A homogeneous Dutch community grew up in this remote region--for the Cape was, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, one of the least-explored and most out-of-the-way parts of the earth--which knew no literature but the Bible, which preserved the manners and traditions of the seventeenth century, and which from its frequent disputes with the Dutch East India Company's tyrannical government imbibed a rooted aversion to all laws and restraints. It was a strong, old-world community, which retrograded rather than advanced as time went on, which in its utter isolation escaped the soothing influence of civilisation, and in which every man, as far as he could, did that which was right in his own eyes. [Illustration: THE PAARDEKRAAL COMMEMORATION. The Paardekraal (Horse-pound) Monument erected near Krugersdorp by the Boers to commemorate their independence. Periodically great meetings are held here, when prayers are offered and patriotic speeches made. Beneath the monument is a sort of cellar, into which every Boer in passing throws a stone as a token of his visit.] [Sidenote: Unpopularity of the Dutch East India Company. British capture Capetown.] The colonists were perpetually in conflict with the hated Dutch East India Company; they were in open revolt when in 1795 a British force appeared off Table Bay and captured Capetown. There was at first no antagonism between the conquerors and the colonists. When the Cape was re-occupied in 1806, it having been restored to Holland in the peace of 1802, Sir Home Popham was able to trust very largely to the colonists for the defence of the place. He lays emphasis on their dislike for the Dutch Company and on their loyalty to the Union Jack. [Illustration: A LAAGER, SHOWING THE LONG CAPE WAGGONS USED IN A "TREK." When Boers are trekking, or travelling from one place to another, they outspan their waggons at night and put them end-on in the form of an oblong. The cattle are tethered in the centre, and the interstices of the wheels filled up with wacht-een-beitje or wait-a-bit thornbush.] [Sidenote: [1837-1854] It was not until England began to interfere with the treatment of the natives by the Dutch colonists that Dutch discontent first showed itself. The prohibition of the use of the Dutch language in official documents and in the law courts, the abolition of slavery in 1834--for which most inadequate compensation was made by England--and the meddling in the government of the colony by doctrinaires in England who knew and cared little or nothing for the peculiar circumstances, familiar to the men on the spot, caused general irritation amongst a people always averse to law and order, and by nature inclined to nomadic habits. [Sidenote: "The Great Trek."]