Now the time was ripe for England to act and she fell upon them with her army and navy and deprived them of all their rights and liberties. They withstood English domineering for a few years, when many of them, driven to it, openly rebelled. The terrible murder scene at Slagter's Nek was the result. Here five men were hung in the presence of hundreds of men, women and children who had been driven to the scene at the point of English bayonets. When the five patriots were dropped, the scaffold broke and down all came, some half dead from choking, and all writhing in agony. The scaffold was partially repaired and all drawn up, so that they could die as horrible a death as possible. The Boers have never forgotten that awful day and that heartrending scene, and they never will. During the recent war men, women and children were again forced to witness many such revolting scenes, and yet the English beg them to forgive and forget. Back in the thirties, the English became so oppressive that life to the Boers was unendurable, so thousands of them banded together, left their dear old homes and all their property and started on the "Great Trek" to the unsettled country of Natal. Here again they had to contend with the savages, wild beasts and starvation. Hundreds of them were murdered, yet, in the end, they again established themselves in homes and made the wilderness bloom. No sooner were they comfortable, happy and in a flourishing condition than the English fell upon them again and drove them from the land. They now crossed the mountains and sought homes in the great deserts now known as the Transvaal and Free State. At last the English said they would no longer hound them and would allow them to live or die in the desert. Again the Boers had to contend with the savages, wild beasts and starvation. Here they suffered terribly, hundreds of them died and hundreds of women and children were murdered by the savages. Yet they persevered and converted the desert into two of the richest and most flourishing little republics in the world. All this is as fresh as ever in the Boer memory, yet, after the late South African War, the English beg the Boers to forgive and forget. Unfortunately for the Free State, as soon as she began to really flourish, the great diamond fields at Kimberly were discovered. Now England falls upon her, kills a lot of her people and, in the end, robs her of her diamond fields and establishes a little despotism in Kimberly. The diamond fields were alone cut off and annexed to Cape Colony, for there was nothing else in the Free State worth having as far as the English knew. It is at Kimberly that the great "Compound System" was established and is still running in all its glory. Rhodes, Beit, Phillips and Barnato were the prime movers.