m Holland
and France patiently toiled, and with mild content watched their
grazing cattle as they gradually spread over a huge expanse of
territory; their only reward the feeling that this barren resting place
on the way to India was all their own, and that they had a sense of
independence which answered the deepest craving in their hearts; they
were safe, forever safe from the Old-World tyrannies.

But there was another nation which also needed a resting place on the
way to India. Great Britain, following closely in the footsteps of
Holland, now had a Greater East India Company, and a larger empire
{174} growing in the East. And clouds began to gather over the Dutch
Colonists, as they saw their solitude invaded by Old-World currents.
Perhaps the irritation from this made them quarrelsome; for temper and
temperament have been two most important factors in the story of the
Dutch in South Africa. At all events, there were various outbreaks and
insurrections, becoming at last so serious that the English Government
felt impelled to aid in their suppression. And this they did so
effectually that after a battle with the local forces in 1806, they
were virtual rulers of Cape Colony, which, in 1814, upon the payment of
six million pounds to the Stadtholder, was formally ceded to Great
Britain.

So, by right of conquest, and by right of purchase, England had come
into possession (although at the time unaware of it) of the greatest
diamond mines, and the richest gold mines in the world. And it had
turned out that the Dutch Colonists for a century and a half had been
subduing man and nature simply to enrich the {175} English; and in
return they were expected to live contentedly and peaceably in the land
they had made habitable for human occupation!

Thus two contrasting people had been carelessly and hastily tossed
together. The most conservative and the most progressive of
nationalities were expected to fuse their uncompromising traits into a
harmonious whole. The result should have been easy to foresee. The
Dutch, coerced into this union, with embittered hearts and deep sense
of injury, after twenty unhappy, stormy years, determined to escape.
They would cross the Orange River into the wilderness and there build
up another State, which should be forever their own. And so, in the
year 1835, there occurred what is known as "The Great Trek," when about
thirty thousand men and women, like swarming bees, migrated in a bod