result that a considerable proportion of the already inadequate sum was
retained in the hands of agents.

The object of the Great Trek was deliverance from the harsh and hostile
jurisdiction of the British Government, and the setting up of a new and
independent Boer community in Natal, which was reported to be a promised
land flowing with milk and honey. The Boers proposed to shake themselves
free from the Egyptian and to occupy Canaan.

The _voortrekkers_, among whom was the boy Paul Kruger, slowly passed
away towards the north and crossed the Orange River. Moshesh, the chief
of the Basutos, watched curiously from his mountains the trains of
wagons strung out on the veld, but refrained from molesting the
emigrants. Not so Moselekatse,[5] a chief who had formerly broken away
from Chaka and had set himself up beyond the Vaal, and who subsequently
founded the Matabele Kingdom in which he was succeeded by his son
Lobengula. He swooped down upon the advanced parties, who defended
themselves with success and afterwards chastised him in his own country,
in which, hidden from his eyes, lay the gold-bearing reefs of
Johannesburg.

Meanwhile the British Government had forged a useless and clumsy weapon
for the coercion of its "erring and misguided" subjects. It was held by
the lawyers that the trekkers could not at will and by the simple
process of migration throw off their allegiance to the Crown of England,
and a declaratory Act was passed under which all British subjects south
of Latitude 25, whether within or without the colony, could be arrested
and punished.

The Boer scouts discovered passes over the Drakensberg which gave them a