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Natal has an area of about 18,000 square miles, and its present
population is, roughly, 25,000 whites and 400,000 natives of the Zulu
race. When, in 1843, it first became a British colony, the number of
natives living within its borders was very small, and they were for the
most part wanderers, fragmentary remnants of the tribes that Chaka had
destroyed. I shall probably be under, rather than over the mark, if I
say, that the Zulu population of the colony has multiplied itself by ten
during the last thirty years. Two causes have combined to bring about
this extraordinary increase; firstly, wholesale immigration from the
surrounding territories; and secondly, the practice of polygamy.
This immigration has been due to a great want of foresight, or want of
knowledge, on the part of the Home authorities, who have allowed it to
go on without check or hindrance till it has, in conjunction with its
twin evil polygamy, produced the state of affairs it is my object to
describe. Ever since its first establishment as a colony Natal has been
turned into a city of refuge for the native inhabitants of Zululand, the
Transvaal, Swaziland, and elsewhere.
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