The reign of stern military rule at the Cape had this effect, that men and women, with a sore in their proud hearts, continued to move away from a controlling power that did not understand them. Some moved across the Orange River and joined the old “Voortrekkers” that had already gone into that country which is now the Free State. England kept a certain virtual sovereignty over that territory, till, in 1854, she grew weary of the expense it cost her, and withdrew from it in spite of the representations of certain of its inhabitants who sent a deputation to England to request her to retain it. Thereupon the folk organized an independent State and Government; and the little land, peopled mainly by men of Dutch descent, but largely intermingled with English who lived with them on terms of the greatest affection and unity, has become one of the most
communities on earth. Others, much the larger part of the people, moved further; they crossed the Vaal River, and in that wild northern land, where no Englishman’s foot had passed, they founded after some years the gallant little Republic we all know to-day as the Transvaal. How that Republic was founded is a story we all know. Alone, unbacked by any great Imperial or national power, with their old flint-lock guns in their hands as their only weapons, with wife and children, they passed into that yet untrodden land. The terrible story of their struggles, the death of Piet Retief and his brave followers, killed by treachery by the Zulu Chief, Dingaan, the victory of the survivors over him, which is still commemorated by their children as Dingaan’s Day, the whole, perhaps, the most thrilling record of the struggle and suffering of a people in founding their State that the world can anywhere produce. Paul Kruger can still remember how, after that terrible fight, women and children left alone in the fortified laager, he himself being but a child, they carried on bushes to fortify the laager, women with children in their arms, or pregnant, laboring with strength of men to entrench themselves against evil worse than death. Here in the wilderness they planted their homes, and founded their little State. Men and women are still living who can remember how, sixty years ago, the spot where the great mining camp of Johannesburg now stands was a great silence where they drew up their wagon and planted their little home, and