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The enormous two-metre “Damara” cattle horns on display in the saloon of the “Big Hole” Diamond Museum in Kimberley, South Africa, are easily overlooked, and few visitors grasp their full significance. Yet cattle were central to the development of both Herero society in central Namibia, as well as the Copper Mines and Diamond Fields of the Northern Cape of South Africa, between 1840 and 1920.
In essence, this is a paper in two parts. The first section deals with the relationship between copper and diamond mining in South Africa, with the development of the OvaHerero, a highly specialised pastoralist society in central Namibia between 1840 and 1892, when German colonial rule came to be established in the territory. In this first section, the paper argues that the supply of cattle to the mines directly impacted on the development of pastoralist communities in southern and central Namibia. The second section deals with the traders and trade routes that opened up across the Kalahari to central Namibia, along which Damara cattle were transported to the Northern Cape. The paper examines the ways in which this took place and details the alliances established that made this trade possible.
This paper has been long in the making and can essentially be said to have developed out of a little tit-bit which I stumbled across nearly 35 years ago. At the time, I was beginning research on the development of a series of highly centralised OvaHerero pastoralist polities in central Namibia. Whilst engaged in this research, I came across a reference to Tswana traders who had travelled to Okahandja in central Namibia to pay their respects to the newly ascended Herero chief Maharero Tjamuaha.2 At the time, and in my later thesis, I argued that these Batswana must have been Batawana, facilitators in part of the mutual assistance agreements that allegedly existed between the Herero of Okahandja and the Tawana. However, Herero traditions do not make explicit mention of these agreements, whereas Mbanderu traditions do make explicit reference to the agreement which was established between their Omuhona Kahimemua and the Tawana Kgosi Letsholathebe.3 In addition, when Samuel Maharero finally reached Bechuanaland as a hunted refugee in the 1904 war, his letters written to Letsholathebe make no mention whatsoever of a mutual assistance pact.4 The Tawana, whose territories were centred on and around the Okavango delta, did not appear to be remotely interested in the Herero, showing instead far more concern for the Bulozi and Ndebele kingdoms that lay to the north and east of them. Who then were these Tswana who travelled to pay their respects to Maharero in Okahandja?
It was only at a later stage, when I recalled a snippet of information from another source, that I began to get an idea as to who these Tswana could have been, and of an aspect of southern African history that had, to all intents and purposes, come to be forgotten. Jonker Afrikaner, the Oorlam chief who had established himself in central Namibia after breaking away from his father at the Orange River, once mentioned in passing that he had travelled from central Namibia to Latakoo. In addition, he mentioned that it was impossible to travel to Latakoo without first travelling South to the Orange river, and then East from there:
“that none of the Namaquas knew a shorter route across to the Bechuana country, but it appears that in former times the Bechuanas knew and used a short route…”5
Maharero Tjamuaha came to power through his family’s association with Jonker Afrikaner, indeed, following 1863, Herero polities in central Namibia became so powerful precisely because they superseded the Afrikaners and took over their lucrative trade routes, which led from the Cape to central Namibia.6 One of these routes led via the rivers mentioned by Jonker Afrikaner, from Kuruman along the Molopo and up the Nossob into central Namibia. A route which, following 1863, fell into the hands of Maharero Tjamuaha, and which, we can safely assume, was used by Barolong traders from Kuruman, and thus the Tswana traders who came to pay their respects to Maharero Tjamuaha.
However, as anyone who cares to look at the map will see, there is a much shorter route between Kuruman and Okahandja than travelling down the Molopo, along the Orange and up the Nossob; except, of course, that this shorter route leads slap bang straight through the Kalahari desert.
This paper, thus, is about how, through trading Herero Cattle, Rolong managed to establish and maintain a trade route that led slap bang through the Kalahari desert. A trade route that had the added virtues of bypassing any territory occupied by European colonial settlers, let alone any patrolled colonial boundary. The information presented in this paper is based primarily on evidence found in the Botswana National Archives and the National Archives of Namibia.
The link between mining and cattle in southern Africa, particularly in relation to the investment of monies earned through migrant mine labour into cattle herds, is a well-established facet of economic and social history as well as anthropology in southern Africa. Max Gluckman and Godfrey Wilson, doyens of what would later become the Manchester School in social anthropology, noted the central importance of mining in the expansion and establishment of cattle herds in Bulozi and Kabwe in the 1930s and 1940s in Zambia.7 Nearly fifty years ago, William Beinart drew attention to the importance of cattle in relation to mine labour in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.8 Beinart outlined how the advance of cattle to prospective mineworkers ensured a steady supply of mine labour and led to a transformation of Pondoland. This system was so successful that, eventually, the Chamber of Mines, with the active support of the South African government, sanctioned and expanded the system. A few years ago, Job Amupanda drew similar attention to the relationship between mining and cattle in Ovamboland, northern Namibia.9 In this case, Amupanda focussed on diamonds allegedly smuggled from the diamond mines in southern Namibia that were sold to traders and the profits sunk into the expansion of cattle herds in Ovamboland. But generally missing from the literature is an overview of how Africans societies were affected by and responded to the demand for meat that emanated from the mines as the industrial mining revolution took hold of southern Africa.10
Without cattle as labour and cattle as meat for human labour, the copper mines of Namaqualand and the world’s biggest and richest diamond mines of Kimberley would not have been developed. Indeed, before the arrival of the steam engine, and later the internal combustion engine, virtually all heavy labour and bulk transport on the copper mines, Diamond Fields and to and from the coast was conducted by cattle.
In this paper, I will look at the development of a particular population group in south-western Africa, the OvaHerero, as an increasingly specialised pastoralist society building upon and responding to the demand for slaughter cattle for industrial mining from the 1840s onwards. Cattle, and specifically the export of cattle, led to the development of Herero society, as a highly specialised pastoralist ethnicity in central Namibia, in the second half of the 19th Century (Gewald 1999 & Henrichsen 2011).11
Thus far, the destination of “Damara” cattle from central Namibia has not been seriously investigated. The paper investigates the destination of “Damara” cattle and argues that they were central to the development of the copper mines of Namaqualand in the Northern Cape of South Africa, as well as the Diamond Fields and Gold Mines of South Africa. In addition, the paper argues that the Copper Mines and the Diamond Fields in particular, as a market for “Damara” cattle, led to the development of the highly specialised pastoralist society in central Namibia that we know today as the Herero.
Cattle, and specifically the export of cattle, led to the development of Herero society, as a highly specialised pastoralist ethnicity in central Namibia, in the second half of the 19th Century.12 Thus far, the destination of “Damara” cattle from central Namibia has not been seriously investigated.
Cattle came to central and southern Namibia well before the arrival of Portuguese sailors on the coast in the late 1480s.13 John Kinahan describes how cattle herders close to Walvis Bay collected cattle in anticipation of trade to ships in the bay14:
The evidence from the Namib Desert coast shows that the trade in cattle was closely regulated by herd-owners who controlled access to the interior at Walvis Bay.15
By the 1790s, cattle raiders emanating from the Cape of Good Hope were beginning to impact pastoralists in central Namibia. Willem van Reenen, based on reports brought to the Cape by traders and hunters, crossed over into what is today Namibia in search of Gold. In the course of his nine-month journey, Van Reenen proceeded as far as contemporary Rehoboth south of the Auas mountains. Van Reenen returned with samples of copper, and reports of Damara who had been robbed of their cattle.16 The seminal work of Brigitte Lau detailed the subsequent development of commando societies in southern Namibia between 1830 and 1850 that revolved around the raiding of cattle ever further north, and trading these southwards to the Cape.17 By the late 1840s much of the pastoralist societies in southern and central Namibia had been impoverished on account of this raiding, with southern raiders extending as far north as the Eyosha Pan.18 The concomitant arrival of missionaries and trading companies in central Namibia created opportunities for impoverished pastoralists to recover and rebuild their livestock. Central to this was the development of the Matchless Copper mine near to Otjimbingwe by the Walfish Bay Mining Company (WMBC), which was run by Charles John Andersson.19 The role of Andersson, other traders, missionaries, and Herero in the establishment of the highly specialised pastoralist OvaHerero society that subsequently emerged has been extensively covered by Dag Henrichsen.20 The role that the mines of Namaqualand and the diamond fields of the northern Cape have played in this process has generally been overlooked.
The rich copper deposits of Namaqualand were known to the Dutch colonial administration of the Cape of Good Hope, but remained an elusive and far from profitable venture throughout the Dutch occupation. Throughout the 1700s ever-increasing numbers of people sought sanctuary beyond the colony, and yet were intimately connected with it. Deserting sailors and soldiers, dispossessed Khoi, runaway slaves, Basters, convicts, and others sought a future beyond the colony. Many of this mixed band of peoples eventually made it to the great diamond bearing river that bisects South Africa, the river we know today as the Orange River. One of these was the Swede, Hendrik Jacobus Wikar, who had fled the colony on account of his gambling debts. Wikar spent four years beyond the colony living with Khoi and Baster communities along the Orange. He was pardoned upon his return primarily because he had kept a diary detailing life and societies beyond the colony.21 Wikar’s observations were expanded upon by Robert Jacob Gordon who travelled to the great river that he would name the Orange, on behalf of the Royal House of the Netherlands in 1779.22 Building on these insights, evermore expeditions on behalf of the administration at the Cape or missionary societies travelled to the Orange River and beyond. The Truter Somerville expedition, which left the Cape in October 1801, was one such expedition sent to gather information about societies north of the Orange, and barter cattle from them. This expedition traversed the area that would later be at the centre of the diamond rushes that were to follow and got as far as Kuruman.23
In the aftermath of the Great Trek in 1836, as well as the ever-developing power of the Cape Colony, the geographical extent of the colony expanded dramatically, particularly into what is today the Northern Cape south of the Gariep (Orange) River. Beginning in the 1840s, industrial mining of copper in Namaqualand began, initially through the floating of a number of business ventures and syndicates.24 The emancipation of slaves at the Cape, under the British administration, and the compensation paid to slave owners meant that substantial sums of capital were available in the Cape. These monies were reinvested in a variety of ventures, including mining.25 The Cape Town-based trading company Phillips & King, with the extensive support of the colonial state, began the first large-scale copper mining venture in Namaqualand with the production of 11 tonnes of copper in 1852.26 By 1860 copper had become the colony’s second most important export.27 A flurry of share speculation led to a copper boom and bust, in the aftermath of which the Cape Copper Company emerged and commenced shaft mining in earnest. The settlement of Okiep emerged as being the centre of this industry that drew people and goods from the region and the world as a whole. The Cornish miners of the Northern Cape being a prime example of this.28 Herzog notes that to meet the demand for labour, the mines “employed African migrant labourers from the southern and central parts of today’s Namibia, the Eastern Cape and Mozambique”.29
In the past, well since Wikar, we know that Tlhaping or Rolong traders, drawing goods from the central Kalahari, travelled to the Orange River and traded with Nama there for goods from the Cape Colony. Referring to the people inhabiting the Kalahari, one commentator noted in 1888:
Here they are the Vassal hunters of the various tribes -Batlaro, Barolong, Bangwaketse, and others- who live round the desert, being found in guns and ammunition by their masters, to whom they have to account for the skins of all animals killed by them.30
During the course of the eighteenth century, the turbulence brought about by the ever-increasing expansion of Cape Colony made itself felt far beyond the official boundaries of the colony. Ever more people, directly connected to the colony by trade or descent, moved into areas that had previously been beyond the influence of the colony. Groups of runaway slaves, refugees, outlaws, traders and raiders began establishing communities independent, not only of the colony but also of the polities that existed in the hinterland. These new communities utilised their links with the colony for access to colonial trade goods, and more often than not, they became intermediaries in the raiding and trading economy that developed along the frontier.31 Partly due to the pressures emanating from the colony, the Rolong confederacy collapsed. Shillington notes in passing that with the breakup of the “southern Tswana federation … The Rolong section had already moved away to Heuningvlei and Morokweng region of the North West”.32 A region, lying as it did on the southern fringes of the Kalahari proper, which was ideally situated to tap the riches of the Kalahari. In the aftermath of this Mfecane, missionaries and trekkers moved into the area around Kuruman. Referring to the arms trade from the Cape colony to Kuruman in the 1860´s, Shillington commented:
“This was an excellent base for operations, lying as it did on the southern edge of the Kalahari hunting veld from which came that most sought-after, most profitable game product - ostrich feathers.”33
The discovery of diamonds in southern Tswana territories in 1867, which were then annexed by Great Britain to become the Crown Colony of Griqualand West in 1871, led to increasing pressure on the southern Tswana communities living there. However, as has been noted elsewhere, “the chief men of the Rolong polities developed a profitable long-distance trade in agricultural produce with the diamond fields of the 1870s.”34 A trade which was cut short by wars between 1881 and 1884. In the search for alternative sources of income, a few Tswana were driven to seek a better life for themselves and their followers elsewhere. For some of these people, it was believed that a better future lay across the Kalahari in what is now Namibia.35
According to Wilikinson, writing in 1893, the territory of influence of “the Western Barolongs … extend(ed) very nearly to Luhututu”, which appears to be under the authority of Maparo.36 In the past Barolong had been tapping out of the Kalahari, that is from North to South, Now reverse this and go straight through. As Shillington commented:
Between 1885 and 1895, regular trading caravans, backed by the chief men of the Rolong reserves, set out north-west across the desert with horses, saddlery, clothing and firearms…37
To be able to cross the desert the travellers set up depots in the desert. A point recognised by Wilkinson:
KUIS …a depot of stolen horses, which are thence sent, as opportunity serves, to Namaqualand and Damaraland, to be exchanged for cattle.38
Charles John Andersson mentions that Tswana had travelled through the Kalahari and that Amraal Lambert arrived in Ai Gams with Griqua and no less than 47 waggons. These had come through the kalahari and had:
Survived by sucking and eating wild gourd [Tsama Melon], first roast to reduce bitterness39
Now, instead of just trading through the Kalahari, and through making use of the knowledge gained through extensive trading to Hereroland, parties of Tswana now consciously trekked through the Kalahari in search of better places on the other side. Not that this was easy. The testimony of Franz Khiba, who as a boy accompanied the Tswana trek from Kuruman to Gobabis, makes for powerful reading:
The Trek demanded many offers of the Tswana. They were threatened on all sides by thirst, hunger, wild bushmen, lions, and getting lost, and they suffered great losses to their people and cattle. People left many waggons and carts, as well as all the goods that were upon them, standing in the desert and in the wilderness, to search, God knows where, for uncertain rain pans or edible wild Tsamas. ... At such moments people run blindly to and fro, without a hope in their uncertainty. One has no more advice, one can comfort and cheer up nobody. … A number of these, who could do no other, left, so as to save their naked lives, all their goods and possessions in the lurch. They left the others under trees or crept into Aardvark lairs as they could no longer accompany the living.40
Testimony indicates that the trek from Kuruman to eastern Namibia was not completed within one season. Instead, burdened by waggons and stock, the trekkers were forced to leap frog from one site of water to the next, from one stand of grazing to the next. A trekker described there progress and reliance on Tsama melons as follows:
We often suffered lack of water. However, after every two to three days we again found edible wild melons. … Sometimes we had to make very long stops, some of 2 to 3 months, but also some of 6 to 12 months.41
During these stops, in which the trekkers would wait for a change in the seasons or an improvement in grazing and water sources, scouts would search the best routes forward. It was during these treks that knowledge gained and contacts made during earlier trading expeditions came to the fore. Consequently the trekkers took between two to three years to arrive in Namibia. However, for many the trek was never completed:
…some lost all hope, and they had to return to their homeland (Heimat). However, many others disappeared without a trace together with their stock.42
The decision to trek through to Hereroland and attempt to settle there appears to have been motivated in part by a direct request from Maharero Tjamuaha, the Herero chief of Okahandja with whom the Tswana traded. A report written in 1910 notes that:
Already many long years before Damaraland became a German protectorate, Betschuana of the tribe Batlharos, capital Kuruman, had trekked to the Hereros with waggons and trade goods to trade for cattle. In this way Monwaketse, … came to Okahandja to Maharero, Samuel´s father. He had the intention of settling the Betschuana in his country, probably because the Betschuana practice extensive horticulture (Ausgedehnten Gartenbau), and he hoped to receive extensive support from this. For these purposes Maharero declared himself prepared to provide Monwaketse with extensive lands at the Waterberg.43
Monwaketse accepted Maharero´s proposal and trekked back to Kuruman with the object of collecting his followers and leading them through to the lands promised to them. Unfortunately, Monwaketse died before he could return to Hereroland. However, his son, Morwa, took up Maharero’s offer, and a number of his people began trekking through to Okahandja.
Genealogy: Monwaketse; Bareki Morwa; Nonong (Nunuk) Huba Kgosiman
Four families trekked straight through to Okahandja. Morwa remained in Aminuis waiting for Tswana trekkers who were still stuck in the Kalahari. The families in Okahandja trekked from there to the Skaap Rivier following the arrival of the Germans and the death of Maharero.44 Here they awaited the arrival of Morwa, who would never come as a number of his followers had recently been attacked by Andreas Lambert. But, prior to this attack, Tswana relations had been warmer with the Khauas Khoi followers of Lambert.45
It would appear to be the case that even before Maharero Tjamuaha invited the Tswana to come and settle in his territories, Tswana traders had already established long-standing relations with the followers of Andreas Lambert, the Kaptein of the Khauas-Khoi.46 Indeed, Tswana traders coming through the Kalahari would have to pass through Khauas-Khoi territories before they even reached the Herero. Tswana descendants of the trekkers noted that in addition:
In the south … the second chief Morwe Monwaketse and his sub-chief and representative Mokgwabone Keahan gained a bad reputation with the whites. Therefore they, and a few of their followers, had to trek to Südwest.47
However, due to the inevitable rivalry that developed between these two men, the group had split up during the trek, with each leader being followed by his relatives and dependents. The followers of Morwe Monwaketse, as noted above, headed for the territories of Maharero Tjamuaha, whereas the followers of Mokgwabone Keahan headed for the lands of Andreas Lambert.
Anxious to have the Tswana settle with him Lambert sent empty waggons into the desert, “so that the difficult journey would end sooner”. The Tswana trekkers settled at Hugusgeist where they were permitted to establish houses and gardens.
…the Betschuana were mostly traders or they were employed in the preparation of skins and the repair of instruments (read guns) and horticulture. That is why, in this land of non-productive pastoralists and hunters, through their labour they could soon earn something and come higher.48
However, the relations between the Khauas-Khoi and the Tswana extended beyond the mere granting of permission to settle. Through an extended system of arranged marriages the Khauas-Khoi sought to bind the Tswana and all that was associated with them to themselves.
Many Betschuana married there with a Hottentot woman, and many Hottentots married with Betschuana women. My father also married a Hottentot woman. He became the son-in-law of the sub-chief Eduard Lambert. … On account of the marriage the Hottentots offered my father land, but on condition that he tilled it for the Hottentots as soon as he had completed his work.49
The father of Franz Khiba thus became a sharecropper sowing seed on the land of another in return for the right to stay and a portion of the crop. Khiba noted that his father sowed: “Corn, beans, maize, pumpkins, water melons, sugar cane, Makatan and so forth”.50 Anxious to bind the Tswana to them, the Khauas-Khoi councillors and notables married off their daughters to the Tswana notables.
Figure 2. Khauas-Khoi Tswana marriage alliances.51
When the Rolong first came to Namibia and married into Khauas-Khoi society, they had reached an arrangement that was beneficial to both sides; “the Hottentots and Betschuana lived as brothers and sisters, as friends and good neighbours next to one another”.52 However, relations were soon to change for the worse.
Before 1893, the Khauas-Khoi of Andreas Lambert were allied to the Nama chief and prophet Hendrik Witbooi.53 As such, the forces of Andreas Lambert could raid the Herero virtually at will. In this way, Andreas Lambert and his followers were able to gather the cattle and loot used as exchange in their extensive trade with the traders who came through the Kalahari. However, with the arrival of an effective German colonial military force in 1890, and the installation of Samuel Maharero as chief in 1891, Hendrik Witbooi was able to broker a ceasefire with the Herero in late 1892. In addition, in early 1893, German forces ambushed and massacred Hendrik Witbooi´s settlement at Hoornkrans.54 With the destruction of Witbooi’s forces and the presence of German forces in central Hereroland, Lambert and his followers were no longer able to raid for spoils amongst the Herero. As such, trade with the Rolong was no longer possible. Instead, the Rolong traders simply bypassed Lambert and his followers and traded directly with the Herero.
In 1892 followers of Lambert living in Oas made major purchases from Barolong traders who had come from Mafeking via Lehututu. In the presence of the Lambert brothers, the inhabitants of Oas promised to pay for their purchases in the following year.55 However, when the traders returned in early 1893, the inhabitants of Oas refused to pay, and the Barolong traders were forced to carry on their journey directly to the Herero.
Upon their return from Hereroland, the trading caravan, accompanied by no less than 3000 cattle, came under sustained attack by the Khauas-Khoi of Andreas Lambert. Though it may sound a little unkind, the truth is that thankfully, we have a very detailed account of the sustained attack, which covered a period of no less than three days, by the Nama on the Rolong trading caravan as it attempted to return from Damaraland. This allows us to reconstruct how the caravans were set up, what they carried, and how they travelled. For example, interestingly, the Rolong who made up the expedition fell under no less than three different colonial administrations, the British Bechuanaland Protectorate, the Bechuanaland Protectorate, the Cape Colony, and the South African Republic. Yet all co-operated in equipping and manning the expedition, with different sections of the expedition meeting up in Lehututu before joining forces and carrying on through the Tsama fields to Damaraland.56
In the aftermath of the attack, the British colonial officials asked the German authorities to allow the Barolong traders to carry weapons on further trading trips in the interests of self-defence, but the Germans, fearing weapons imports, vetoed this idea.57 However, the attack by Lambert on the trading expedition did form the basis of his downfall at the hands of the German colonial authorities.
In the aftermath of the attacks on the expedition, the Tswana who had settled amongst the Khauas-Khoi also came under attack from the Nama. Several Tswana, who had settled amongst the Khauas-Khoi, were robbed of all their goods, beaten and killed. Two Barolong traders from Kuruman, as well as Nonong, son of Bareki, the chief of Heuning Vlei in British Bechuanaland, were stripped of their pants and dragged around the settlement of Aeis with raw hide nooses around their necks.58 Large numbers of Tswana fled into the Kalahari and tried to reach Lehututu, whilst others turned to the new German colonial administration in Windhoek and laid their complaints there.59
In the light of what they had experienced at the hands of Andreas Lambert and his followers, the Tswana survivors had no qualms about co-operating with the new German administration. Indeed, in exchange for their assistance in quashing the Khauas-Khoi, the Tswana followers of Nonong received title to land near Aais and Aminuis, as well as several modern breech-loading rifles with ammunition, ostensibly for self-defence.60
It appears that when the war broke out in 1904, many Herero made use of the route that had been pioneered by the Rolong traders. Hodson, Kalahari get their own back in acquiring the weapons of Herero refugees, thus gaining independence with regard to Rolong.
This independence is of short duration as in 1910 German reports note that the Tswana of Aminuis are drawing thousands of skins from the field. This also indicates that the Tswana are again drawing from the Kalahari, but this time from the west to the west and not from the south to the south.
Already prior to the ending of the German colonial administration in Namibia, the Tswana living at Aminuis lost their rights to the land which they had gained twenty years previously. Though they were never driven off their newly acquired lands, the establishment of Herero reserves upon the territories occuppied by the Tswana in the early 1920s by the new South African colonial administration, effectively meant that the Tswana lost direct control over the lands they regarded as their own.
Interestingly in 1943 letters were sent off by the Department of Native Affairs in Pretoria, South Africa, to the South African Administration in Namibia asking as to the whereabouts of a certain Phemelo Totwe Makgolokwe:
I beg to inform you that a petition has been received asking for the appointment of a Chief to the Bathlaro Tribe in the district of Kuruman.
According to information obtained from the Tribe the heir to the chieftainship is a man named Phemelo Totwe Makgolokwe, who is said to be living with some of the Bathlaro Tribe in the Gobabis district and who trekked from the Kuruman district to Gobabis in about the year 1895.
I shall appreciate it if you will kindly reuqest the magistrate of Gobabis to endeavour to trace Phemelo, who is said to live either in Aminuis Reserve or in the Epukiro reserve, and to furnish me with a report on his character and standing.61
Unfortunately for Phemelo, who was eventually discovered to be working as a farm labourer in the Gobabis district, the colonial administration was of the opinion that he did not have the character and standing befitting a chief. Consequently he was not invited to travel to South Africa to take up his chieftaincy, instead he continued his life as a labourer.62 A position, if the truth be told, little different from that of his subjects in South Africa. Though the Barolong and Bathlaro of Heuning Vlei, Morokweng, Kuruman and Mafeking might have hoped to have attained a better future for themselves by trekking to new land, much as the Batawana had done in the nineteenth century, they were to be bitterly disappointed.