AWFUL SUFFERINGS OF SOUTH AFRICAN EMIGRANTS.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2094, 8 December 1879, Page 3

AWFUL SUFFERINGS OF SOUTH AFRICAN EMIGRANTS.

A sad story is told in a letter, which appears in the “Daily Nows” from a South African;correspondent regarding the fate pf a party of Boer farmers who “tracked” from the Transvaal some four • years ago with their wives arid families.' These unhappy people, 300 in number, • with their women and children, stock and waggons, set out in 1875 in order to avoid ’ the reforming rule of Mr Btirgers, then President of the Republic. They,struck-westward across the deserts ;to Lake N'Gami, led by some vague reports of a fair country to the west. The narrative of their sufferings reads like the account of the Wreck of the Medusa. They encountered thirst, famine, and fever, they fell among .'hostile natives and they quarrelled among themselves. Many men died, leaving their widows and orphans cntirelydepcndent for food on the rifles of those who had the courage to stick to this pitiful party, for in one of their disputes the original party seems to have seperated, and the stronger and more compact section took a different course. The latest accounts come from a trader who has visited them, and who tells us that only 70 men and 30 women and children are still alive, 'while hundreds mostly children and men, have succumbed. The men maintain a precarious existence by hunting, and the privations they have endured are plainly visible from their emaciated frames and scanty and tattered clothing. Another account in, a letter from an elephant hunter to a mercantile firm in the place says, in describing the condition of the party : —I have heard of instances in which putrid carcasses of dead cattle have been eaten by people already weak and emaciated through sickness and hunger, and have caused fearful sufferings. Altogether 100 men, women,and children have fallen victims > and succumbed to such hardships, and a more bitter and hart-rending state of , affairs it would be impossible to imagine. In one instance, a person came across 8 or 10 waggons occupied by perhaps one or two women and a few children w ith not a man left, and not an ox; cow, horse, or any other living animal to live from, looking starvation and death in the face, and praying for a speedy release. Again, you approach a number of waggons and find a few sick men, women, and children, scarce able to crawl about, with nothing to cat, no medicine, and no one to pay them any attention, awaiting the inevitable result with what fortitude Heaven may grant them, and striving to hope for some chainge for the better. Here a child is carried to its grave ; there an old man lies dying ; here five or six are given up as past all hopes; there a mother, Or, perchance, father, listening and watching the death throes of an only remaining child ; here a few raving for. food; there another frightening away the birds of prey from some putrid carcase, that he may regale himself on what a wolf would disdain. All this makes up such a picture of horror ns may God grant w'e shall seldom have to witness and still less seldom to be in the midst of. As soon as the news of the straits to which the poor emigrants had been reduced reached our South African colonies, steps were at once taken, as was to be expected,to organise ways and means of sending them relief, and it is to be hoped that relief will reach them before it is too late.