining more and more through the earthly form. and I think almost every loving look one has cast upon him has been accompanied by a momentary thrill of pain - hastily pushed away as foolish and needless. It has been rather the thought of what a 19 Colenso Letters dreary blank the world would be were this to be which now is, than actual anxiety. For though very thin and tired looking he seemed wonderfully to keep his health, and my feeling always was 'when once the Zulu business is happily over he will rest - both heart and mind,' and here I must tell you how very much pleased he was with your late literary and political efforts. I don't think you could have done anything to please him more, and I am very very glad you did it, for your sake as well as because it was a good and right thing to be done. But to go back to my miserable tale, (my part in it truly so) he went down to Durban on May 30, my birthday, and I was to have gone with him, but was not well enough, and for various reasons decided to go a week later. I was to stay away till Sept. It so happened that I went down at last the very day he came up. We knew it beforehand, but it so happened that it could not be helped. Our 2 trains stopped at the +way house together for a few moments, just long enough for us to exchange greetings from our windows, unfortunately not opposite each other by some 4 or 5, and for me to have one look - my last at his blessed white head. That thought did cross my mind as we passed on but only in the form of .Suppose that were my last sight of him how should I bear it!' but of course I had no slightest reason for really fearing it except because it would be so dreadful. When I got to Durban I heard from Rob' that our darling Father had had a touch of coast-fever down there, but that he was better when he started and Rob had treated him and was certainly not alarmed, and both he and I were relieved when our next letters from Bishopstowe gave good accounts. So a fortnight ... passed, and I got comfortably settled in my winter quarters, feeling sure that Papa would manage to come and see me in the middle of the time. But on a Tuesday morning - only last Tuesday, the 19th, I got letters from home written on Saturday night, and which ought to have reached me the day before. Harrie4 wrote, saying he was not well and they had decided to ask Dr Scott to come and see him next day, Sunday, on w\1ich day H. added a p.s. to the same effect. But though anxious they were not then when they wrote alarmed, nor do I think we in Durban should have been but for our having had no later news and Rob's not having heard from Dr Scott. Rob at once telegraphed to Dr Scott for information, but the reply was rather uncertain, and mentioned that the sender was writing. This did not look urgent you see, and though Rob said that he should go up, it was already too late for that afternoon's train, and no passenger train left again before 8 next morning. Meanwhile I also telegraphed on my own account to Dr Scott (who is my medical attendant) charging him to telegraph for me if there was any danger. About 7 p.m. came another telegram from Dr Scott asking Rob to come up by the night luggage train, but making no mention of me. Now I find that poor Harrie specially asked Dr Scott to send for me also, but he did not do so. I suppose he thought that any alarm would bring us both but he should have remembered that I was not situated like other people. In Durban I was under Rob's medical control, and as there could be no doubt that a sudden night journey into a colder atmosphere and without travelling conveniences would be a great risk for me, he might have been sure that nothing short of the full alarm would induce Rob to bring me. As it was Rob wished me to wait, not only for the morning train, but until he telegraphed for me, which could not be until the afternoon. In fact he was not sure from the telegrams whether there was immediate danger or not, or whether Dr S. was merely nervous about the responsibility etc. So, though Rob told me that I must decide for myself, he 20 Colenso Letters plainly thought that I ought to be patient and wait, and not risk getting ill, and making them all unhappy, perhaps without need. I am thankful to say that Rob and all of them say that if they had known the dreadful blow that was coming, they would not have dreamt of keeping me away, feeling with me that nothing could be so terrible an injury as to be too late to see him. So Rob went off by the 2 a.m. train and I felt that right or wrong, I could not stay behind, so I started after him by the first morning train, which should have reached Maritzburg at 2 p.m. but was nearly -} an hour late. All the way up - six hours - I was feeling gUilty and fearing it was selfish of me to come, but now that Rob was with him I don't think that I felt frightened until just that last half hour which happened to be beyond the time. I had telegraphed to Mr Egner5 to provide a trap for me for I did [not] want to trouble them out here or - in case I was doing wrong to come - for them to know it till I reached home. But meanwhile during the 6 hours I was in the train I had been sent for at last and Emil6 had telegraphed back to say that I was on the way. So at the P.M.B. station I found Dr Scott to meet me and Mr Egner, and a trap with a pair of large, fast horses. I knew from all their looks that the great fear of our lives was coming near, although Dr Scott's words were not hopeless - only that he was better in one way, but not so well in another. It was rather the extreme care and tenderness with which he looked after and cared for me than anything else that made me feel sure he had no hope. He was not coming out here with me but Mr Egner was and also Mr. Gallway? [sic] whom we picked up in town by his request to Mr Egner. As we left the station the latter began to talk of Papa of how he had been in on Thursday - and so on and I just told him I could not talk of him if I were to get home and then Mr. Gallway [sic] came up and began 'the accounts are better today,' but I had said hurriedly to Mr Egner 'for God's sake tell him not talk to me of my Father' (I don't use such expressions naturally, but it seemed like some-one else speaking, outside myself) and so Mr Egner somehow managed to stop him, and we drove out, very fast, yet it seemed an age, and almost silent, I quite. Frank, it seemed to me that I had leapt back 4 years in an hour, and that it was again that day - the 24th Jan. 79, when I drove the other way, but in just the same swift, tardy silence, and with just the same terror, and almost certainty of the worst, yet clinging desperately to one gleam of hopeK I felt sure that we were soon to lose our darling Father, but I did not for a moment dream that he was already gone. It was two o'clock when all was over, and as they watched his parting breath, our dear Harrie (Mother tells me) said softly 'Oh! poor Frances!' Poor indeed to have lost the last look and word, to have been but just too late. I would have given all the rest of my life to have been just two hours sooner. He knew and recognized Rob, but had hardly strength to speak. Only on Saturday did he begin to be ill (as far as anyone knew that is - he was too patient and enduring), only on Tuesday did Dr Scott tell them there was danger, and on Wednesday all was over. Oh! Frank! he did look so very, very beautiful next day, it was hard to tear oneself away from gazing upon him. It seemed as though all the lovely qualities of mind and heart which he possessed in life were traced on every feature of his beloved face. How are we to live without him. At least we have not to say what is often said 'We did not know how dear' a lost one was till too late for he has been the very light of our existence for years. Harrie and Agnes9 have never had any interest in life apart from him, while to me my Father has been the great comfort of my life and for his sake I have cared to live. You will want to know how we all are. Poor dear Mother is very brave and good, but I think she feels that for her the separation is only for a little while, and that it 21 Colenso Letters will not be very long before she is once more with the Beloved One who for nearly 40 years has been all the world to her. I feel as though we ought not to wish to keep her. Yet she is not ill though always very frail and weak. 10 We can hardly tell yet how she will be. As to our dear Harrie, she is wonderful, truly she is worthy to be his daughter, and no more can be said than that! Though to her the loss is so very very great, she does everything - thinks of, and for us all, and most of all of everything that he would wish and of carrying on his work. I do not think she has faltered or spared herself for one hour, and she never shrinks from any duty, great or small. She sets us a noble example which Agnes follows gallantly, and I more halting and far behind, try at least to keep in sight of her. She went with Rob on Friday w h e ~ they laid the mortal remains of our darling Father to rest beneath the stones just in front of the Communion Table, on which he stood to give the blessing for so many years. They say that nearly 4,000 people were present, and at least the universal sorrow is the best answer to all the old false tongues against him. I cannot write more to-night but will do so next mail. I am my darling Brother your loving sister, my dearest love to my sweet sister, Nelly.11 REFERENCES 1. Francis Ernest Colenso (1852-1910) second son of John WiJliam Colcnso, then an actuary living in Norwich. He supported the political and religious Colenso causes in Britain. 2. Presumably Dr W.J. Scott. M.B.C.M. 3. Robert John Colenso (I R50-1925) elder son of John William Colcnso, a medical doctor at the time at Palmhurst, Beach Grove, Durban. His qualifications are listed as M.A., B.M. Oxon, M.R.C.S. Eng, M.A. Capetown. 4. Harriette Emily Colenso (1847-1932). 5. J. M. Egner, general dealer of Pietermaritzburg, churchwarden of St Peter's, member of the Church Council of the Church of England in Natal, later a curator of the properties of the Church of England. 6. Emil (or Emily) Colenso (nee Kerr) wife of Robert John Colenso, born in Canada of Scottish descent. 7. Michael Gallwey (1826-1912) attorney general and subsequently chief justice of Natal, friend and adviser of Bishop Colenso although a Roman Catholic. 8. She recalled the drive from Bishopstowe into Pietermaritzburg when first reports of Isandlwana were recei ved. 9. Agnes Mary Colenso (1855-1932). 10. Sarah Frances Colcnso (1816-1893) survived her husband for more than ten years dying in December, 1893. 11. Frances Ellen signed in the diminutive of her name which she preferred although 'Fanny' was the form used by her parents. 22 Colenso Letters [H.E. Colenso added an unsigned postscript to her sister's letter of 24 June 1883] My darling Frank, I send you all the Newspapers but please let Mr Chesson12 see them. He sees only the Witness. [The following addition is either a sequel to Frances Ellen's letter of 24 June 1883 or a separate undated letter, probably of July 1883.] Dear Sophie - dear, dear Sophie, I wish I were with you. There! that is a tribute to the real sympathy which I feel exists between you and me which no less spontaneous, 'unintended' utterance could have told. I got up to write it from where I was sitting, just reading an idle, but pretty, book which I had taken up toforget for a little while, and I came upon the mention of your name 'Sophie' - no more, nothing further to remind me of you, not the heroine, but just the mere passing mention of 'that pretty girl in blue and ... M. Sophie etc.' So it was just the mere name at the moment that sent my thoughts home to you. But I was reading darling Frank's last letter to Mama, and his account of 'Eothen's'13 birth not an hour ago, so it is not very wonderful that my thoughts should easily revert to you. My darling, I am so thankful that you should have this comfort just now when both your own loving nature, which made you love our Father, without seeing him, and your sharing of our poor Frank's sorrow, will have made such comfort more than ever needful to you. One of our first thoughts when all was over was the hope that the dreadful news would not reach you until your time of weakness should be over. . 8th. Dear, I meant to write you a long letter, but I have been too unwell these last few days to do anything in that way, so you must forgive me for another week. It is one of our few comforts that our darling Frank has you and the little one to help him through this grievous time. I have written so much to him, in my mind, these weeks that I cannot feel sure what I have said, or have not said on paper, and now I am only sending this scrap. Do not be anxious about me, dears. We can't any of us be very well just now, but I don't think my lung is any worse. I like your little daughter's name, and think it suitable for is she not the light in the east, the dawn to you and Frank, of I trust, a very long bright day of new happiness to come? Goodbye my darling brother and sister, and blessing on your little one, from your most loving Nelly Next week I will write to you at length, and I hope also to send home the first part of what I am writing on Zulu matters, 14 which he set me to do, the last time he spoke to me, and which I am, therefore, all the more anxious to do well. It is difficult to begin anything, yet it is our only comfort to do what he wished done. I have this, (of which I will tell you fully next time) and also his Zulu dictionary proofs to correct. I was doing that, under him, before I went to Durban, and now I am going on by myself. Davis had bought this edition from him, and was glad to accept our offer that I should finish the correction. 15 It is nearly 3 hours work each time but they don't send them every day. 23 Colenso Letters NOTES 12. F. W. Chesson (1833/4-1888) journalist and secretary of the Aborigines Protection Society. 13. Eothen (I 883-c. 1976). the eldest surviving child of Sophie and Frank Colenso whose first-born. Esmond. died in infancy. Sophie Colenso (/lee Frankland) had German family connections. 14. This work. which Frances Ellen wrote in co-operation with her brother Frank and sister Harriette. was published as The Ruin of Zululand, 2 volumes (1884-5). 15. P. Davis. printer, publisher and bookseller of Pietemaritzburg published some Colenso texts in Zulu. Durban Sept. 9. 1884 My darling Frank, I feel as though you had been very badly treated, and I fear you have really suffered, and are suffering, more than any of us in consequence of our disaster. We did immediately think of sending you a cablegram, but then it seemed needless as the Witness was sending one to England, and Stathaml certainly ought to be, if he is not, friendly enough to assist us in such a thing. So we went in to him to be sure to include in his cablegram that we were all safe, which indeed, was as much as there was to say then. I am afraid it has cost you a great deal, both in anxiety and money, that you might have been saved. I will now tell you what I can of the event. For the last 3 months Harrie has gone out on every still afternoon, with all the men she could collect, to burn round the place. Never before has so much been done (though we have always been careful) for the season was unusually dry, and H. felt especially responsible for the property this year. Destructive fires have been unusually frequent, and again and again, had anyone but Harrie, with her long experience in the matter, her remarkable presence of mind and energy, and her special influence over the natives around, been in charge the same thing would have happened much sooner, and when it was avoidable, which it was not when it did happen. It was the most tremendous hot gale I ever experienced, - all day no-one could face it, and this fire (which is said to have come from 10 miles away) was blown, or hurled right across our defences - i.e. as wide a burnt strip as the oldest colonist would have thought necessary for safety. When you think that flakes of flaming grass were hurled from the haystack beyond the stables over them and the chapel, and fell upon the roof of the house at the furthest end - i.e. over the drawing room and my room upstairs, you will see how useless were the broadest burnt strips. I say all this because some enemies2 have been sneering at this as the result of leaving the place in our (women's) hands! as though any dozen Natalian men would have been as fit for the charge as Harrie, or as though any of them could or would have done half she has done. No man could have done more, but no human power could have saved the house that day, in such a gale and drought, and the fire directly to windward. Harrie had been intensely anxious for weeks, while she was burning round, (she came in one evening with her eyelashes and front hair singed off, but with no hurt) and would constantly stay out four to six hours over the work. When we objected to her over-taxing her strength so much she often said 'Do you want to be burnt out?' However her mind was fairly at rest on the morning of the 2nd, as we were well burnt round on every side. The day was a most oppressive one, hot and heavy, the air heavy within, the sky lurid and dull, and a fierce hot gale blowing without. These, as you know, are common features of 24 Colenso Letters a bad windy day - fortunately rare occurrences - but no doubt they were greatly increased by the great fire advancing upon us though not yet in sight. About 2+[2.30 p.m.?J it came over the crest to which Cope's hill belongs, and the alarm was given. Harrie ran out with all the men she could collect. but in a few minutes the fire had leaped across and swept through the young plantations down towards the stables. Katie, Emil, Eric3 and I were at this moment the only people at hand. K. cut the horses loose, and she and I led them down just beyond the old kitchen tying them to the trees there. I had been a good deal out of sorts for the previous fortnight, hardly leaving my room, and was actually in my dressing-gown when I came down to look out and seeing Katie leading a horse out of the stable, went, as I was, to help her. After that I thought I had better go and put on a dress, hat, and boots, not that I expected danger to the house then, but simply to be more useful. I went up-stairs, and was certainly not 5 minutes dressing, and came down again at once. As I left my room, that dear pretty room, so full of pretty things, some instinct made me take up a basket into which I had put, some days before all the important papers in our case against O.S.4 in order to take them to town to show them to a lawyer, and I carried that down with me. It could have been no expectation of danger, or I should have carried off my box of letters etc., at all events, which I could easily have done then had I known it was my last chance. I went back to the horses, thinking that looking after them was about the only use I could be, and found the whole of the back, one thick dense smoke. Emil's German maid, our two little black maids and I got the horses further off, round the next corner of the house, i.e. between the window of the room you used to have (and which was still called 'Frank's room') and the carriage drive. Here We remained about five minutes when a great dense blast of dense smoke came pouring round the front upon us, while we were struggling for a clearer spot, the horses getting frightened, and I finding it most difficult to draw a breath, (the smoke did not suit my weak lung) two or three wild-looking men (natives) rushed through the gloom, caught the horses from us, shouting to us that the house was on fire and we must follow the rest. We did not in the least understand where - but ran into the house at the back along the back verandah, and down the long passage, looking for the others. We saw no-one only smoke everywhere and I caught up my basket which I had left in Emi\'s room down-stairs and ran out to the front where I was met by Mr Phipson' looking for us. He almost dragged me out of the house and looking up I saw the whole roof in flames. He took me round the garden, (the front lawn was in flames) and across to the mulberries in the centre of which I found Eric sitting in his grandfather's study chair, with his mother, our mother and Katie around him. Harrie was stiIl trying to get things out of the study, but she had to give it up as hopeless in a few minutes having, however, saved the papers which she cared most about of His. Emirs German girl (a very powerful and sensible young woman) did good service by catching up the drawing room table-cloth with all its contents, including all Mother's little array of framed photographs - yourselves and Eothen, Eric and so on and various little treasures. worth more to her than their money's worth, also folios of her flower-paintings. and some books. My portrait of Papa, and Sophie's of you were saved, but no other pictures, except mine of Helen," and the great Millais print from the dining room. Everything was got out of the dining room, which was the last room attacked, but it only contained tables and chairs, the old piano, one bookshelf of books and the best china tea and dessert sets. Everything else is gone - not a thing left from upstairs except that basket of papers in O.S.'s case. Surely I am to succeed in that! I suppose I have lost, 25 Colenso Letters because I possessed, the most actual property. All that pretty furniture that the Colonel had made for my room, all the nice things I brought out from England, all my books, photographs, casts, painting materials, pictures, including 4 genuine Burne-Jones drawings,7 not to speak of copies, Sophie's portrait, Edward'sx portrait, all the work I have done since I came out, and of course, worst of all that box of letters etc. which and I always carried about with me. My watch, heavy gold-chain, silver ornaments, 3 gold brooches etc. etc. all gone, but I had on the black and gold brooch with spray of small pearls on it, belonging to Grandmama's hair bracelet, also Dora's9 gold bracelet, and the rings that I always wear, all except one. Not one of us saved her watch except Emil, whose maid got hers out and was nearly suffocated in doing so. The extreme rapidity of the fire and the awful smoke, which, driven before the level wind, was something indescribable, were what prevented our saving more - I think if I had had the full use of my lungs I should have tried for my little box, and I believe I could have got to my room, but I do not think I should gave got back again. The whole thing was over in an hour, during which we stood in the mulberries, out of danger as long as the wind did not change in our direction, which mercifully it did not. We were really surrounded by fire, but the smoke from the house did not come our way. I think having Eric with us prevented our feeling alarmed for ourselves, we were so anxious about him. The darling boy was so good, never gave us any trouble at all, and hardly ever complained when the smoke made his eyes smart. When we could get away we went over to Bishopsthorpe at Mrs Bonifant's 10 invitation, where we camped the night. She did all in her power for us, but of course had not real accommodation for us - 7 of us, in that little 4-roomed house. However, we were only too thankful for a roof over us, mattresses and blankets on the floor (besides one bed), and a meal of tea, bacon and first-rate eggs. Next morning Emil, Eric, tqeir maid and I were sent down here, where I am to remain for the present. It is a great trouble to me to be away from them all at such a time, but I know it is the best thing for them as well as for me, that it would have been only selfish in me to insist on staying. They have moved into the farm buildings,11 and are no doubt writing to you from there. Mother has borne it all wonderfully well. After last year nothing would distress her much except the loss of one of us. None of us seem the worse for the fright and distress, and after all what a different thing it would have been if anyone of us had been lost! I must now say a little on business. I had fortunately sent you, the day before the fire, my latest written ms. taking ourtale down to the end ofthe libel trial. 12 I mean, this week to write a single chapter, or sort of summary of what is yet to come, and explaining that as the whole of my materials have been destroyed and must be re-collected, a 3rd. vol. becomes a necessity. I can say a good deal in that last chapter. We had better, if we can, bring out the 2nd vol. at once, and the 3rd next year. 13 I am going simply to ask Dora to enable us to bring out the 2nd vol. I shall write to her next mail, and I feel pretty sure she will. I shall begin next week, as soon as my last chapter and preface are sent off to you, to re-collect my newspaper materials by going daily to the library here, and copying what I want from the files, and please do you or Mr Chesson send me out at once copies of the 2nd and 3rd vols. of our 'Digest', especially the 3rd beginning with the 'restoration'. 14 If this subscription business comes to anything we may be able to pay for vol. 2 ourselves. You of course, must not think of risking more. I only hope you have not risked too much with vol. 1. I shall send my letter to Dora through you, on the chance of people having already subscribed enough to make it needless. Dears, believe that we are none 26 Colenso Letters of us broken down by this calamity - after the great sorrow we have gone through the loss of property seems comparatively light to us, and even that of sacred relics however dear, is endurable, however painful. If you show my letter to anyone beyond yourselves carefully scratch out the sentences about writing to Dora, please. By the way there was 1/5 to pay on each of the copies of vol.l you sent out. otherwise they would have been burnt. The one day's delay saved them. IS Now goodbye darlings, think of us as cheerful, and not unhappy since we have each other. Some people call us 'stoical', and cannot understand us at all. I am your loving sister Nelly. P.S. I was just getting over a bad cold which had thrown me back for a while - but I am going on well now. NOTES l. F. R. Statham (1844-1908) author of Blacks, Boers and Brirish. a rhrecc(}rnered prohlclI/ (1881) and intermittently editor of the Nallll Willless was a supporter of Bishop Colenso but the family quarrelled with him when he insisted on regarding William Grant as the 'agent' of the Aborigines Protection Society. thus implicating the Society in Grant's role in facilitating the 'Boer' seizure of land in Zululand and blunting its criticism of white filibusters. 2. Among themselves the Colensos frequently called their critics 'enemies'. 3. Sister-in-law of Warwick-Brookes (the firm friend of Colenso and Natal's first superintendent of education whose suicide in IRn deeply grieved the Bishop), Katie Giles (d. 1910) was a life-long and admiring friend of the Colensos and at the time of the fire a member of the household. Eric John Colenso (Robert's son) later followed a military career. After the death of his aunts. Harriette and Agnes, in 1932 he donated the Colenso papers to the Natal Government Archives. 4. Offy (Theophilus) Shepstone (1843-1907) lawyer, politician and later agent with the Swazi king. Frances Ellen's suspicions of him culminated in an enquiry in Pietermaritzburg in 1886 by means of which Offy pre-empted further effective action against himself and secured an apology from Colonel Luard who, as Frances Ellen's 'Sir Lancelot', had made allegations against Offy on her behalf. 5. Presumably a neighbour. possibly an assistant in managing the estate. 6. Helen Shepstone. nee Bisset, wife of Offy. 7. Georgiana Burne-Jones was a friend of Frances Ellen Colenso and her link with the artistic world and the warmth and vitality of the Burne-Jones's social circle. In 1887. when Frances Ellen left the convalescent hospital knowing that her case was regarded as incurable. she hoped to stay in the Burne-Jones's home 'to get well again', but it was in lodgings at Ventnor that Frances Ellen died. 8. Edward Durnford. brother of Anthony William. 9. Dora Lees. a friend of Frances Ellen (possibly since their schooldays) and evidently a woman of means. 10. Evidently a neighbour on the Bishopstowe/Ekukhanyeni estate. I!. This cottage, known as 'The Farm' or 'Seven Oaks' or 'Little Bishopstowe' was the Natal home of the Colenso women until about 1900. It was itself destroyed by fire in about 1964. 12. In September 1883 John Wesley Shepsto