it should not be believed. Someone
connected with the London Missionary Society reported us to the
Government at the Cape for shooting poor, innocent black men, and it was
threatened that Jan and Ralph would be put upon their trial for murder
by the British Government. Indeed, I believe that this would have been
done had not we and others of our neighbourhood let it be clearly known
that before they were dragged to the common gaol there would be killing
not only of black but of white men.

Our case was only one of many, since in those times there was no
security for us Boers--we were robbed, we were slandered, we were
deserted. Our goods were taken and we were not compensated; the Kaffirs
stole our herds, and if we resisted them we were tried as murderers; our
slaves were freed, and we were cheated of their value, and the word of a
black man was accepted before our solemn oath upon the Bible.

No wonder that we grew tired of it and trekked, seeking to shake the
dust of British rule from off our feet, and to find a new home
for ourselves out of the reach of the hand of the accursed British
Government. Oh! I know that there are two sides to the story, and I
daresay that the British Government meant well, but at the least it was
a fool, and it always will be a fool with its Secretaries of State, who
know nothing sitting far away there in London, and its Governors, whose
only business is to please the Secretaries of State, that when the
country they are sent to rule grows sick of them, they may win another
post with larger pay.

Well, this tale is of people and not of politics, so I will say no more
of the causes that brought about the great trek of the Boers from the
old Colony and sent them forth into the wilderness, there to make war
with the savage man and found new countries for themselves. I know those
causes, for Jan and Ralph and I were of the number of the voortrekkers;
still, had it not been for the loss of Suzanne, I do not think that we
should have trekked, for we loved the home we had made upon the face of
the wild veldt.

But now that she was gone it was no home for us; every room of the
house, every tree in the garden, every ox and horse and sheep reminded
us of her. Yes, even the distant roar of the ocean and the sighing
of the winds among the grasses seemed to speak of her. These were the
flowers she loved, that was the stone she sat on, yonder was the path
which day by day she trod. The very air was th