318 
SOUTHERN AFRICA* 
Government, which, from time to time, were oe~ 
curing, disheartened and displeased every one, 
and it may be readily believed it was not re- 
ceived in the most favourable light by the dis- 
contented Dutch boers. During the fourteen 
years which intervened between 1820 and 1834 r 
the whole of the inhabitants of the Eastern 
frontier of the old colony were kept in a per- 
petual state of "unrest" arising from a series of 
petty thefts and robberies committed by the 
Kaffirs. These were sufficiently palpable to 
make the owners of the plunder feel its loss, 
though not sufficiently extensive or manifest 
to induce the then conciliatory government to 
declare hostility, or provoke disturbance, in 
trying to suppress them. The several wars, 
moreover, as they sprang up one after another, 
were so destructive to property and cattle, that 
the boers had certainly ample cause for feeling 
the miseries of a frontier life. 
About this time a party of them collected 
some twelve or fourteen wagons, and numbering 
in all about twenty persons, headed by some 
Dutchmen, named Piet Nys, Cobus Nys, Haus 
de Lange, Stephanus Maritz, and Gert Rudolph, 
they started to explore Natal, and, taking the 
lower route along the Eastern slopes of the 
Quathlamba or Drakensberg range, they fol- 
lowed nearly the same track by which Dr. 
