SWAZILAND.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1917, 16 July 1889, Page 3

SWAZILAND.

Notwithstanding the repeated requestsi of TJmbandine, the Swazie ting, and of his people, the Home Government, fearing to give offence to the Boers, steadily refuse to declare a protectorate over the country. Consequently the land is infested with Dutch and English:- speculators, holding titles, real or imaginary, to gold .on grazing concessions; who quarrel among themselves, and bring evil on the natives. The king, indeed, has made great advances in civilisation. For instance, he sits upon a gin case instead vcf on the greund, and gets drunk every day on sweet champagne. But neither the gin casenor the champagne seem to hayei modified his native brutality. Here ' is ; Mr Mather's, account of a little, domestic tragedy connected with TJmbandine's own household:—" A beautiful young wife of the king's in some innocent way did not. please him. The order was given to smell her'but, and the witch doctors do their, horrible work. Executioners Were'tbl(i ; off, and they were sent out to the young wife to tell her of her sentence. She dreßsed herself in her best .ornaments, and determined to appear before the king to say ' goodbye.' She had been the ruler's playmate and favorite sweetheart as a child, and she ventured to send a message to him asking permission to say 'good-bye' to him. The king refused the, request. Calmly preparing for death, the young woman: disregarded, the denial, and walked to where his' majesty' was sitting, drinking champagne, She said to him, "King, I have come to say " Good-bye;. tell me why; you are killing me." The king vouchsafed no answer, and turned his face away. The poor woman proceeded to bid adieu to the other wives and girls of the monarch, 'fhey stood in a row, and as; she walked down in front of them she said, ' I am the first, but there will be more of you to come after me.' Without another word she quietly followed her executioners. They led her about three miles from the kraal, across the Tillan River, and there hanged her on a low thorn tree. The reim by which she was suspended being too long, her feet nearly touched the ground, and strangulation was completed by beating the reim with sticks, the person of royalty being sacred to the common touch. Surely it is time that -England interfered in the interests of all parties, and even the expense of offending President Kruger, to put & stop to the ruin of Swaziland and the occurrence of such horrors, of which the above quoted is only a sample. But Her Majesty's Government appear to think otherwise.