Twenty-Five Years in a Waggon in South Africa: Sport and Travel in South AfricaAnderson, Andrew A.
History
Twenty-Five Years in a Waggon in South Africa: Sport and Travel in South Africa
Anderson, Andrew A.
Africa, Southern -- Description and travel; Anderson, Andrew A. -- Travel -- Africa, Southern
When the Boers reached Moroka's town, they were reduced to the greatest
extremity, and were received with the greatest hospitality and kindness
by the natives; they remained until the following year, getting supplies
and fitting out another commando at Thaba Nchu. Again they started on
an expedition to attack Moselikatze, accompanied by a large force of
Moroka's people under his own command, whilst Gert Maritz commanded the
Boer contingent. The present chief Montsioa, then a young man, also
aided the Boers in person with men, and a small Griqua force, under a
petty chief Bloem, completed the little army. A great part of
Moselikatze's warriors were killed, and he had to fly north with the
remnant of his army, and eventually settled in the country his people
now occupy called Matabeleland, showing that the main success of the
Boers in gaining a footing in the Transvaal was through the Barolong
tribe, of which the chief Montsioa was a captain.
In the same year Potgieter took possession of the south part of the
Transvaal, then, as it is now, an open uninteresting country--rolling
grass plains, with a few isolated hills; and he laid out the town of
Potchefstroom, in 1839, which is partly called after his name and partly
after the river upon which it is built, on an extensive open plain, as
all towns were then built, that no enemy could advance to it without
being seen, and it became the capital of the country until the seat of
Government was removed to Pretoria in 1860. At that time the country
was full of large game--elephants, rhinoceros, and giraffe browsed on
the banks of the Vaal, down to the Orange river.
Soon after, Potgieter left Potchefstroom and went north-east, and laid
out the village of Origstad, now a gold-field. Other Boers in 1847
followed, and being mounted on horses with rifles, had no difficulty in
destroying the natives, who had only the assagai and arrows, as they
advanced into the country.
Another party went south from Origstad, and built the town of Lydenburg,
that district being formed into a republic, separate from the republic
at Potchefstroom; but, by common consent, in 1860 they were united into
one.
In 1834 a party of Boers, numbering twenty-seven families, under the
command of Rensburg and Trichard, endeavoured to reach the Indian Ocean.
Passing down the Olifanta river, they crossed the mountains, after many
hardships; where they divided. Rensburg went north, Trichard and his
party travelled south-east towards Delagoa Bay. Many of them died on
the road; the remainder were sent on to Natal by the Portuguese
Governor. Rensburg's party was never heard of again, showing the
restless nature of these discontented Boers. They were all killed, or
died of fever.
Although they had secured the fertile plains of the Transvaal, where
there was more land than they could hope to occupy, their thirst for
more land was still unsated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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