Then began the real history of Natal which like so many other parts of South Africa,--like the greater part of that South Africa which we now govern,--was first occupied by Dutchmen trekking away from the to them odious rule of British Governors, British officers, British laws,--and what seemed to them to be mawkish British philanthropy. The time is so recent that I myself have been able to hear the story told by the lips of those who were themselves among the number of indignant emigrants,--of those who had barely escaped when their brethren and friends had been killed around them by the natives. “Why did you leave your old home?” I asked one old Dutch farmer whom I found still in Natal. With the urbanity which seemed always to characterize the Dutch he would say nothing to me derogatory to the English. “He says that there was not land enough for their wants,” explained the gentleman who was acting as interpreter between us. But it meant the same thing. The English were pressing on the heels of the Dutchmen. The whole theory of life was different between the two people and remains so to the present day. The Englishman likes to have a neighbour near him; the Dutchman cannot bear to see the smoke of another man’s chimney from his own front door. The Englishman would fain grow wheat; the Dutchman is fond of flocks and herds. The Englishman is of his nature democratic;--the Dutchman is patriarchal. The Englishman loves to have his finger in every pie around him. The Dutchman wishes to have his own family, his own lands, above all his own servants and dependants, altogether within his own grasp, and cares for little beyond that. There had come various laws in the Cape Colony altogether antagonistic to the feelings of the Dutch farmer, and at last in 1834, came the emancipation act which was to set free all the slaves in 1838. Although the Dutch had first explored Natal before that act came into operation,--it had perhaps more to do with the final exodus of the future Natalians than any other cause. The Dutchman of South Africa could not endure the interference with his old domestic habits which English laws were threatening and creating.