According to the latest news from the Cape, the Kaffir
insurrection is virtually over, a telegram announcing that the Galeka tribe is retreating from its territory and breaking up. This is evidently also the opinion of Lord Carnarvon, who met a deputation of gentlemen interested in the Cape on Friday week, and is in accordance with detailed accounts extending up to October 23 and published in the Times. A note- worthy fact, which may hereafter have important consequences, comes out in those accounts. The Galekas have reached a stage of civilisation in which they are exceptionally weak.
They have obtained firearms, but not discipline. They therefore have abandoned their old method of war, which was the Red-Indian method of taking advantage of every shelter, and come out into the open, a disorderly mob, armed with guns, unable to resist a charge, and panic-struck by the lightest artillery. At present, therefore, they are not formidable. Men with guns, however, but without regular discipline, invariably take sooner or later to constructing either earthworks or stock- ades, and it is when they have reached this, the Early British or Maori stage, that the Cape tribes will be dangerous. Before that the South African Dominion ought to have a highly-trained and well-mounted local force of horse artillery, the one arm before which savages, as they emerge into civilisation, cannot stand.
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