It cannot be denied that these conventions of 1852 and 1854 created two new and independent states. Nor can it be denied that in consenting to their creation the action of the British government was taken under no pressure of war, under no powerful foreign interference, but altogether of its own free will, and with the conviction that in cutting loose from undesirable and disputed territory it was acting for the good of the empire. Canon Knox Little, in his “South Africa,” calls this action of the British government “a serious blunder.” Be that as it may, the Africanders acted in perfect consistency with all their former aspirations and claims, and they made no blunders in the negotiations that secured to them independent national existence. The British “blunder”—if blunder it was—was written in a formal official document, and subscribed by the authorised representatives of the government, appointed expressly to give effect to imperial legislation, and can no more be repudiated righteously than can a written contract between private individuals. CHAPTER VII. THE AFRICANDERS’ SECOND TREK TO THE NORTH. The purview intended to be given in these pages requires that we now look back to Natal, and to the condition and movements of the Africanders living in that region after it became British territory. As has been stated in chapter V., the English took forcible possession of Natal in 1843. Two years later it was made a dependency of the older colony at the Cape; in 1856 it was constituted a separate colony, and so remains to this day. A small minority of the Africanders—about five hundred families—being greatly attached to the homes they had founded in that most attractive part of South Africa, reconciled themselves to the British administration and remained. But the majority, including all the fiercer and more restless spirits, took their families and goods, their flocks and herds, and once more trekked in search of independence. Their course lay northwestward across the mountains to the elevated plateaus of the Orange River district and the Transvaal. Very reluctantly the Africanders abandoned sunny and fruitful Natal, and the one hold they had ever gained of a part of the coast. But a goodly land and access to the sea, to be of great value in their esteem, must be associated with freedom to govern themselves and to deal with the native population as an inferior and servile race not entitled to civil equality with the whites.