THE FRENCH IN ALGERIA AND THE BOERS IN SOUTH AFRICA.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] Sin,—The suffocation of a whole tribe of Algerians by the French alluded to by a correspondent in the Spectator of November 9th reminds me of a similar occurrence in South Africa in more recent times. It is related at some length by Mr. W. L. Distant in his "Naturalist in the Transvaal" (1892), pp. 81-84, from which I abridge the following particulars. In 1554 a hunting party of thirteen men and ten women and children, headed by a Field-Cornet named Hermann Potgieter, were barbarously murdered by Kaffirs at a place called since Mahapan's Poort, after the name of their chief. The Kaffirs then began to pillage the neighbourhood, and four hundred armed Boers gathered together and drove the Kaffirs into an immense cavern about 2,000 ft. in length and 400 ft. or 500 ft, in width :— " Now commenced that wild revenge which is common to man's nature under similar circumstances ; it has been practised by the French in Algeria, and by ourselves during the Sepoy revolt in India. Frantic with thirst, the imprisoned Kaffirs sought at night to reach the water that flows near the cave, but were shot down in the attempt. Quarter was a word unknown, and after twenty-five days' blockade the cavern was entered and its horrors seen ! According to Commandant Pretorins—who would have no interest in exaggerating the figures—nine hundred Kaffirs had been killed outside the cavern, and more than double that number had died of thirst within it. Mahapan himself is reported to have perished by poison introduced in water, but the true &tory of the wild vengeance will probably never be told. It was du ring this blockade that the present President Kruger exhibited an act of that bravery which be has elsewhere dis- played. A Boer commander. was shot when standing near the mouth of the cavern, and Mr. Kruger volunteered to bring away the body, which he did."
Mr. Distant states in a note that the numbers given above are accepted by Mr. G. McCall Theal in his " History of South Africa, 1854-72," p. 30,. where I presume the story is also related. I am not sufficiently well acquainted with the history of the Indian Mutiny to know exactly to what Mr. Distant refers in connection with it, and I do not remember hearing
of anything exactly similar at the time. During his resi- dence in the Transvaal Mr. Distant visited the cave where the massacre of Kaffirs occurred, and brought away some skulls, which are now in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. A view of the cave forms the frontispiece to his
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