During the "trekking" trip from Cape Colony to the final settlement in the Transvaal the Boer settlers shot no less than six thousand lions, and of that number Kruger is credited with shooting more than two hundred and fifty.
His personal bravery was never shown to better advantage than in 1857, when he was sub-commandant of the Transvaal army. He had ordered several of his burghers to go into the Orange Free State, with which country there was a serious misunderstanding, and there they were arrested. As soon as Mr. Kruger heard of the men's arrest he hastened into the camp of the Free State forces and asked for the release of the prisoners on the ground that they were innocent, and that if any one were guilty he was that man, because he had ordered them to enter the country. The commandant of the Free State forces was so greatly amazed by Mr. Kruger's bravery that he allowed all the Boers to return to their own camp.
Mr. Kruger's remarkable vitality and capacity for hard mental labour are the results of the great care which he bestows upon himself and the regular habits which he has followed for almost twenty years. He rises at half past five o'clock every morning, and follows a daily programme, from which he never deviates unless he is absent from home. After he leaves his bedroom he proceeds to his library and drinks several cups of intensely black coffee, and smokes several pipefuls of strong Boer tobacco. Then he spends the greater part of an hour in family devotions and the perusal of the Bible. After breakfast, at half past seven o'clock, he receives the members of the Volksraad, and then transacts the heaviest business of the day. After all the Volksraad members have departed, he steps out on the piazza of his little whitewashed cottage and joins the burghers, or citizens, who every morning congregate there and discuss state affairs while they sip the coffee and smoke the tobacco which the President furnishes to all visitors.
At ten o'clock the state carriage and its escort of eight gaudily apparelled troopers await him at the gate, and he is conveyed to the Government House, several blocks distant. As soon as he arrives there he is to be found either in one legislative chamber or the other, directing the affairs of the two bodies, making addresses or quietly watching the progress of legislative matters. At noon he returns to his home for luncheon, but is back at his duties in the Government House at two o'clock, and remains there three hours in the afternoon. Thereafter he receives burghers at his home until seven o'clock, and retires every evening at precisely eight o'clock.