When the news of his death reached his friends they became greatly aroused, and, arming themselves, vowed to expel the English "tyrants" from the country. The English soldiers captured five of the leaders, and on March 6, 1816, hanged them on the same scaffold at Slagter’s Nek, a name afterward given to the locality because of the bungling work of the hangmen and the ghastly scenes presented when the scaffold fell to the ground, bearing with it the half-dead prisoners. The story of this event in the Boer history is as familiar to the Dutch schoolboy as that of the Boston Tea-Party is to the American lad, and its repetition never fails to arouse a Boer audience to the highest degree of anger. The primal cause of the departure of the Boers from Cape Colony, or the "Great Trek,"[#] as it is popularly known, was the ill treatment which they received from the British administration in connection with the emancipation of their slaves and the depredations of hordes of thieving native tribes. The Boers had agreed about 1830 to emancipate all their slaves, and they had received from the British Government promises of ample compensation. [#] To trek is to travel from place to place in ox-wagons. A trek generally refers to an organized migration of settlers to another part of the country. After the slaves had been freed, and the majority of the Boer farmers had become bankrupt by the proceeding, the Government offered less than half the promised compensation. The Boers naturally and indignantly refused to accept less than the amounts England had promised of her own free will. The Boers felt sorely aggrieved, but, being in the minority in the colony, could secure no redress. Several years after the slaves had been freed great hordes of thieving natives swept across the frontiers, and in several months inflicted these losses upon the farmers: 706 farmhouses partially or totally destroyed by fire; 60 farm wagons destroyed; 5,713 horses, 112,000 head of cattle, and 162,000 sheep stolen. The value of the property destroyed and stolen by the blacks amounted to almost two million dollars. Much of the live stock was recovered by the Boer farmers, who had the boldness to pursue the robbers into their mountain fastnesses, but the Government did not allow them to hold even such cattle as they identified as having been driven away by the natives, but compelled them to yield all to the Government. When they asked for compensation for restoring the property to the Government, the Boers received such a promise from the governor, D’Urban; but Lord Glenelg, the British colonial secretary, vetoed the suggestion, and informed the Boers that their conduct in recovering the stolen property was outrageous and unworthy of English subjects.