Vaal Sentence Examples

Among these lavas is the "pipe" amygdaloid of which many blocks have been transported great distances down the Vaal river.

Flowing between steep banks, considerably below the general level of the country, here about 3000 ft., it receives, between the Vaal confluence and the Atlantic, a distance of more than 400 m.

In the neighbourhood of the Vaal, confluence, where the river passes through alluvial land, and at some other places, the waters of the Orange are used, and are capable of being much more largely used, for irrigation purposes.

Mission stations north of the 'Orange were established a few years later, and in 1813 the Rev. John Campbell, after visiting Griqualand West for the London Missionary Society, traced the Harts river, and from its junction with the Vaal followed the latter stream to its confluence with the Orange, journeying thence by the banks of the Orange as far as Pella, in Little Namaqualand, discovering the great falls.

It is built by the banks of a tributary of the Vet affluent of the Vaal, and is a trading centre for a large grain and pastoral district.

It became the capital of a quasi-independent Boer state, which included considerable areas north of the Vaal.

That Spion Kop, with Vaal Kranz and Pieter's Hills, are heights on the northern bank of the upper Tugela.

In a dispute between the Transvaal and the Orange Free State he decided (February 1870) that the Klip river and not the upper Vaal was the frontier stream.

The rest of the country is divided between the drainage areas of the Vaal and Limpopo.

The Vaal (q.v.) rises in the high veld in the Ermelo district not far from the source of the Komati and that of the Usuto tributary of the Pongola.

A broad ring of crystalline rocks (Swaziland schists) encircles the Transvaal except on the south, where the Karroo formation extends over the Vaal River.

The following subdivisions have been recognized by Molengraaff Karroo System, Transvaal System, Vaal River System, South African Primary System.

The conglomerates consist almost entirely of pebbles of quartz set in a hard 2 At the Standerton gauge on the Vaal in 1905-1906, a year of extreme drought, the total flow was 8,017,000,000 cub.

Potchefstroom, in the south near the Vaal (pop. 9348), is the oldest town in the Transvaal.

Klerksdorp (4276) is also near the Vaal, S.S.W.

Besides the Pretoria fields there are diamondiferous areas (alluvial diggings) in the Bloemhof district on the Vaal river north-east of Kimberley, and in other regions.

The principal collieries are those at Boksburg and at Brakpan, also on the East Rand, with a coal area of 2400 acres; at Vereeniging and Klerksdorp, near the Vaal; at Watervaal, 12 m.

At that time the region between the Vaal and Limpopo was scarcely known to Europeans.

Such was the situation when Boer emigrants first crossed the Vaal.

The first party to cross the Vaal consisted of 98 persons under the leadership of Louis Trichard and Jan van Rensburg.

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.

After the Matabele peril had been removed, many farmers trekked across the Vaal and occupied parts of the district left derelict.

The first permanent white settlement north of the Vaal was made by a party under Potgieter's leadership. That commandant had in March 1838 gone to Natal, and had endeavoured to avenge the massacre of Piet Retief and his comrades by the Zulus.

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.

Up to 1845 Potgieter continued to exercise authority over the Boer communities on both sides of the Vaal.

At this time there were settled north of the Vaal about 5000 families of European extraction - about 40,000 persons, including young children.

The Sand River Convention of 1852 had not defined the western border of the state, and the discovery of gold at Tati to the northwest, together with the discovery of diamonds on the Vaal in 1867, offered Pretorius every inducement to extend his boundary.

Although to-day the great diamond mines are south of the Vaal River, the early discoveries of diamonds were made chiefly on the northern bank of the Vaal, near the site of the town now known as Barkly West.

The eastern boundary of the new territory was made to include the region between the Harts river and the Vaal, in which the diamond diggings were situated, but not the Bloemhof district.

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.

Brand had arranged, in the teeth of the strongest protests from Kruger, that the Cape railway should extend to Bloemfontein and subsequently to the Vaal river.

The Delagoa Bay railway being at length completed to Pretoria and Johannesburg, Kruger determined to take steps to bring the Rand traffic over The Netherlands railway Drifts began by putting a prohibitive tariff on goods from the Vaal river.

Not to be coerced in this manner, the Rand merchants proceeded to bring their goods on from the Vaal by wagon.

Most serious of all was the pressure between Bloemfontein and the Vaal, where the Free Staters, under De Wet and other commanders, had initiated the guerrilla as soon as Botha and the Transvaalers retired over the Vaal and ceased to defend them by regular operations.

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

No natural boundary marks the western frontier, a line across the veld (separating it from the Griqualand West district of the Cape) from the Orange to the Vaal rivers.

The whole country forms part of the drainage basin of the Orange river, its streams, with insignificant exceptions, being tributaries of the Vaal or Caledon affluents of that river.

The watershed between the Vaal and Caledon is formed by chains of hills, which, leaving the main range of the Drakensberg at Mont aux Sources, sweep in semicircles west and south.

The chief tributaries of the Vaal (q.v.) wholly or partly within the province are, going from east to west, the Klip (this stream from near its source to its confluence with the Vaal divides the Free State from the Transvaal), the Wilge, Rhenoster, Vet, Modder and Reit.

All the affluents of the Vaal mentioned flow north or west.

The Vaal itself for the greater part of its course forms the boundary between the province and the Transvaal.

Except the Caledon, Vaal and Orange, they are dry or nearly dry for three or four months in the year, but in the rainy season they are often raging torrents.

Coal-mines are worked in various districts in the north near the Vaal, notably at Vierfontein, and at Clydesdale, which lies a few miles south of Vereeniging.

The majority of the inhabitants appear to have been members of the Bechuana division of the Bantus, but in the valleys of the - Orange and Vaal were Korannas and other Hottentots, and in the Drakensberg and on the western border lived numbers of Bushmen.

Potgieter, who concluded an agreement with Makwana, the chief of the Bataung tribe of Bechuanas, ceding to the farmers the country between the Vet and Vaal rivers.

The emigrants soon came into collision with Mosilikatze, raiding parties of Zulus attacking Boer hunters who had crossed the Vaal without seeking permission from that chieftain.

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.

He recognized the failure of the attempt to govern on the lines of the treaties with the Griquas and Basutos, and on the 3rd of February 1848 he issued a proclamation declaring British sovereignty over the country between the Orange and the Vaal eastward to the Drakensberg.

Thereupon Pretorius, with those most bitterly opposed to British rule, retreated across the Vaal.

In 1851 Moshesh joined the republican party in the Sovereignty in an invitation to Pretorius to recross the Vaal.

Many of the burghers would have at this time welcomed union with the Transvaal, but learning from Sir George Grey that such a union would nullify the conventions of 1852 and 1854 and necessitate the reconsideration of Great Britain's policy towards the native tribes north of the Orange and Vaal rivers, the project dropped.

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 years1870-1871a Discovery large number of diggers had settled on the diamond of the fields near the junction of the Vaal and Orange rivers, which were situated in part on land claimed by the Fi Griqua chief Nicholas Waterboer and by the Free State.

Save the Vaal river no frontier was indicated, and " boasting," writes Livingstone in his Missionary Travels, " that the English had given up all the blacks into their power.

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.

A rush of prospectors at once took place to the banks of the Orange and Vaal rivers, and resulted in considerable discoveries, so that in 1870 there was a mining camp of no less than 10,000 persons on the " River Diggings."

But towards the close of 1870 stones were found at Jagersfontein and at Dutoitspan, far from the Vaal river, and led to a second great rush of prospectors, especially to Dutoitspan, and in 1871 to what is now the Kimberley mine in the neighbourhood of the latter.

The River Diggings on the Vaal river are still worked upon a small scale, but the production from this source is so limited that they are of little account in comparison with the mines in the blue ground.

When the lad, who had already taken part in fights with the Matabele and the Zulus, was fourteen his family settled north of the Vaal and were among the founders of the Transvaal state.

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

Sir Harry, deeming no other course open to him, proclaimed (February 1848) the country between the Orange and Vaal rivers British territory, under the name of the Orange River Sovereignty.

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.

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.

In that year, following smaller finds of diamonds on the banks of the Vaal and Orange rivers, the diamond mines of Du Toits Pan and Bultfontein were opened up. In.

In the middle section, where both banks are in the colony, the Orange receives from the north-east its greatest tributary, the Vaal.

The Vaal, within the boundaries of the colony, is increased by the Harts river from the north-east and the Riet river from the south-east, whilst just within the colony the Riet is joined by the Modder.

From the north, below the Vaal confluence, the Nosob, Molopo and Kuruman, intermittent streams which traverse Bechuanaland, send their occasional surplus waters to the Orange.

The Great Trek, as it is called, lasted from 1836 to 1840, the trekkers, who numbered about 7000, founding communities with a republican form of government beyond the Orange and Vaal rivers, and in Natal, where they had been preceded, however, by British emigrants.

The discovery of diamonds on the Orange river in 1867, followed immediately afterwards by the discovery of diamonds on the Vaal river, led to the rapid occupation and development of a tract of country which had hitherto been but sparsely inhabited.

In 1891 the Free State railway was still farther extended to Viljoen's Drift on the Vaal river, and in 1892 it reached Pretoria and Johannesburg.

Their action in what is known as the Vaal River Drift question will best illustrate the line of action which the Transvaal government believed it expedient to adopt.

The Cape government, for the purposes of carrying the railway from the Vaal river to Johannesburg, had advanced the sum of f600,000 to the Netherlands railway and the Transvaal government conjointly; at the same time it was stipulated that the Cape government should have the right to fix the traffic rate until the end of 1894, or until such time as the Delagoa Bay - Pretoria line was completed.

In order to compete against this very high rate, the merchants of Johannesburg began removing their goods from the Vaal river by waggon.

Thereupon President Kruger arbitrarily closed the drifts (fords) on the Vaal river, and thus prevented through waggon traffic, causing an enormous block of waggons on the banks of the Vaal.

In 1820 Moffat and his wife left the Cape and proceeded to Griqua Town, and ultimately settled at Kuruman, among the Bechuana tribes living to the west of the Vaal river.

It is built on the right bank of the Vaal, here spanned by a bridge.

Originally called Klipdrift, the town was the first founded by the diggers after the discovery in 1867 of diamonds along the valley of the Vaal, and it had for some years a large floating population.

The Vaal drains the greater part of the plateau, flowing westward towards the Atlantic. The waters of the northern escarpments of the plateau and of all the region farther north are carried to the Indian Ocean by the Limpopo (q.v.) and its tributaries the Olifants, Great Marico, Great Letaba, &c. Both the Vaal and the Limpopo in their main course have high steep banks.

For a considerable distance the Vaal forms the frontier between the province and the Orange Free State and in similar manner the Limpopo separates the Transvaal from Bechuanaland and Rhodesia.

Peaceful overtures having failed, Pretorius and Paul Kruger placed themselves at the head of a commando which crossed the Vaal with the object of enforcing union, but the Free State compelled their withof drawal (see Orange Free State).

It was about 1820 that Mosilikatze (properly Umsilikazi), a general in the Zulu army, having incurred Chaka's wrath by keeping back part of the booty taken in an expedition, fled with a large following across the Drakensberg and began to lay waste a great part of the country between the Vaal and Limpopo rivers.