the proprietor of a farm of about 3,000 to 10,000 acres, who combines
stock-breeding with a variety of other farming enterprises as well,
according to the soil and locality. As a national designation, the term
"Boer" conveys the distinction from the recently arrived Dutchman, who
is called "Hollander." Hollanders, again, delight of late to claim the
Boer nation as their kith and kin, but prefer to ignore the existence of
the French Huguenot factor.

The great "trek," with families and movables, as the emigration movement
is called, occurred in 1836; some families started even before, and
other contingents followed shortly afterwards. After many vicissitudes
and nearly twenty years of wanderings, and a nomadic life attended with
untold hardships and dangers, intermittent conflicts with native tribes,
and at times also contests with British forces, they were eventually
permitted, under treaty with England, to settle down and to constitute
the independent Orange Free State and Transvaal Republics. That was in
1854 and 1852 respectively.

But, until then, progress in the British colonies and peaceful relations
with the several Kaffir nations had at times been sadly impeded by the
aggressive native policy pursued by the Boers after the pattern adopted
from the previous Dutch _régime_, which admitted of slavery, whilst
English law had abolished and forbade that practice as contrary to a
soundly moral method of civilizing natives and inimical to prosperous
and peaceable colonial progress. Broils and wars between Boers and
Kaffirs had been almost incessant, and intervals of peace only proved
their mutually latent hostility. Besides being occasionally engaged in
unavoidable wars with neighbouring tribes themselves, it became
frequently incumbent upon the British military authorities to intervene
in conflicts induced by the Boers, alternately protecting them against