We quit this Colony under the full assurance that the English Government has nothing more to require of us, and will allow us to govern ourselves without its interference in future. We are now leaving the fruitful land of our birth, in which we have suffered enormous losses and continual vexation, and are about to enter a strange and dangerous territory; but we go with a firm reliance on an all-seeing, just, and merciful God, whom we shall always fear and humbly endeavour to obey. In the name of all who leave this Colony with me. P. RETIEF. [Sidenote: The English in pursuit.] We journeyed then with our fathers beyond the Orange River into the unknown north, as free men and subjects of no sovereign upon earth. Then began what the English Member of Parliament, Sir William Molesworth, termed a strange sort of pursuit. The trekking Boer followed by the British Colonial Office was indeed the strangest pursuit ever witnessed on earth. [8] The British Parliament even passed a law in 1836 to impose punishments beyond their jurisdiction up to the 25th degree south, and when we trekked further north, Lord Grey threatened to extend this unrighteous law to the Equator. It may be remarked that in this law it was specially enacted that no sovereignty or overlordship was to be considered as established thereby over the territory in question. [Sidenote: The Trichardt Trek.] The first trek was that of Trichardt and the Van Rensburgs. They went to the north, but the Van Rensburgs were massacred in the most horrible way by the Kaffirs, and Trichardt's party reached Delagoa Bay after indescribable sufferings in a poverty-stricken condition, only to die there of malarial fever. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 4: Theal, _History of the Boers_, page 64.] [Footnote 5: _Oceana_, page 34.] [Footnote 6: Theal, page 62.] [Footnote 7: Theal, 102.--Cachet.] [Footnote 8: 6 & 7, William IV., ch. 57.] THE FOUNDING OF NATAL. [Sidenote: Murder of Piet Retief.] The second trek was equally unfortunate. Piet Retief had duly paid for and obtained possession from Dingaan, chief of the Zulus, of that tract of territory now known as Natal, the latter, incited by some Englishmen, treacherously murdered him and his party on the 6th February, 1838; 66 Boers and 30 of their followers perished. The Great Trek thus lost its most courageous and noble-minded leader. [9] Dingaan then sent two of his armies, and they overcame the women and children and the aged at Boesmans River (Blaauw-krantz), where the village of Weenen now stands; 282 white people and 252 servants were massacred. Towards the end of the year we entered the land of this criminal with a small commando of 464 men, and on the 16th December, 1838--since known as "Dingaan's Day," the proudest in our history--we overthrew the military might of the Zulus, consisting of 10,000 warriors, and burnt Dingaan's chief kraal. [Sidenote: No extension of British territory.]