ower. When, in 1828, Hottentots and other
free coloured people were placed by governmental ordinance on an equal
footing with whites as regards private civil rights, the colonists were
profoundly disgusted, and their exasperation was increased by the
enactment of laws restraining their authority over their slaves, as well
as by the charges of ill-treating the natives which continued to be
brought against them by the missionaries. Finally, in 1834, the British
Parliament passed a statute emancipating the slaves throughout all the
British colonies, and awarding a sum of twenty million pounds sterling
as compensation to the slave-owners. The part of this sum allotted to
Cape Colony (a little more than three millions sterling) was
considerably below the value of the slaves (about 39,000) held there,
and as the compensation was made payable in London, most slave owners
sold their claims at inadequate prices. Many farmers lost the bulk of
their property, and labour became in many districts so scarce that
agriculture could hardly be carried on. The irritation produced by the
loss thus suffered, intensifying the already existing discontent, set up
a ferment among the Dutch farmers. Their spirit had always been
independent, and the circumstances of their isolated life had enabled
them to indulge it. Even under the government of their Dutch kinsfolk
they had been restless, and now they received, as they thought, one
injustice after another at the hands of alien rulers. To be watched and
denounced by the missionaries, to have black people put on a level with
them, to lose the fruits of their victory over the Kafirs--all these
things had been bad enough. Now, however, when their property itself was
taken away and slavery abolished on grounds they could neither
understand nor approve, they determined to endure no longer, and sought
for some means of deliverance. Rebellion against so strong a power as
that of Britain was evidently foredoomed to failure. But to the north
and east a great wild country lay open before them, where they could
lead that solitary and half-nomadic life which they loved, preserve
their old customs, and deal with the natives as they pleased, unvexed by
the meddlesome English. Accordingly, many resolved to quit the Colony
altogether and go out into the wilderness. They were the more disposed
to this course, because they knew that the wars and conquests of Tshaka,
the ferocious Zulu king, had exterminated the Kafi