There the original Voortrekkers had scattered themselves on both sides of the Vaal River, and helped to found the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. As may be imagined at this juncture, the natural hostility to the British, which has now become part of the Boer character, was growing apace. The voluntary exiles from Natal, on moving to the north of the Orange River, determined to evade the British, and proclaim the whole of that locality an independent Republic. The authorities at the Cape, however, frustrated the new struggle for independence. They laid claim for Great Britain to the whole territory east of E. long. 22 deg. and south of S. lat. 25 deg., with the exception of the land already owned by Portugal or by friendly native chiefs. [Illustration: CAPE TOWN, DEVIL'S PEAK, TABLE MOUNTAIN, AND LION'S HEAD FROM TABLE BAY. Photo by Wilson, Aberdeen] It may be remembered that one of the causes of the great Trek was the restoration of their province to Kaffirs, thereby according to the blacks an independence that was not enjoyed by the Boers. No astonishment, therefore, will be felt at the exasperation of the Boers when they found that the Cape Government had entered into treaties with the Griquas--treaties which seemed to them to promise more freedom to the savage than was accorded to themselves. Grievances of many kinds--some real and some ridiculous--continued daily to occur. Things serious and things trivial were liable to cause them equal indignation. According to Livingstone, the ignorant followers of Potgieter--who were posted at Magaliesberg, a thousand miles from the Cape--were moved to wrath merely by the arrival of Herschel's great telescope at the Cape Observatory! What right, said they, had the Government to erect that huge instrument at the Cape for the purpose of seeing what they were doing behind the Kashan mountains?