y murdered by Dingaan, the chief or king of the Zulus, at
his kraal, which they had visited at his request in February 1838; and
the chief made a sudden attack with his armies upon the isolated bands
of farmers, and killed a great many of them. After many bloody fights,
in which large numbers of Zulus were killed, the Boers drove Dingaan and
his armies across the Tugela, and occupied the country.

The British Government, however, declined to recognise the right of its
colonists to leave the colony, wage war upon the native tribes, and set
up as independent republics, and therefore, after overcoming the
resistance of the Boers, occupied Natal, and eventually made it into a
separate colony. After some trial of British rule, the bulk of the
Dutch recrossed the mountains, and joined their fellow-countrymen in the
Orange Free State, or in the land beyond the Vaal.

At length in 1852 the British Government, having enough to do with
native wars on the Cape frontier, found it expedient to concede
independence to the Transvaal Boers; and two years afterwards abandoned
the territory between the Orange and Vaal Rivers to its inhabitants, the
Dutch farmers, who thus founded the Orange Free State.

The Dutch of the Free State were of much the same type and education as
the Cape Dutch, and soon settled down and arranged their affairs, and
evolved an almost ideal form of republican government, under which,
after having at great sacrifice and courage overcome the native
difficulties on their borders, they lived a happy and contented
existence, with increasing prosperity, no public enemy, perfect civil
and religious equality, and, except for railways and public works, no
public debt, until in 1899 that wonderful loyalty to race which is so
remarkable a trait in the Dutch African involved them in the ambitions
and the ruin of the South African Republic.

With the Transvaal Boer it was far otherwise. Amongst the leaders of
the Voor-trekkers, as the original emigrants from Cape Colony are
called, were leaders of whom colonists of any race might be proud, such
as Pretorius, Potgieter, Uys, and Retief, and, no doubt, among their
followers were many like them; but it was the most discontented and the
most uncivilised and turbulent, as a rule, that crossed the Vaal
originally; and there they lived isolated lives, far away from any white
being but those of their own family, without books, without intercourse
with the outer world, surround