When the Commissioner sent by the English authorities to annex the land arrived at Pietermaritzburg, there were bitter and stormy scenes. Most of the inhabitants absolutely refused to remain under British rule. There was a mass meeting of women, whose leader, the ancient wife of Erasmus Smit, the old fore-trekkers' preacher, addressed the Commissioner for two hours,[68] painting a picture of all they had suffered in founding their new state and of the injustice done in robbing them of it.
[68] Having, it is said, closed the doors so that he could not escape.
At the end of the meeting, the women passed an unanimous resolution that rather than submit to English rule they would leave the land which, with so much blood and anguish, they had won. "We go across these mountains to freedom or to death," said the old woman, pointing toward the Drakensberg Mountains, which, through the names of Laing's Nek and Amajuba, have since become known to all the world.
Over these mountains almost the whole population of Natal passed, leaving only about three hundred families, the ancestors of the present ten thousand Boer inhabitants of Natal.
Those who passed over the Drakensberg Mountains joined the bodies of fore-trekkers who had remained on the north side of the mountains, and entered into that great region where no British flag had yet ever waved, which no Englishman had ever dreamed of claiming, and which was left almost desolate and uninhabited as the result of Mosilikatzi's[69] raids. Here they founded their republic, known as the _Transvaal_ or _South African Republic_.
[69] Mosilikatsi and Umsilikazi (Umsiligaas, p. 238) are the same person--S.C.C.S.
By the Sand River Convention, ratified by Sir George Cathcart in 1852, it was agreed that the English Government should not follow them into the territories north of the Vaal River; that their independence should be recognized; and that there should be no attempt on the part of the British Government to interfere with their government or management of their own affairs.
The most interesting point with regard to the South African Boer is his astonishing gift for forming new societies, and, as it were, instinctively creating for himself a new social structure, under whatever conditions he may find himself.