Boers Sentence Examples

In the early months of the Boer War of 1899-1902 Aliwal North was held by the Boers.

He was, moreover, an Imperialist and a Colonial Federationist at a time when Liberalism was tied and bound to the Manchester traditions; and, to the consternation of, the official wire-pullers, he vigorously supported Disraeli's foreign policy, and in 1881 opposed the Gladstonian settlement with the Boers.

The snake, however, to which the word "asp" has been most commonly applied is undoubtedly the haje of Egypt, the spy-slange or spitting snake of the Boers (Naja haje), one of the very poisonous Elarinae, from 3 to 4 ft.

During the war of 1899-1902 the Boers were driven out of Barberton (13th of September 1900) by General (afterwards Sir John) French.

A few years later, in 1836-1837, large parties of emigrant Boers settled north of the Orange, and before long disputes arose between them and Moshesh, who claimed a great part of the land on which the white farmers had settled.

The Basuto acquired an unenviable notoriety as a race of bold cattle lifters and raiders, and the emigrant Boers found them extremely troublesome neighbours.

At the same time, if the Basuto were eager for cattle, the Boers were eager for land; and their encroachments on the territories of the Basuto led to a proclamation in 1842 from Sir George Napier, the then governor of Cape Colony, forbidding further encroachments on Basutoland.

In 1865 a fresh feud occurred between the Orange Free State Boers and the Basuto.

The Boers proved more successful than they had been in the past, and occupied several of the Basuto strongholds.

They also annexed a certain fertile portion of Basuto territory, and finally terminated the strife by a treaty at Thaba Bosigo, by which Moshesh gave up the tract of territory taken by the Boers and professed himself a subject of the Free State.

In early life he had distinguished himself in the wars with the Boers, and in 1880 he took an active part in the revolt against the Cape government.

He provided a steady revenue by the levying of a tax of 10% on the annual net produce of the gold mines, and devoted special attention to the repatriation of the Boers, land settlement by British colonists, education, justice, the constabulary, and the development of railways.

Here in December 1880 a great meeting of Boers resolved again to proclaim the independence of the Transvaal.

It is in the north-west of the province, is famous for its investment by the Boers in 18 991900 and is an important railway junction.

Utrecht (860) lies between Newcastle and Vryheid, and was one of the first towns founded by the Transvaal Boers.

The first emigrant Boers to enter the country were led by Pieter Retief (c. 1780-1838), a man of Huguenot descent and of marked ability, who had formerly lived on the eastern frontier of Cape Colony and had suffered severely in the Kaffir wars.

The Zulu king then commanded his impis to kill all the Boers who had entered Natal.

The Zulu forces crossed the Tugela the same day, and the most advanced parties of the Boers were massacred, many at a spot near where the town of Weenen now stands, its name (meaning wailing or weeping) commemorating the event.

Nevertheless in one week after the murder of Retief 600 Boers - men, women and children - had been killed by the Zulus.

Meantime the Boers, who had repelled the Zulu attacks on their laagers, had been joined by others from the Drakensberg, and about 400 men under Hendrik Potgieter and Piet Uys advanced to attack Dingaan.

The Boers had firearms, the Zulus their assegais only, and after a three hours' fight the Zulus were totally defeated, losing thousands killed, while the farmers' casualties were under 1 Captain Allen Francis Gardiner (1 79418 5 1) left Natal in 1838, subsequently devoting himself to missionary work in South America, being known as the missionary to Patagonia.

In sanctioning the occupation of the port the British government of the day had no intention of making Natal a British colony, but wished to prevent the Boers establishing an independent republic upon the coast with a harbour through which access to the interior could be gained.

Meantime the Boers had founded Pietermaritzburg and made it the seat of their volksraad.

Dingaan was utterly defeated and soon afterwards perished, Panda becoming king in his stead by favour of the Boers.

The Boers, however, strongly resented the contention of the British that they could not shake off British nationality though beyond the bounds of any recognized British possession, nor were they prepared to see their only port garrisoned by British troops, and they rejected Napier's overtures.

The Natal Boers believed the Netherlands to be one of the great powers of Europe, and were firmly persuaded that its government would aid them in resisting England.

The Boers, cut off from their port, called out a commando of some 300 to 400 men under Andries Pretorius and gathered at Congella at the head of the bay.

On the 26th the Boers captured the harbour and settlement, and on the 31st blockaded the British camp, the women and children being removed, on the suggestion of Pretorius, to a ship in the harbour of which the Boers had taken possession.

There was a considerable party of Natal Boers still strongly opposed to the British, and they were reinforced by numerous bands of Boers who came over the Drakensberg from Winburg and Potchefstroom.

Many of the Boers who would not acknowledge British rule trekked once more over the mountains into what are now the Orange Free State and Transvaal provinces.

For some years Natal, in common with the other countries of South Africa, had suffered from the absence of anything resembling a strong government among the Boers of the Transvaal, neighbours of Natal on the north.

At In- gogo, Majuba and Laing's Nek, all of them situated within the colony, British forces had been defeated by the Boers.

It was clearly understood that the Boers would aim to establish a republican government over the whole of South Africa, and that the terms of peace simply meant greater bloodshed at no distant date.

But it was not long before their worst fears with regard to the Boers began to be realized, and their patience was once more severely taxed.

As the London Convention had stipulated that there should be no trespassing on the part of the Boers over their specified boundaries, and as Natal had been the basis for those operations against the Zulus on the part of the British in 187 9, which alone made such an annexation of territory possible, a strong feeling was once more aroused in Natal.

For some years Natal had watched with anxiety the attitude of increasing hostility towards the British adopted by the Pretoria administration, and, with bitter remembrance of the events of 1881, gauged with accuracy the intentions of the Boers.

So suspicious had the ministry become of the nature of the military preparations that were being made by the Boers, that in May 1899 they communicated their apprehensions to the High Commissioner, Sir Alfred Milner, who telegraphed on the 25th of May to Mr Chamberlain, informing him that Natal was uneasy.

The first act was the seizure by the Boers of a Natal train on the Free State border.

Newcastle was next occupied by the Boers unopposed, and on the 10th of October occurred the battle of Talana Hill outside Dundee.

Brigadier-General Yule then took command, and an overwhelming force of Boers rendering the further occupation of Dundee dangerous, he decided to retire his force to Ladysmith.

On the 21 st of October General Sir George White and General (Sir John) French defeated at Elandslaagte a strong force of Boers, who threatened to cut off General Yule's retreat.

The Boers gradually surrounded the town and cut off the communications from the south.

For this course there were many reasons, the Transvaal territory annexed, or the greater part of it (the Vryheid district), having been only separated from the rest of Zululand in 1883 by a raid of armed Boers.

West and north of the Drakensberg the general level of the low veld is not much below that of the lowest altitudes of the middle veld, though the climatic 1 By the Boers the western and less elevated part of the plateau is known as the middle veld.

The Dutch, as their usual designation, Boers, implies, are mainly farmers and stock-raisers and are still predominant elsewhere than in the Witwatersrand and Pretoria districts.

Operations began in 1873 but in 1880 the machinery was destroyed by the Boers.

On returning to the Vet, Potgieter learned that a hunting party of Boers which had crossed the Vaal had been attacked by the Matabele, who had also killed Boer women and children.

This party instituted an elementary form of government, and in 1840 entered into a loose confederation with the Natal Boers, and also with the Boers south of the Vaal, whose headquarters were at Winburg.

In 1842, however, Potgieter's party declined to go to the help of the Natal Boers, then involved in conflict with the British.

Meantime the southern districts abandoned by Potgieter and his comrades were occupied by other Boers.

When the British government decided to recognize the independence of the Transvaal Boers it was with Pretorius that negotiations were conducted.

On the 17th of January 1852 a con- River vention was signed at a farm near the Sand river in the Orange sovereignty by assistant commissioners nominated by the British high commissioner on the one hand, and by Pretorius and other Boers on the other.

Whatever their internal dissensions the Boers were united in regard to what they considered their territorial rights, and in the interval between the signing of the Sand River Convention and the death of Pretorius an incident occurred significant alike of their claims to jurisdiction over enormous areas and of their manner of treating the natives.

Pretorius alleged that by this means the natives were obtaining firearms. At the same time the Transvaal Boers claimed that all the Bechuana country belonged to them, a claim which the British government of that day did not think it worth while to contest.

Sechele was regarded by the Boers as owing them allegiance, and in August 1852 Pretorius sent against him a commando (in which Paul Kruger served as a field cornet), alleging that the Bakwena were harbouring a Bakatla chief who had looted cattle belonging to Boer farmers.

In reviewing an incident so important in the history of the Transvaal as the appointment of the Potchefstroom assembly it is of interest to note the gist of the complaint among the Boers which led to this revolution in the government of the country as it had previously existed.

To conciliate the Boers of Zoutpansberg the new-born assembly at Potchefstroom appointed Stephanus Schoeman, the commandantgeneral of the Zoutpansberg district, commandant-general of the whole country.

If at this stage of their existence the real ambition of the Transvaal Boers was to found a strong and compact republican state, their conduct in opposing a scheme of union with the Orange Free State was foolish to a degree.

A charge frequently laid at the door of the Boers, at that time and since, was that of enslaving the black races.

It was also in accord with the desire of the Transvaal Boers to obtain a seaport, a desire which had led them as early as 1860 to treat with the Zulus for the possession of St Lucia Bay.

The boundary on the east was settled by a treaty with Portugal in 1869, the Boers abandoning their claim to Delagoa Bay; that on the west was dealt with in 1871.

The award caused a strong feeling of resentment among the Boers, and led to the resignation of President Pretorius and his executive.

The Boers now cast about to find a man who should have the necessary ability, as they said, to negotiate on equal terms with the British authorities should any future dispute arise.

He recognized that, even at this early stage of their history, the Transvaal Boers were filled with the wildest ideas as to what steps they would take in the future to counteract the influence of Great Britain.

Brand intimated to many of the leading Transvaal Boers that in his opinion they were embarking on a rash and mistaken policy.

Having failed with Brand, the Boers invited the Rev. Thomas Francois Burgers, a member of a well-known Cape Colony family and a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, to allow himself to be nominated.

He had lived among the Boers and attempted to lead their government.

It is you - you members of the Raad and the Boers - who have lost the.

The treasury was empty, the Boers refused to pay their taxes, and there was no power to enforce them.

Moreover, the menace of attack on the Zulu side was a serious one, however able the Boers may have been to meet a foe who fought in the open, and who had been beaten by them in previous wars.

Moreover, apart from the attitude of President Burgers, which cannot be said to have been one of active opposition, a considerable number of the Boers accepted the annexation with complacency.

He shows how, for purely personal ends, Kruger allied himself with the British faction who were agitating for annexation, and to undermine him and endeavour to gain the presidency, urged the Boers to pay no taxes.

In April Frere visited Pretoria and conferred with the Boers.

Meantime Frere's proposals to fulfil the promises made to grant the Boers a liberal constitution were shelved.

Sir Garnet Wolseley now assured the Boers at a public gathering that so long as the sun shone the British flag would fly at Pretoria.

In May 1880 he returned to England, having established in the Transvaal a legislative council with powers so limited as to convince many of the Boers that there was no intention of fulfilling Shepstone's promises.

Meanwhile events in Great Britain had once more taken a turn which gave encouragement to the disaffected Boers.

So keenly were the Midlothian speeches appreciated by the Boers that the Boer committee wrote a letter of thanks to Gladstone, and expressed the hope that should a change in the government of Great Britain occur, " the injustice done to the Transvaal might find redress."

Meanwhile in the Transvaal, concurrently with the change of prime minister and high commissioner, the administrator, Colonel Lanyon, began vigorously to enforce taxation among the Boers.

In November matters were brought to a head by the wagons of a farmer named Bezuidenhout being seized in respect of the non-payment of taxes, and promptly retaken from the sheriff by a party of Boers.

This, however, was not immediately available, and on the 13th of December the Boers in public meeting at Paardekraal resolved once more to proclaim the South African Republic, and in the meantime to appoint a triumvirate, consisting of Kruger, Pretorius and Joubert, as a provisional government.

Captain Elliot, one of the prisoners, who had been released on parole, was shot dead by Boers while crossing the Vaal, and Captain Lambert, another paroled prisoner who accompanied Elliot, was also shot, but escaped.

Sir George Colley, with about 1400 men, marched towards the Transvaal frontier, but before reaching it he found, on the 24th of January 1881, that the Boers had already invaded Natal and occupied Laing's Nek.

Negotiations had been opened with the Boers before the attack on Majuba and the British cabinet refused to allow that disaster to influence their action.

These terms practically conceded all that the Boers demanded, and were never regarded as anything else than surrender either by the Boers or the loyalists in South Africa.

In later years, when the Boers desired to regard the whole of this convention (and not merely the articles) as cancelled by the London Convention of 1884, and with it the suzerainty, which was only mentioned in the preamble, Mr Chamberlain, a member of the cabinet of 1880-1885, pointed out that if the preamble to this instrument were considered cancelled, so also would be the grant of self-government.

Unfortunately, this magnanimity was forthcoming after defeat It appeared as though a virtue had been made of a necessity, and the Boers never regarded it in any other light.

Meanwhile the landhunger of the Boers became stimulated rather than checked by the regaining of the independence of their country.

On the western border, where the natives were of less warlike character than those on their southern and northern frontiers, intrigues were already going on with petty tribal chiefs, and the Boers drove out a portion of the Barolongs from their lands, setting up the so-called republics of Stellaland and Goshen.

Moreover, it is undeniable that Lord Derby acted as though he was anxious to appear to be giving the Boers what they wanted.

On the eastern border a similar policy of expansion was followed by the Boers, and in this instance with more success.

As a " reward " for their services to the Zulus, the Boers then took over from them a tract of country in which they established a " New Republic."

In fact, so attractive did this sale of land become to the Boers that they eventually parted with a third of the whole land area of the country to Uitlander purchasers.

At a later date, Chief Justice Kotze, when on circuit, warned the Boers that in its retrogressive action the government was undermining the grondwet or constitution of the state.

Whether he deceived himself or not, he led President Kruger and the Boers to believe that Germany was prepared to go to almost any length in support of the Transvaal if any opportunity occurred.

The Boers, who had failed to fulfil the conditions under which they might have secured Kosi Bay, nevertheless resented this action, which took away from them all chance of obtaining a seaport.

The scheme to seize the Pretoria fort had to be abandoned, as at the time fixed Pretoria was thronged with Boers.

On the 2nd of January 1896 Jameson, who found himself at Doornkop in a position surrounded by Boers, surrendered.

It was not then realized either by the public or the government how seriously, and with what considerable justification, the Boers believed in their ability, if necessary, to sweep the British " into the sea."

The Boers profoundly despised the military power of Great Britain, and there was no reason why they, any more than Germany or France, should contemplate the possibility of the empire standing together as a whole in such a cause.

But the truth was that the Boers thought they stood to gain by fighting, while the British, though not expecting war, and acting up till the last month or so on the assumption that serious military preparations were either unnecessary or sufficiently unlikely to be necessary to make them politically inexpedient, had with no less confidence committed themselves to a policy which was impracticable on peaceful terms.

Fortunately, although the draft of an ultimatum was lying in the state secretary's office in Pretoria, the Boers, unprepared in departmental arrangements which are necessary in large military operations, were unable to take the field with the promptitude that the situation demanded.

It was certain that, since the troublous times of 1896, the Transvaal had greatly increased its armaments; but at their best, except by a very few,' the Boers were looked upon by British military experts as a disorganized rabble, which, while containing many individual first-class marksmen, would be incapable of maintaining a prolonged resistance against a disciplined army.

The number of Boers in the field at any one period was probably little more than 40,000.

The plan of campaign which found favour with the Boers, when they determined to put their differences with Great Britain to the test by the ordeal of the sword, was to attack all the principal British towns adjacent to their own borders; at the same time to despatch a field army of the necessary dimensions to invade and reduce Natal, where the largest British garrison existed.

Meanwhile Sir George White had discovered the Boer force on the railway, and, though anxious on account of the advance of the Free Staters, on the 21st, stimulated by the news of Talana, he sent out a force of all arms under General (Sir John) French to drive the Boers from Elandslaagte and so to clear Symons's line of retreat.

He encountered resistance at Belmont on the 23rd, but attacking resolutely he drove the Boers out of their strong positions.

The Boers, who held a river line, kept the British attack at bay all day, but eventually fell back, relinquishing the position after dark, as their right had been turned by General Pole-Carew's brigade.

On the 6th of January the Boers in Natal made a desperate attempt to storm Ladysmith.

Lord Roberts's plan was first to concentrate to his left, taking every measure to induce the Boers to believe that the original scheme of invasion by the centre would now be resumed, and in this purpose he succeeded so well that his field army with the necessary transport for a cross-country march was assembled between the Orange and the Modder without serious mishap. Cronje at the new centre of gravity was not reinforced, all available Boers drawing down towards Colesberg.

The result, after one premature and costly assault on Cronje's lines had been made by Kitchener, was the surrender of 4000 Boers at Paardeberg with their leader on the 29th of February, the anniversary of Majuba.

The object of this action was to push back the Boers from the neighbourhood of Pretoria, but no sooner was this done than the ncrth-western Transvaal became active, in spite of Hunter's and Baden-Powell's advance from Mafeking through this district.

As the British line of operations now extended eastward from Pretoria, the advance of these Boers to the Magaliesberg threatened their rearward communications, and as Buller had moved far more slowly than the main army there was not as yet an alternative line through Natal.

June brought little of, moment, though the Boers scored two minor successes, Kritzinger capturing the village of Jamestown in Cape Colony, and Muller reducing a force of Victorians at Wilmansrust, south of Middelburg.

In July there were further evidences of weakness on the part of the Boers, and Botha applied for permission to communicate with Kruger.

About the same time, the force in front of De la Rey and Kemp in the west being depleted to find the troops for larger operations, the Boers made a fierce surprise attack on Colonel Kekewich's column at Moedville, in which Kekewich was wounded and his troops hard pressed for a time.

The Boers were at last convinced of the futility of any attempt to prolong the struggle, and on the 23rd of March the representatives of the Boer governments came into Pretoria.

More than one plot on the part of Boers who had taken the oath of allegiance was hatched in Johannesburg, the most serious, perhaps, being that of Brocksma, formerly third public prosecutor under the republic. On the i 5th of September 1901 Brocksma and several others were arrested as spies and conspirators.

On their return to South Africa the Boer generals and their colleagues aided to some extent in the work of.resettlement, but the seats offered to the Boers on the executive council were declined.

The efforts made by the administration to restore the Boers to the land, to develop the material resources of the country, and to remove all barriers to the intellectual and moral development of the people, were soon, however, hampered by severe Economic commercial depression.

These were all men of progressive, in some respects democratic, views, and in thus forming his cabinet General Botha showed his determination not to be dominated by the " back veld " Boers.

Bronkhorst Spruit, where in December 1880 a detachment of British soldiers was ambushed by the Boers, lies about 30 m.

In December 1880 it was invested by the Boers, but held out until the conclusion of peace.

Coming over the Drakensberg in considerable numbers during 1837, the Boers found the land stretching south from the mountains almost deserted, and Retief went to Arrival Dingaan to obtain a formal cession of the country of the west of the Tugela, which river the Zulu recognized as the boundary of Zululand proper.

After agreeing to Retief's request Dingaan caused the Boer leader and his companions to be murdered (6th of February 1838), following up his treachery by slaying as many as possible of the other Boers who had entered Natal.

After two unsuccessful attempts to avenge their slain, in which the Boers were aided by the British settlers at Port Natal, Dingaan's army was totally defeated on the 16th of December 1838, by a Boer force under Andries Pretorius.

On " Dingaan's day " the Boer force received the attack of the Zulu while in laager; the enemy charged in dense masses, being met both by cannon shot and rifle fire, and were presently attacked in the rear by mounted Boers.

After the defeat Dingaan set fire to the royal kraal (Umgungindhlovu) and for a time took refuge in the bush; on the Boers recrossing the Tugela he established himself at Ulundi at a little distance from his former capital.

His power was greatly weakened and a year later was overthrown, the Boers in Natal (January 1840) supporting his brother Mpande (usually called Panda) in rebellion against him.

Dingaan passed into Swaziland in advance of his retreating forces, and was there murdered, while Panda was crowned king of Zululand by the Boers.

When in 1843 the British succeeded the Boers as masters of Natal they entered into a treaty with Panda, who gave up to the British the country between the upper Tugela and the Buffalo rivers, and also the district of St panda.

With the Boers who had settled in the Transvaal, however, he was involved in various frontier disputes.

He had wars with the Swazis, who in 1855 ceded to the Boers of Lydenburg a tract of land on the north side cf the Pongolo in order to place Europeans between themselves and the Zulu.

The frontier disputes between the Zulu and the Transvaal Boers ultimately involved the British government and were one of the causes of the war which broke out in 1879.

Disputes with the They concerned, chiefly, territory which in 1854 was Trens- proclaimed the republic of Utrecht, the Boers who vaal.

According to evidence brought forward later by the Boers, Cetywayo offered the farmers a strip of land along the border if they would surrender his brother.

This they did on the condition that Umtonga's life was spared, and in 1861 Panda signed a deed making over the land to the Boers.

The camp was surprised, 62 out of 106 men were killed, and all the stores were With the column were 40 Boers, the Uys clan, under Piet Uys, whose father had been killed in 1838 in the wars with Dingaan.

Cetywayo left a son, Dinizulu, who sought the assistance of some of the Transvaal Boers against Usibepu, whom he defeated and drove into the Reserve.

These Boers, led by Lukas Meyer (1846-1902), claimed as a stipulated reward for their services the cession of the greater and more valuable part of central Zululand.

The Usutu party now repented of their bad bargain, for by the end of 1885 they found the Boers claiming some three-fourths of their country.

The British government intervened, took formal possession of St Lucia Bay (to which Germany as well as the Transvaal advanced claims), caused the Boers to reduce their demands, and within boundaries agreed to recognize the New Republic - whose territory was in 1888 incorporated in the Transvaal and has since 1903 formed the Vryheid division of Natal.

During the war of1899-1902there was some fighting between the Zulu and the Boers, provoked by the Boers entering Zulu territory.

The town, named after the leader of the Boers in their war with the Basuto chief Moshesh in 1865, was founded in 1888.

It is the chief place in a district of the same name, originally settled in 1848 by emigrant Boers from Natal.

Africa, is named by the Boers "roode FIG.

The Sand river, on whose banks the convention recognizing the independence of the Transvaal Boers was signed in 1852, is a tributary of the Vet and passes through the centre of the country.

Many of the towns were the scenes of encounters between the Boers and British, March 1900-May 1902.

At Boshof fell the leader of the Boers' European Legion, Colonel de Villebois Mareuil, on the 5th of April 1900.

Reprisals followed, and in November 1837 Mosilikatze was decisively defeated by the Boers and thereupon fled northward.

The emigrants were treated with great kindness by Moroko, the chief of that tribe, and with the Barolong the Boers maintained uniformly friendly relations.

After the defeat of Mosilikatze the town of Winburg (so named by the Boers in commemoration of their victory) was founded, a volksraad elected, and Piet Retief, one of the ablest of the voortrckkers, chosen " governor and commandant-general."

The year in which the treaty with Moshesh was made several large parties of Boers recrossed the Drakensberg into the country north of the Orange, refusing to remain in Natal when it became a British colony.

The treaties gave great offence to the Boers, who refused to acknowledge the sovereignty of the native chiefs.

The volksraad at Winburg during this period continued to claim jurisdiction over the Boers living between the Orange and the Vaal and was in federation with the volksraad at Potchefstroom, which made a similar claim upon the Great Boers living north of the Vaal.

In 1846 Major Warden occupied Winburg for a short time, and the relations between the Boers and the British were in a continual state of tension.

The justness of Sir Harry Smith's measures and his popularity among the Boers gained for his policy considerable support, but the republican party, at whose head was Andries Pretorius, did not submit without a struggle.

Distracted among themselves, with the formidable Basuto power on their southern and eastern flank, the troubles of the infant state were speedily added to by the action of the Transvaal Boers.

In the same year the disputes between the Basutos and the Boers culminated in open war.

The Boers gained considerable successes, and this induced Moshesh to sue for peace.

Thus the thirty years' strife between the Basutos and the Boers came to an end.

By the Sand River Convention, independence had been granted to the Boers living " north of the Vaal," and the dispute turned on the question as to what stream constituted the true upper course of that river.

In the opinion, moreover, of Dr Theal, who has written the history of the Boer Republics and has been a consistent supporter of the Boers, the annexation of Griqualand West was probably in the best interests of the Free State.

At this time, largely owing to the exhausting struggle with the Basutos, the Free State Boers, like their Transvaal neighbours, had drifted into financial straits.

In 1880, when a rising of the Boers in the Transvaal was threatening, President Brand showed every desire to avert the conflict.

In spite of the neutral attitude taken by their government a number of the Free State Boers, living in the northern part of the country, went to the Transvaal and joined their brethren then in arms against the British.

In him the Boers, not only in the Free State but in the whole of South Africa, lost one of the most enlightened and most upright rulers and leaders they have ever had.

It was on this occasion that President Kruger, referring to the London Convention, spoke of Queen Victoria as a kwaaje Vrouw, an expression which caused a good deal of offence in England at the time, but which, to any one familiar with the homely phraseology of the Boers, obviously was not meant by President Kruger as insulting.

The mass of Boers in the Free State, deluded by a belief in Great Britain's weakness, paid no heed to his remonstrances.

Before war had actually Boers, and the attitude assumed by the majority was highly critical of the work of the government.

Having recovered from the worst effects of the war the Boers, both in the Transvaal and Orange Colony, began in 1904 to make organized efforts to regain their political ascendancy, and to bring pressure on the government in respect to compensation, repatriation, the position of the Dutch language, education and other subjects on which they alleged unfair treatment.

A similar organization, called Het Volk, had been formed by the Transvaal Boers in January 1905.

The loss of their independence was, however, felt bitterly by the broken out the Free State began to expel British subjects, and the very first act of war was committed by Free State Boers, who, on the 11th of October, seized a train upon the border belonging to Natal.

At this period the Transvaal Boers were in a very unsettled state, and those living in the western districts showed a marked inclination to encroach upon the lands of the Bechuana.

Not only was Sechele attacked at his capital Kolobeng, and the European stores and Livingstone's house there looted, but the Boers stopped a trader named M`Cabe from going northward.

Again to quote Livingstone, " The Boers resolved to shut up the interior and I determined to open the country."

In 1858 the Boers told the missionaries that they must not go north without their (the Boers') consent.

Moffat complained to Sir George Grey, the governor of Cape Colony, through whose intervention the molestation by Transvaal Boers of British subjects in their passage through Bechuanaland was stopped.

At a later date (1865) the Boers tried to raise taxes from the Barolong, but without success, a commando sent against them in 1868 being driven off by Montsioa's brother Molema.

This led to a protest (in 1870) from Montsioa, which he lodged with a landdrost at Potchefstroom in the Transvaal, threatening to submit the matter to the British high commissioner if any further attempt at taxation were made on the part of the Boers.

The Boers then resorted to cajolery, and at a meeting held in August 1870, at which President Pretorius and Paul Kruger represented the Transvaal, invited the Barolong to join their territories with that of the republic, in order to save them from becoming British.

The attacks of the Boers at length became so unbearable that Montsioa in 1874 made a request to the British authorities to be taken under their protection.

In formulating this appeal he declared that when the Boers were at war with Mosilikatze, chief of the Matabele, he had aided them on the solemn understanding that they were to respect his boundaries.

The Boers are coming into it, and I do not like them."

All these things I shall find in the Boers, and it is these things which destroy people to make an end of them in the country.

The custom of the Boers has always been to cause people to be sold, and to-day they are still selling people."

The testimony of Livingstone confirms them, and even a Dutch clergyman, writing in 1869, described the system of apprenticeship of natives which obtained among the Boers " as slavery in the fullest sense of the word."

There was fighting between Montsioa and Moshette, while Massow, a Batlapin chief, invited the aid of the Boers against Mankoroane, who claimed to be paramount chief of the Batlapin.

The Transvaal War of that date offered opportunities to the freebooting Boers of the west which were not to be lost.

Unless steps were taken at once, the whole of Bechuanaland might be permanently lost, while German territory on the west might readily be extended to join with that of the Boers.

In spite of the convention the Boers remained in Stellaland and Goshen - which were west of the new Transvaal frontier, and in April 1884 the Rev. John Mackenzie, who had succeeded Livingstone, was sent to the country to arrange matters.

He found very little difficulty in negotiating with the various Bechuana chiefs, but with the Boers he was not so successful.

In Goshen the Boers defied his authority, while in Stellaland only a half-hearted acceptance of it was given.

But in Goshen the Boers would let him do nothing.

Rhodes then left under protest, declaring that the Boers were making war against Great Britain.

The Boers now (loth of September) proclaimed the country under Transvaal protection.

The limit of concessions to the Boers had been reached, and Sir Charles Warren's force-4000 strong - had reached the Vaal river in January 1885.

It is quite clear that had they not represented the true state of affairs to the authorities the whole of this territory would have gradually been absorbed by the Boers, until they had effected a union with the Germans on the west.

Joubert, Botha was made commander-in-chief of the Transvaal Boers.

The success of his measures was seen in the steady resistance offered by the Boers to the very close of the three years' war.

He was the chief representative of his countrymen in the peace negotiations of 1902, after which, with de Wet and de la Rey, he visited Europe in order to raise funds to enable the Boers to resume their former avocations.

On the capture of Bloemfontein by the British during the Anglo-Boer War of1899-1902Kroonstad was chosen by the Orange Free State Boers as the capital of the state, a dignity it held from the 13th of March to the IIth of May 1900.

David Livingstone was as determined to open the interior as the Boers were to keep it shut, and he succeeded, pushing north, discovering Lake Ngami, and consecrating a remarkable life to the evangelization of Central Africa.

The ministry, however, under Dr Kuyper were able to keep the popular feeling in favour of the Boers in restraint, and to maintain towards Great Britain a correct attitude of strict neutrality.

It was the scene of an action fought on the 15th of December 1899 between the British forces under Sir Redvers Buller and the Boers, in which the former were repulsed.

And the brewing of the storm in South Africa, where the Boers were preparing to resist British suzerainty, helped to make the nation regret that their fleet was not sufficiently strong to make German sympathies effective.

Middelburg was chosen in 1901 as the place of conference for peace negotiations between the British and the Boers.

During the South African War he took a prominent part in the attempts to get Holland to mediate between Great Britain and the Boers.

Instead of loyally supporting the president in the difficult task of building up a stable state, he did everything in his power to undermine his authority, going so far as to urge the Boers to pay no taxes while Burgers was in office.

Immediately after the ultimatum Natal and the Cape Colony were invaded by the Boers both of the Transvaal and the Free State.

He was buried at Pretoria on the following 16th of December, Dingaan's Day, the anniversary of the day in 1838 when the Boers crushed the Zulu king Dingaan - a fight in which Kruger, then a lad of thirteen, had taken part.

Along the upper Kunene and in other districts of the plateau are settlements of Boers, the Boer population being about 2000.

From the time of its establishment it was the seat of the Volksraad of the Natal Boers, and on the submission of the Boers to the British in 1842 Maritzburg (as it is usually called) became the capital of the country.

Thenceforward he came to be regarded more and more as the most formidable leader of the Boers in their guerrilla warfare.

Cetywayo was a young man when in 1840 his father was placed on the throne by the aid of the Natal Boers; and three years later Natal became a British colony.

This feud with the Boers was inherited by the British government on the annexation of the Transvaal in 1877.

In December 1878 Frere sent the Zulu king an ultimatum, which, while awarding him the territory he claimed from the Boers, required him to make reparation for the outrages committed within the British borders, to receive a British resident, to disband his regiments, and to allow his young men to marry without the necessity of having first "washed their spears."

Klerksdorp was one of the villages founded by the first Boers who crossed the Vaal, dating from 1838.

In 1845 Hendrik Potgieter, a prominent leader of the Trek Boers, removed thither.

The Zoutpansberg Boers formed a semi-independent community, and in 1857 Stephanus Schoeman, their commandant-general, sided against Marthinus Pretorius and Paul Kruger when they invaded the Orange Free State.

The white settlers in Zoutpansberg had for many years a reputation for lawlessness, and were later regarded as typical "back velt Boers."

It must be borne in mind that the Boers of every grade have always been more or less sedulously instructed in religious subjects, at all events to the extent required to fit them for formal membership of their church, and in all their wanderings they have usually been attended by their pastors.

His charges greatly embittered the Boers, who were further aggrieved by the emancipation of the slaves.

This chieftain lived north of the Orange river in the district now known as Griqualand West, and ruled over some 4000 people, a bastard race sprung from the intercourse between Boers and native women.

During that period no fewer than 7000 Boers (including women and children), impatient of British rule, emigrated from Cape Colony into the great plains beyond the Orange river, and across them again into Natal and into the fastnesses of the Zoutspanberg, in the northern part of the Transvaal.

The Boers then established a republican government at Maritzburg.

The Boers at first rejected offers of accommodation.

Many Boers, dissatisfied with this arrangement, withdrew beyond the Drakensberg.

It had taken the British government nearly ten years to decide on the annexation of Natal; its policy towards the Boers settled north of the Orange was marked by the same hesitation (see Orange Free State).

The extension of British rule north of the Orange was opposed by Andries Pretorius, who, being defeated at Boomplaats, withdrew north of the Vaal, where, though not interfered with by the British, the Boers split up into several rival parties.

The home government (the first Russell administration), which had reluctantly consented to confirm Sir Harry Smith's annexation of the Orange River territory., on learning of these difficulties, and also that many of the burghers remained dissatisfied, changed their policy, and in 1851 the governor was informed that the ultimate abandonment of the Sovereignty was a settled point.2 In fulfilment of their settled policy to keep the British South African dominions within the smallest possible limits, the cabinet decided to recognize the independence of the Boers living beyond the Vaal.

Despite their distracted condition the Transvaal Boers had no sooner obtained their independence than they began to make claims to authority in Bechuanaland.

While vast additional territories had been occupied by British 'a ' or Boers the unity of administration, which had Policy of marked the previous stages in the expansion of the white races in South Africa, had been lost.

Whether or not a wiser policy on the part of Great Britain would have secured the continued allegiance of all the Boers it is impossible to say; the fact that numbers of Boers remained in Natal under British rule, and that the majority of the Boers who settled between the Orange and the Vaal desired to remain British subjects, points to that conclusion.

With justice the Boers complained of the course actually adopted by the British authorities.

They might at the outset either have let the trek Boers go, and given them their blessing and liberty, or they might have controlled the trek and ' Part of the territory thus reannexed was added to Cape Colony while the region between the Keiskamma and Kei was created a separate territory under the name of British Kaffraria.

The majority of the Boers remained very much what they had been in the 17th century.

At that time Paul Kruger and Piet Joubert, delegates from the Transvaal Boers, were in Cape Town, and they used their influence to prevent the acceptance of the proposals, which were shelved by the ministry accepting " the 3 Serious troubles with the Basutos which began in 1879 reacted on the situation in the Transvaal and Natal.

The removal of the Zulu danger did not, however, restore harmony between the British and the Boers in the Transvaal.

The malcontent Boers became a powerful element in the country.

After the receipt in December 1879 of the reports of Mr Gladstone's speeches during his Midlothian campaign - in which he denounced annexation as obtained by means dishonourable to Great Britain - the Boers expected nothing less than the retrocession of the country.

There was one strong reason against retrocession, concerning which the Boers - if they gave it thought - would naturally be silent.

The time must eventually arrive when the Boers will be in a small minority, as the country is very sparsely peopled; and would it not therefore be a very near-sighted policy to recede now from the position we have taken up here, simply because for some years to come the retention of 2000 or 3000 troops may be necessary to reconsolidate our power.

I It is remarkable that the Liberal government, despite this aspiration, and despite stronger language used by Mr Gladstone, did nothing to give the Boers any real self-government.

It is at all events abundantly clear that had the Boers not resorted to arms they would not have gained the support of the cabinet.4 Sir Evelyn Wood, who had succeeded Colley as general in command and governor of Natal, under instructions from home, concluded a treaty of peace on the 22nd of March.

But the success of the Transvaal Boers both in war and diplomacy had quickened the sense of racial unity among the Dutch throughout the country, and there arose a spirit of antagonism between the Dutch and the British which affected the whole future of South Africa.

Before, however, dealing with the relations between the British and the Boers subsequent to 1881 brief reference may be made to affairs in which other powers were concerned; affairs which were the prelude to the era of expansion associated with the career of Cecil Rhodes.

Neither the Portuguese nor the British claims seemed of much importance until the rise of the South African republic. Anxious for a seaport, the Transvaal Boers -in turn laid claim to Delagoa Bay.

As a port outside British control Delagoa Bay was a source of strength to the Boers, especially as the railway 1 was under their control.

In the war which began in 1899 munitions of war and recruits for the Boers were freely passed through Delagoa Bay.

At first the encroachments on Bechuana territory by Boers from the Transvaal were looked upon with comparative indifference.

The Boers respected neither the frontier laid down by the Pretoria convention nor that (modified in their favour) drawn in the London convention.

As a member of the Cape parliament he undertook a mission, before the arrival of Warren, to the Goshen and Stellaland Boers, endeavouring, unsuccessfully, to obtain from them a recognition of British sovereignty.

In his endeavours to realize this aim he had to contend with the new spirit of national consciousness animating the Boers, which found expression in the formation of the Afrikander Bond.

The support given by the Cape Colony Dutch to the malcontent Transvaal Boers has already been mentioned.

The situation with which the Boers were called upon to deal was one of great difficulty.

This step prevented the country from falling into the hands of Germany, Portugal or the Boers.

The Transvaal government, meantime, had obtained some knowledge of what was being projected, and the Raid ended in a forced surrender (January 2, 1896) to a superior force of Boers.

It greatly embittered racial feeling throughout the country; it threw the Free State Boers completely on to the side of the Transvaal; it destroyed the alliance between the Dutch in Cape Colony and the Imperialists led by Rhodes.

Rhodes informed the House of Commons Select Committee that the belief that the Boers intended to introduce the influence of another foreign power in the already complicated system of South Africa " greatly influenced " him in promoting the revolt.

Germany at the time of the Raid was prepared to intervene, and on the 3rd of January 1896 the German Emperor, by telegram, congratulated Kruger that " without appealing to the help of friendly powers " the Boers had overcome Jameson.

To some extent this was done - but in a manner which led the Transvaal Boers to count in any event on the support of the Cape Dutchmen.

The fact is that the Boers had made up their minds to a trial of strength with Great Britain for supremacy in South Africa.

After the surrender of Cronje at Paardeberg (February 1900) to Lord Roberts, Presidents Kruger and Steyn offered to make peace, but on terms which should include the acknowledgment of " the incontestable independence of both republics as sovereign international states "; the Boers also sought, unavailingly, the intervention of foreign powers.

The refusal of the German Emperor to receive him extinguished alike his political influence and all hopes that the Boers might still have entertained of help from foreign governments.

At that time all the chief towns in both of the late republics were held by the British, and the Boers still in the field were reduced to guerilla warfare.

The repatriation of some 200,000 Boers followed, and the departments of justice, education and agriculture were remodelled.'

The The Boers in the Transvaal, headed by Louis Botha, Lyttelton formed an association which was called Het Volk constjtu- (the people), and in the Orange Colony a similar tion,1905.

The Liberal leader held, however, that the Boers should be given self-government at once.

In the Transvaal the burghers of British origin were about equal in number with those of Dutch origin, and the fairly even balance of parties might be held to be a guarantee against retrogression; in the Orange River Colony it was notorious that the grant of selfgovernment meant handing over the control of the country not simply to the Boers, but to that section of them which since the war had exhibited the greatest racial bitterness.

But the policy of complete trust in the Boers was a bold one, which was justified by success.

They had met with the determined opposition of Mr Merriman (the Cape premier), of the Orange Free State Boers, and of the Bond, which had lost the counsel of Hofmeyr.

It was at Rustenburg that the volksraad met in March 1852 to ratify the Sand River Convention granting independence to the Transvaal Boers.

This attitude towards the Kaffirs was one of the many reasons given by the Trek Boers for leaving Cape Colony.

Considerable trouble was caused by the emigrant Boers on either side of the Orange river, where the new corners, the Basutos and other Kaffir tribes, Bushmen and Griquas contended for mastery.

The governor had other serious matters to contend with, including the assertion of British authority over the Boers beyond the Orange river, and the establishment of amicable relations with the Transvaal Boers.

The Basutos, who dwelt in the upper valleys of the Orange river, had subsisted under a semi-protectorate of the British government from 1843 to 1854; but having been left to their own resources on the abandonment of the Orange sovereignty, they fell into a long exhaustive warfare with the Boers of the Free State.

The Boers, except in the immediate vicinity of Cape Town, were a primitive people.

His influence over the Dutch members was supreme, and in addition to directing the policy of the Bond within the Cape Colony, he supported and defended the aggressive expansion policy of President Kruger and the Transvaal Boers.

In 1884 Mr Hofmeyr led the Bond in strongly supporting the Transvaal Boers who had invaded Bechuanaland (q.v.), proclaiming that if the Bechuanaland freebooters were not permitted to retain the territories they had seized, in total disregard of the terms of the conventions of 1881 and 1884, there would be rebellion among the Dutch of Cape Colony.

Fortunately, however, for the peace of Cape Colony at that time, Sir Charles Warren, sent by the imperial government to maintain British rights, removed the invading Boers from Stellaland and Goshen - two so-called republics set up by the Boer freebooters - in March 1885 and no rebellion occurred.

Rhodes's efforts to conciliate the Boers failed - hence the necessity for the Warren mission.

Mr Hofmeyr and the Bond were loud in their denunciation of him, nor can it be denied that the circumstances of the raid greatly embittered againstEngland the Dutch element in Cape Colony, and influenced their subsequent attitude towards the Transvaal Boers.

There is every reason to suppose that this charge was true, and it is consistent with the intrigues which the Boers from time to time practised among the natives.

The effect of these engagements at the very outset of the war, occurring as they did within Cape Colony, was to offer every inducement to a number of the frontier colonial Boers to join their kinsmen of the republics.

The Boers were prolific, and their families large.

In South Africa they might hope that a similar policy would attain a similar result with the Boers.

Towards the end of the year 1900 the war entered on a new phase, and took the form of guerilla skirmishes with scattered forces of marauding Boers.

In December some of these bands entered the Cape Colony and endeavoured to induce colonial Boers to join them.

In this endeavour they met at first with little or no success; but as the year 1901 progressed and the Boers still managed to keep the various districts in a ferment, it was deemed necessary by the authorities to proclaim martial law over the whole colony, and this was done on the 9 th of October 1901.

In November 1906 a small party of Transvaal Boers, who had been employed by the Germans against the Hottentots, entered the colony under the leadership of a man named Ferreira, and began raiding farms and forcibly enrolling recruits.

The Boers of the Transvaal were then beginning to occupy the regions adjacent to Swaziland and in 1855 the Swazis in order to get a strip of territory between themselves and the Zulus, whose power they still dreaded, ceded to the Boers the narrow strip of land north of the Pongola river now known as the Piet Retief district.

With the Boers the Swazis remained on friendly terms and this friendship was extended to the British on the occupation of the Transvaal in 1877.

On the retrocession of the Transvaal in 1881 the independence of the Swazis was recognized by the Boers and the Pretoria convention of that year defined the boundaries of the country.

Immediately afterwards, however, the Boers began a series of efforts to obtain control of the country.

On his refusal the Boers replied to him, "Why do you refuse to sign the paper?

The Boers further added that if the Swazis were relying on the British, they were leaning on a broken reed, and would find themselves left in the lurch.

Later on, in 1887, both Boers and gold prospectors of all nationalities were overrunning his country, and Umbandine asked for a British resident.

The Boers now determined to adopt towards Swaziland the policy which had proved so successful in Zululand.

A colony of Boers settled within the Swazi territories and proclaimed "The Little Free State."

In 1894 a convention was signed between Great Britain and the Transvaal, and the Boers, in spite of the Swazi opposition, assumed administration of the country.

The Boers' object in intriguing to acquire Swaziland was not merely that of obtaining that country.

Ubanu, installed by the Boers as paramount chief in 18 9 4, was a sanguinary despot and was compelled to flee in 1898.

She more than once appealed to the British to cause the Boers to respect the terms of the conventions, and before the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer war in 1899 she took the side of the British.

Before its close the Boers seized Heidelberg and established a republic; they destroyed a detachment of British troops at Bronkhorst Spruit; and they surrounded and attacked the British garrisons in the Transvaal.

Wholly misralculating the strength of the Boers, Sir George Colley, at the end of January 1881, attacked them at Laings Nek, in the north of Natal, and was repulsed with heavy loss.

The following day the Boers attacked the hill, overwhelmed its defenders, and Sir George Colley was himself killed in the disastrous contest on the summit.

Even this great concession did not satisfy the ambition of the Boers, who were naturally elated by their victories.

The foreign population of the Transvaal, which was chiefly English, became in a few years more numerous than the Boers themselves, and they complained that they were deprived of all political rights, that they were subjected to unfair taxation, and that they were hampered in their industry and unjustly treated by the Dutch courts and Dutch officials.

His force, utterly inadequate for the purpose, was stopped by the Boers,, Ia,neSOn and he and his fellow-officers were taken prisoners.

Ignorant of the strength of Great Britain, and elated by the recollection of their previous successes, the Boers themselves believed that a new struggle might give them predominance in South Africa.

In the meantime, while the Boers were silently and steadily continuing their military preparations, the British settlers at Johannesllurg the Uitlanders, as they were calledcontinued to demand consideration for their grievances.

The discussion, which had originally turned on the franchise, was enlarged by the introduction of the question of suzerainty or supremacy; and at last, in the beginning of October, when the rains of an African spring were causing the grass to grow on which the Boer armies were largely dependent for forage, the Boers declared war and invaded Natal.

The same circumstances which had emboldened the Boers to declare war in the autumn of 1899, induced them to renew a guerilla warfare in the autumn of 1900the approach of an African summer supplying the Boers with the grass on which they were dependent for feeding their hardy horses.

When in 1854 independence was conferred on the country the town was chosen by the Boers as the seat of government.

It became noted for the intelligence of its citizens, and for the educational advantages it offered at the time when education among the Boers was thought of very lightly.

Two days later Parnell called the prime minister a " masquerading knight-errant," ready to oppress the unarmed, but submissive to the Boers as soon as he found " that they were able to shoot straighter than his own soldiers."

The new councils very generally passed resolutions of sympathy with the Boers in the South African war.

When the Boers rose in revolt in December 1880 they occupied Laing's Nek to oppose the entry of British reinforcements into the Transvaal.