In all the great region between the Orange River and the Limpopo these conditions, however, prevailed between 1836 and 1850 to a greater or lesser degree. South of the Vaal a check came through the vicinity of British power and population; but north of that historic river there was little ameliorative influence until about 1864. Marthinus Wessel Pretorius became President of one of the Transvaal sections, or republics, in 1857, and by 1860 had united the entire region under his control. Even then, however, there was a further period of civil war until, in 1864, Pretorius succeeded in obtaining general acceptance by the people and a legal election, with S. J. P. Kruger as Vice-President. He at once resigned the Presidency of the Orange Free State, which he had also held since 1858--but without success to his efforts at uniting the northern and southern republics--and devoted himself to breaking the power of the Baramapulana tribe which had established itself, in great and growing strength, upon the southern banks of the Limpopo and in territory which the Boers thought they should control. During more than three succeeding years the Transvaal tried in vain to subjugate this tribe. The State, however, had no money, and could not even pay for the transport of ammunition from Durban, on one occasion, while its people were not united in the prosecution of the war. The result was a practical withdrawal from the Zoutpansberg region; a recognition of the independence of the Baramapulana under the nominal form of a small annual tribute; and the creation of difficulties amongst other tribes which realized the check thus given to a people who had often oppressed them and frequently attacked their kraals. Wars followed with the Baralong and other clans, and the Republic presently found itself unable to assert its authority over the natives within its claimed sphere of supremacy, or to even hold its own territory intact. By 1870, when the Transvaal became mixed up in the Diamond Fields controversy and entered into the arbitration resulting in the Keate Award, the condition of the people was deplorable. [Sidenote: Ignorance and Isolation] The generation which was now grown up had absolutely no knowledge of anything beyond their own family circle, and had no acquaintance whatever with books, or history, or external affairs. The rivers were unbridged, the Treasury was empty, the salaries of the officials were only occasionally paid and trade was carried on by barter in the absence of gold or silver. The natives around them could not be more densely ignorant, or more completely isolated, than were these farmers on the veldt with all their thriving flocks and herds and stores of grain and vegetables and fruit. Whatever the poverty of intellect, or knowledge, or the primitive nature of their government, there was never any lack of food and wealth of cattle amongst the Dutch of the Transvaal. Like