Many years have gone by since then, and now you are old, my father. It
is many years even since I was a boy, and followed you when you went
up among the Boers and took their country for the Queen.
Why did you do this, my father? I will answer, who know the truth. You
did it because, had it not been done, the Zulus would have stamped out
the Boers. Were not Cetywayo's impis gathered against the land, and
was it not because it became the Queen's land that at your word he
sent them murmuring to their kraals?[1] To save bloodshed you annexed
the country beyond the Vaal. Perhaps it had been better to leave it,
since "Death chooses for himself," and after all there was killing--of
our own people, and with the killing, shame. But in those days we did
not guess what we should live to see, and of Majuba we thought only as
a little hill!
Enemies have borne false witness against you on this matter, Sompseu,
you who never erred except through over kindness. Yet what does that
avail? When you have "gone beyond" it will be forgotten, since the
sting of ingratitude passes and lies must wither like the winter
veldt. Only your name will not be forgotten; as it was heard in life
so it shall be heard in story, and I pray that, however humbly, mine
may pass down with it. Chance has taken me by another path, and I must
leave the ways of action that I love and bury myself in books, but the
old days and friends are in my mind, nor while I have memory shall I
forget them and you.
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