El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1899-10-18
THE GREAT BOER TREK.
An Old pioneer Tells OF Its Begin
ninu In The Year 1885.

An Old Pioneer Tells OF Its Begin
ming In The Year 1885.
Los Angeles Times.
I'VE are ruined by being robbed oil
our slaves. They roam about the
country as Migrants and steal our cat
tie. The missionaries, who are the ad-
visers of the government, sey that
black man is as good as white, and
better. We will not submit to it. We
are Gods chosen people, and we will
leave this benighted country, this hot
bed of injustice, and seek the Promis-
ed Land. We will trek to the north
and pitch our tents upon the banks OF
the Gle" So said the Beers of the
Cape colony in the year of grace
1885. And they did SO: only the Gle
they found ran into the Limpopo, in
stead of into the Mediterranean sea.
Luis Trichard was the first. He was
a man of violent temperament, whose
animosity against the English was so
great and undisguised that he WAS be-
| lieved to have melted the Ksffirs In the
| war of lS34-35. A reward was set upon
| his head, and he fed. His party of
| forty-nine, of whom seven were women
and thirty-four children, contained the
| familiar names of PretOrius, Botha,
Strydom, Scheepers, and Albrecht.
Before he reached the Orange river
he was Joined by another party of forty
nine (uine women and thirty childrep).
under Johannes Rensberb, and ipclud-
ing ViIjoens. Bronkhursts, De Vets,
Van Wyks, Krankhmps and Prinses.
And SO the great trek began. De
prived of their slaves, the ANTS would
seek them in other and better lands.
lions, in which they made it abundant
Iy clear that in them alone we're repo-
sited the virtue and the wisdom OF the
ages, and that they alone understood
the true principles of government. BY
the logic of manifesto the English
authorities were demonstrated to be
blind leaders of the blind, which, hav-
ing been in the days when the political
economists, the Little Euglanders and
the early Exeter Hallists ruled the
roost, was probably not without it's
germ of truth. But whatever their
grievances, they were precisely the
same as those of the English settlers,
and the latter did not find
their position more irksome than to
warrant little of that divine dis
content which is the incentive to all
progress. The English 0rumbled and
worked for reform; the Dutch despair
ed and fed. By their fruits We shall
know them. The Beers wished to leap
into Paradise without any labor of
their own; the English put their
shoulders to the wheel and esssyed to
work their way into it. Such are the
distinctives of the races, for it was a
race movement, and none OF the
sophistries of the historians can alter
the fact.
Therefore these eighteen mulish and
overrighteous men led their wives and
sixty-four young and innocent children
to their doom. They crossed the
Orange River and entered the desert
bowling and drear," as Pringle hath |
it. 1t is not desert, and it does not |
howl, nor can it be called drear; but if |
the poets had to confine themselves to |
facts they would be drear indeed. But
If it was not drear It would have been
to any refined natures lugubrious
enough, though it may we'll be doubted
II these Sainted vOertrekkers were af
fected by any such sensations. For
every ridge, ever grassy slope, every
smiling hollow where the deep water
ing reeds. every thorn specked declivi
ty that shelved down to the willow
lined streams, was strewn with lines
and piles and maZes of.rocks and stones
that but a score of years ago had been
built into huts and kraals which shelf
cred untold thousands of prosperous
and multitudinous herds of
domestic animals: Now they
among which the lion
and the hyena and jackal
orowled, shifting at the sun blesched
skeletons, and among which the stein
Duck and the sprinRhaas leaped and
,be adder and cobra summed them
'elves. Had an epidemic carried off
,he vast population that had peopled
,hese grassy downs and plains? Yes,
IN epidemic CT blood, lust and murder
,us ferocity. The pitiless fends of
rchaka, the Terrible, and Umziligazi,
he Destroyer, had been let loose over
he land. Those they had been unable
o destroy they swept before them in
treat hordes of homeless wanderers,
whom their misfortunes transformed
rom peaceful pastoralists and agricul-
wrists into incendiaries and barbar-
ans as savage and monstrous as their
espoilers, and who in their turn fell
pon every pacific community they ..
anne across. The numbers who lost
heir lives in these holocaust have to
e reckoned in the millions.
PLAINS SwARMING WITH GAME.
But these voiceless solitudes were far !
rom being lifeless, They positively
eeked with life. Countless thousands
AYE, millions-of Observation-Disclosures,
ut harmless wildebeestes, of painted i.
pringbuck, of gaudy zebras, of glossy
lesbuck, made the plains look like the
nvironment of disturbed ant heap.
hey tumbled over each other, ran
ITO each other, and etirred up such q
estlesss turmoil that the very surface Il