The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-01-27

of modern culture, and think to myself -this man. despite his unpromising ex- terlor, Is one of a band of heroes who have made a great and interesting his tory. who have endured manifold suf- ferings, whose bones litter the silent veldt in every distant nook and corner of South Africa, and who are. upon the whole. as fine Q race of pioneers as the world has seen. They have their faults and weaknesses, these people, but what nationality has not?
 It should always be remembered that the South African Boer became subject to Great Britain by no fault or wish of his own. He was never conquered in the true sense of the word. We held the Cape in 1795 for a. few years by ar- engagement with the Stadtholder, the Prince of Orange, then a fugitive in England from the armies of the French republic. Cape Town was finally cap- tured by force in 1906, but the back country farmers knew little or nothing of the affair. A gross act of injustice, the abolition of slavery in Cape Colony in 1885 without adequate compensation to the farmers who owned slaves, ru- ined large numbers of them, and drove them in the bitterest spirit of indigna- ton to seek new homes beyond the reach of British government and British laws. In the Great Trek" as it is called, hundreds of farmers quilted Cape Colony, selling their farms for anything they would fetch in a forced market, and, with their families be- slowed in their wagons and their fiocks and herds around them, crossed the Or ange river and sought new homes and pastures. The present republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State owe their origin to this movement.
 The history of the Great Trek, if 1t ever comes to be written, will furnish one of the most inspiring of epics. These despised and slow-moving Dutch farmers, armed with only fiintlock guns, after suffering cruel reverses and the bloodiest treachery, met and con- quered the whole Zulu army, then al the height of it's strength and military discipline. Fewer than four hundred and fifty Boers successfully resisted twelve thousand of the fiercest Zulu warriors. At the close of that Sunday morning battle, fought upon December 16th, 1888, three thousand Zulus lay dead round the Dutch laager; the stream flowing by, ever since called the Blood river, ran crimson; and the pow. er of Dingaan and his nation was for years broken. To this hour the Trans. vaal Dutch annually meet to celebrate "Dingaan's Day." and return humble 1 thanks for their crowning mercy, that wonderful victory over the Zulu host. | In their warfare with the Zulus, tr the country now called Natal, the Dutch farmers used that plan of battle lingering their wagons in square for 1 mation-which has been found ever since an invaluable aid against the over-powering numbers of savage | tribes. Only so lately as in the Mata | bele war this old Boer method was adopted; and by its use-aided o1 course immensely by Maxim guns-the colonfsts of Mashonaland won theil brilliant victories, and destroyed the | long and cruel Matabele tyranny.
 | About this same period-1S36- '97-an ! other portion of the Great Trek made 1 it's way into the present territory of the I Orange Free State, and thence, cross l ing the Vaal, succeeded, after some bloody and disastrous reverses, in driv
 ing Moselikatse Gather of Lobengula
 beyond the Limpopo into the country now called Matabeleland. Moselikatst was then the most redoubted native captain in South Africa, and his men almost all pure-bred Zulus, who hat migrated from Zululand with him in 2 body, were as fearless, as fierce, as cru el and as highly trained as Chaka,s Dingaan's finest warriors. Yet thu Trek Boers vanquished Dingaan. ant took possession of that fair and ricl country now called Transvaal.
 | One battle was fought in laagel against Moselikatse's Matabele hordes There were but forty grown Dutchmer | in the camp, but the women and ever
 the children President Kruger, then {
 boy, was, I believe, among the number
 served in the defence, loading the lon&
 smooth-bore guns as fast as they wert
 emptied, and the Boers finally beat of
 their savage enemy with great loss After this fight endorsements came 1T
 and small hands of mounted farmer
 attacked the Matabele in their owl l kraals.
 | Tn the last ofthese daring campaigns
 one hundred and thirty-fve Beers fol l lowed up and fell upon Moselikatse il
 person on the Marico river. Moseli
 katse commanded no fewer than tel
 thousand of his finest soldie:s. Fierc-
 as they were, however, they lacked
 horses and guns, and found themselve
 no match for the mounted Dutch farm
 CTS, all fine game shots, and all imbuet
 with an invinctble determination. Flo
 more than a week the Boers, with noth
 ing but biltong (sun-dried game meat llarried and harassed the Matabel hosts. Again and again the Matabel
 tried to entrap their active opponents to bring them to close quarters, whel
 their stabbing assegais might b
 brought into play But the mounte
 men always evaded them, and a length, after losing large numbers 0
 his warriors, Moselikatse gave up tn contest, retreating beyond the Limpo
 DO, and left the whole vast territory o
 the Transvaal, which he had long hell
 by the sheer terror of his name an
 arms, to the "Voor-Trekkert. We Eng fish, an a miserably mismanaged wal
 and after a shameful peace, have hsl' our bad moments with the Transvaa
 Boers. But now that time has some
 what assuaged the bitter memories O
 Majuba Hil, those of us who know ant
 appreciate the sterling qualities of tn