In 1836 a company of trekkers about 300 strong, the second that crossed the Orange River, was under the command of Hendrick Potgeiter and attacked by native warriors, twenty-five trekkers were killed, but the main body were warned and forming a laager of wagons with barricades of thorn bushes. They were able to beat off the assailants. Paul Kruger, a boy of ten years, was one of the defenders. Henry M. Stanley, M.P., the famous African explorer, writing at Pretoria in November, 1897, gives a graphic sketch of President Kruger, "fully dressed in the usual black suit and little old-fashioned top hat, smoking on the veranda of his house." This was the first glimpse Mr. Stanley had of the great ruler upon whom he was calling, and the historical correspondent was shown into the spacious saloon, finding opposite to him "a large and coarse oil painting" of Kruger. Stanley says in his striking and unreserved way: [Sidenote: Not a Bad Likeness of President Kruger] "The history of the painting I do not know, but as it is permitted to be hung so prominently in the reception room, it is to be presumed that the President and his friends regard it as a faithful likeness, and are consequently proud of it. This small fact proved to be the ABC of my study of the man of destiny of South Africa. It was clear that neither Kruger nor his friends knew anything of art, for the picture was an exaggerated reproduction of every defect in the President's homely features, the low, narrow, unintellectual brow, over small eyes, and heavy, massive expanse of face beneath. The man himself was almost beautiful in comparison with the monster on the canvas, and I really could not help pitying him for his innocent admiration of a thing that ought to be cast into the fire. But presently the President spoke--a mouthful of strange guttural sounds--in a voice that was like a loud gurgle, and as the great jaws and cheeks and mouth heaved and opened, I stole a glance at the picture, and it did not seem to me then as if the painter had libeled the man. At any rate, the explosive dialect so expanded the cheeks and widened the mouth, that I perceived some resemblance to the brutal picture."