ABSTRACT
THE advent of Lord Grey found South African policy in the melting-pot of war. The eastern border treaties were an admitted failure: what was to be put in their place? Whatever embarrassment and expense it might seem to involve, said Governor Sir Peregrine Maitland, there must be some extension of British sovereignty. The war was being waged for the security of the frontier. The most generous treatment of the Kaffirs had failed to stop their cattle-thefts, and so long as they had the jungles of the Fish River to screen them and the Amatola fastnesses to take refuge in, it would be useless to give them a second chance. They must be kept beyond the Keiskamma, and the intervening lands occupied not by Europeans but by coloured races which could be trusted not to sympathize with the hostile tribes; and beyond this buffer region some sort of control should be exercised over the Kaffir country right up to the Kei. 1 In October he replied to peace moves on the part of the chiefs by demanding not only the surrender of their firearms and the restoration of their booty, but their retirement to such lands, away from the immediate border, as might be assigned to them under British rule or supervision: if they would retire beyond the Kei they might remain independent, but not otherwise. 2 The Gaikas professed their willingness to accept these terms, and the Governor proposed that the territory between the Keiskamma and the Kei should be ruled not through the chiefs but through a Commissioner with magisterial powers, assisted by native headmen in each kraal and district headmen of a superior kind, including possibly some of the former chiefs. 3
