communities on earth. Others, much the larger part of the people, moved
further; they crossed the Vaal River, and in that wild northern land,
where no Englishman’s foot had passed, they founded after some years
the gallant little Republic we all know to-day as the Transvaal. How
that Republic was founded is a story we all know. Alone, unbacked by
any great Imperial or national power, with their old flint-lock guns in
their hands as their only weapons, with wife and children, they passed
into that yet untrodden land. The terrible story of their struggles,
the death of Piet Retief and his brave followers, killed by treachery
by the Zulu Chief, Dingaan, the victory of the survivors over him,
which is still commemorated by their children as Dingaan’s Day, the
whole, perhaps, the most thrilling record of the struggle and suffering
of a people in founding their State that the world can anywhere
produce. Paul Kruger can still remember how, after that terrible fight,
women and children left alone in the fortified laager, he himself
being but a child, they carried on bushes to fortify the laager, women
with children in their arms, or pregnant, laboring with strength of
men to entrench themselves against evil worse than death. Here in the
wilderness they planted their homes, and founded their little State.
Men and women are still living who can remember how, sixty years ago,
the spot where the great mining camp of Johannesburg now stands was a
great silence where they drew up their wagon and planted their little
home, and