middlemen. Indignation meetings were held in every little townlet
and cattle camp on the Karoo. The old Dutch spirit was up--the
spirit of the men who cut the dykes. Rebellion was useless. But a
vast untenanted land stretched to the north of them. The nomad life
was congenial to them, and in their huge ox-drawn wagons--like
those bullock-carts in which some of their old kinsmen came to
Gaul--they had vehicles and homes and forts all in one. One by one
they were loaded up, the huge teams were inspanned, the women were
seated inside, the men, with their long-barrelled guns, walked
alongside, and the great exodus was begun. Their herds and flocks
accompanied the migration, and the children helped to round them in
and drive them. One tattered little boy of ten cracked his sjambok
whip behind the bullocks. He was a small item in that singular
crowd, but he was of interest to us, for his name was Paul
Stephanus Kruger.

It was a strange exodus, only comparable in modern times to the
sallying forth of the Mormons from Nauvoo upon their search for the
promised laud of Utah. The country was known and sparsely settled
as far north as the Orange River, but beyond there was a great
region which had never been penetrated save by some daring hunter
or adventurous pioneer. It chanced--if there be indeed such an
element as chance in the graver affairs of man--that a Zulu
conqueror had swept over this land and left it untenanted, save by
the dwarf bushmen, the hideous aborigines, lowest of the human
race. There were fine grazing and good soil for the emigrants. They
traveled in small detached parties, but their total numbers were
considerable, from six to ten thousand according to their
historian, or nearly a quarter of the whole population of the
colony. Some of the early bands perished miserably. A large number