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