35G 
THE WITWATERSRAXD AND 
The various grievances briefly indicated above led to the first 
great “Trek,” or emigration of the Boers, from Ca})e Colony in 
183(5-’37. Taking only their herds and such movables as they 
could load on their wagons, thousands left the country. The 
emigrants themselves maintained that the}' left the colony not 
to avoid law, but lawlessness, and they made it evident that their 
chief motive was to escai)e the .severe yet ineflicient English dom- 
ination. In a manifesto by one of their })rincipal men, Peter 
Ketief, written in 1837 it is a.sserted, “ We quit this colony under 
the full assurance that tlie English government has nothing more 
to require of us and will allow us to govern ourselves without its 
interference in the future.” Vain hope! 
In migrating into tlie wilderness, the Boers natuially came 
into contact with the natives, not the negroes of the United 
States, who came from the West Coast of Africa, nor the Hotten- 
tots of the Cape, hut the great Bantu or Kaffir race, which includes 
the Zulus, Matal)ili, Basutos, etc. These people are of a dark 
bronze hue, and have good athletic figures. They possess some 
excellent traits, but are horribly cruel when once they have 
smelled blood. The Bantus ai)pear to have reached the cape 
about the same time as the Euro])eans, killing out Hottentots 
and Bushmen as they advanced, and waging furious inter-tribal 
wars. Again and again a Bantu tribe, eftectively organized under 
some able chief, has swept a great region clear of human beings. 
When their witch-finding ceremonies are considered as supple- 
menting the unsiiaring slaughter of war, it is remarkable that 
any considerable number of Bantu remained. Nothing but the 
phenomenal fecundity of the race has kept up its numbers. 
The trekking Boers thus met tribes who held their territories 
only by the right of recent and bloody coii(|uest and to whom 
battle was the olqect of life. If the Boers had small compunc- 
tion in taking land from them, it is perhaps not to be wondered 
at. The Boers })aid for it, like the Bantus, with blood. The 
history of the conflicts between the Boers and Zulus is wildly 
romantic. It has been written and cannot be repeated here. 
The greater ]>art of the territory occupied by the South African 
Republic and by the Orange Eree State was absolutely depoi:>u- 
lated by the Matabili (or rebel Zulus) under Moselekatse in 1817. 
Twenty years later this chief and his followers fled to the north 
of the Limpopo river, as the result of independent defeats by the 
Zulu subjects of Dingaan and l)y the Boers. 
When they left Cape Colony a portion of the Boers settled in 
