e a religious people, knowing no book but the Bible, and they deemed
themselves, like many another religious people at a like crisis of their
fortunes, to be under the special protection of Heaven, as was Israel
when it went out of Egypt into a wilderness not so vast nor so full of
perils as was that which the Boers were entering. Escaping from a sway
which they compared to that of the Egyptian king, they probably expected
to be stopped or turned back. But Pharaoh, though he had turned a deaf
ear to their complaints, was imbued with the British spirit of legality.
He consulted his attorney-general, and did not pursue them. The colonial
government saw with concern the departure of so many useful subjects.
But it was advised that it had no legal right to stop them, so it stood
by silently while party after party of emigrants--each householder with
his wife and his little ones, his flocks and his herds and all his
goods--took its slow way from the eastern or northern parts of the
Colony, up the slopes of the coast range, and across the passes that
lead into the high plateau behind. Within two years from 6,000 to 10,000
persons set forth. They travelled in large covered wagons drawn by ten
or twelve yoke of oxen, and they were obliged to travel in parties of no
great size, lest their cattle should exhaust the pasture along the track
they followed. There was, however a general concert of plan among them,
and most of the smaller groups united at spots previously fixed upon for
a rendezvous. All the men were armed, for the needs of defence against
the Bushmen, and the passion for killing game, had made the farmers
expert in the use of the rifle. As marksmen they were unusually steady
and skilful, and in the struggles that followed nothing but their
marksmanship saved them. Few to-day survive of those who took part in
this Great Trek, but among those few is Paul Kruger, now President of
the South African Republic, who followed his father's cattle as they
were driven forward across the prairie, being then a boy of ten.

I have not space to tell, save in the briefest outline, the striking and
romantic story of the wanderings of the emigrant Boers and their
conflicts with the native tribes. The first party, like the first host
of Crusaders that started for the East in the end of the eleventh
century, perished miserably. It consisted of ninety-eight persons
travelling with thirty wagons. They penetrated far to the north-east,
into w