Some thought of retiring from Natal;
some contemplated revenge.

The pathetic state of the Boers attracted the sympathy of the
Englishmen then in Natal, and they joined hands. Potgieter and Uys
then commanded a force, and marched out on the enemy, but
unfortunately fell into an ambush and were slain. Among the dead
were the commandant Uys and his son.

Then the Englishmen, not to be behindhand in the fray, came to the
rescue. Though there were but seventeen of them, they went out
accompanied by 1500 Hottentots to meet the enemy. They followed the
retreating savages beyond the Tugela, when suddenly they found
themselves face to face with a fierce multitude of 70,000 Zulus. A
conflict of the most terrible kind ensued: a conflict the more
terrible because at the same time so heroic and so hopeless. From
this appalling fight only four Englishmen escaped. These had
succeeded in cutting their way through the enemy; the rest had been
surrounded, and died fighting valiantly, and were almost buried
among the dead bodies of their antagonists.

But this was not to be the finale of the Boer resistance to the wild
Zulu. The above tragic engagement between the Englishmen and Zulus
took place in April 1838. By December of the same year they had
gathered themselves under the banner of their fine leader Andries
Pretorius, a farmer from the district of Graff Reinet, and started
forth again to meet the treacherous Dingaan, and pay him the debt
they owed him.

A word or two of this Pretorius, after whom the now notable town of
Pretoria was named. He was a born leader of men: he was a Cromwell
in his way. At that date he was forty years of age, in the prime of
strength and manhood. He was tall, and vigorous in mind as well as
in body, calm and deliberating in counsel, but prompt and fiery in
action. His descent is traced from one Johannes Pretorius, son of a
clergyman at Goeree in South Holland, one of the very early
settlers--a pious and worthy man, whose piety and worth had been
inherited by several generations. Like the rest of his countrymen,
Pretorius would brook no control. Though he was indubitably brave
and immensely capable, he had the conservative instincts of his
race. He shrunk from all innovations, he disliked everything
connected with civilisation that might in the smallest degree
interfere with the personal liberty of the individual. Freedom was
as the very breath of his nostrils, and here was the great link
between th