As inevitable results of the life they led—so isolated and wild—the children grew up untaught; the women, being served by slaves, lost both the Dutch and French habits of thrift and cleanliness; and the men became indifferent to the elegancies of life, and grew more and more stern and narrow-minded on all questions of public policy and religion. But there was no declension of religious fervor. In all their wanderings the Bible went with them as an oracle to be consulted on all subjects, and the altar of family worship never lacked its morning and evening sacrifice. And they retained a passionate love of personal freedom which no effort of the Company’s government could bring under perfect discipline. Magistrates and assessors were appointed in some of the distant stations, but they failed to control the wandering stockmen, who were called Trek Boers because they “trekked” from place to place. Being good marksmen and inured to conflict with wild beasts and wilder men, they formed among themselves companies of fighting men whose duty it was to disperse or destroy the savage Bushmen. These independent military organizations the government recognized and approved by appointing over them a field commander for each district and a subordinate called a field cornet for each subdivision of a district. These officers and their respective commands became permanent features of the system of local government, and the war bands—called commandos—have always been recognized in the records of military operations by the Boers. The administration, through a governor and council appointed by the Dutch East India Company in Holland, was never popular with the colonists. The governor was in no sense responsible to the people he governed. This was one of the causes which prompted the Boers to go out into the wilderness, where distance from the center of authority secured to them greater freedom. In 1779 the disaffected colonists sent commissioners to Holland to demand of the States-General redress of the grievances suffered under the rule of the Dutch East India Company and a share in the government of the colony. This action was due, in part, to actual wrongs inflicted on a liberty-loving people, and, in part, to the spirit of independence which characterized the temper of the age and had led the British colonists in North America to throw off the control of their mother country.