132 ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO. 



ing the same. These French Huguenots, nearly all steady, honest 

 and God-fearing folk, became a source of great strength to the 

 rising colony. 



During the last century the Boers spread far and wide into 

 Cape Colony, traversing pathless deserts, waterless karroos, and 

 difficult mountain country, in search of new homes and pastures. 

 Many of them were hunters pure and simple, and followed the ele- 

 phants for their ivory. As they moved inland, magistracies were 

 tardily established in their midst, not lest they might lapse into 

 utter barbarians, but to enable an anxious government to draw its 

 taxation from the land on which they settled. Churches and schools 

 followed the settlers yet more tardily. 



THE REIGN OF THE BOER. 



Far-removed though they have been from churches and pastors, 

 they have yet clung closely to the primitive faith of their fore- 

 fathers. Wherever they have trekked, the great Dutch Bible, often 

 more than two hundred years old, and its lessons, have gone with 

 them. At morning and at night, wherever they may be, prayer and 

 thanksgiving are invariably offered up. 



It is the fashion among the "Uitlanders" to ridicule the long 

 and somewhat dreary prayers of these Dutch farmers; yet, surely 

 it is to the credit of the Boers that, amid every danger and diffi- 

 culty, they have thus preserved their faith. Even when marching 

 to fight the Zulu hosts under Dingaan in Natal, they offered up 

 prayers at every halt, and the 400 farmers who met and conquered 

 10,000 Zulus at the Blood River in 1838 attributed their astonish- 

 ing victory to the idrect intervention of the Lord of Hosts in answer 

 to their supplications. 



In 1796 the British, by arrangement, with the Stadtholder of 

 the Dutch Republic, then a fugitive from the armies of the French 

 Republic, took possession of the Cape, which in 1803 was handed 

 back to the Dutch. In 1806 the British, being then at war with 

 the Dutch, again took possession of the Cape Colony, after a severe 

 struggle near Cape Town. From that time the Cape has been con- 

 tinuously in the hands of Great Britain, 



