hey were required to pay a sum amounting to
five pounds a year for the use of three thousand _morgen_ (a little more
than six thousand acres) of grazing ground, and were accustomed at
certain seasons to drive their herds up into the deserts of the Karroo
for a change of feed, just after the time when the summer rains
stimulate the scrubby vegetation of that desert region. These settlers
led a lonely and almost nomadic life. Much of their time was passed in
their tent-waggons, in which, with their wives and children, they
followed the cattle from spot to spot where the pasture was best. They
became excellent marksmen and expert in the pursuit of wild beasts. Some
made a living by elephant-hunting in the wilderness, and those who
tended cattle learned to face the lion. They were much molested by the
Bushmen, whose stealthy attacks and poisoned arrows made them dangerous
enemies, and they carried on with the latter a constant war, in which no
quarter was given. Thus there developed among them that courage,
self-reliance, and passion for independence which are characteristic of
the frontiersman everywhere, coupled with a love of solitude and
isolation which the conditions of western America did not produce. For
in western America the numbers and ferocity of the Red Indians, and
those resources of the land which encouraged the formation of
agricultural and timber-producing communities, made villages follow the
march of discovery and conquest, while in pastoral Africa villages were
few and extremely small. Isolation and the wild life these ranchmen led
soon told upon their habits. The children grew up ignorant; the women,
as was natural where slaves were employed, lost the neat and cleanly
ways of their Dutch ancestors; the men were rude, bigoted, indifferent
to the comforts and graces of life. But they retained their religious
earnestness, carrying their Bibles and the practice of daily family
worship with them in their wanderings; and they retained also a passion
for freedom which the government vainly endeavoured to restrain. Though
magistrates, called _landdrosts_, were placed in a few of the outlying
stations, with assessors taken from the people, called _heemraden_, to
assist them in administering justice, it was found impossible to
maintain control over the wandering cattle-men, who from their habit of
"trekking" from place to place were called Trek Boers.[19] The only
organization that brought them together was that whi