The abolition of slavery was the immediate cause which led to "the Great Trek" in 1837, when many hundreds of Dutch colonist-farmers or "Boers," as they now came to be called, went forth with their waggons and women and children and belongings into the vast, unknown, mysterious, remote lands which then bordered upon the colony. They settled down in what is now Natal, the Orange Free State, and the southern Transvaal. Natal was annexed by England in 1843; the Orange Free State in 1848, after the Boers had been defeated at Boomplaats in the first real engagement fought in South Africa between the English and the Dutch colonists. [Illustration: "STUCK" ON THE DRAKENSBERG. The Drakensberg Mountains form the northern boundary of Natal, dividing that colony from the Orange Free State. The passes are of a difficult and often dangerous nature for waggon-transit.] [Illustration: FORDING A RIVER IN THE TRANSVAAL. Except after heavy rains all the rivers are easily crossed at the different drifts or fords, and after a long, dusty trek, the team of sixteen oxen enjoy the coolness of the water, and linger in the stream for as long as their drivers will permit.] [Sidenote: England recognises the Republics.] In 1852 the independence of the Transvaal was recognised by the Sand River Convention, with the express stipulation that slavery should never be permitted within the territories of the Republic. Two years later England abandoned the Orange Free State for no reason whatever, except her dislike for onerous responsibilities. All this while war with the Kaffir tribes had continued, in which British soldiers did most of the work and the British people paid most of the cost. All this while, too, one able man after another was going out from England to govern South Africa, and, because his ways were not the home government's ways, was returning in disgrace. Sir Benjamin D'Urban, Sir Harry Smith, Sir George Grey, all walked the same sad road; all did what was wise, far-sighted, and just; all gained the respect of the English and the Dutch in the colony, and all alike were over-ruled, interfered with, or recalled. Jerusalem stoned the prophets; England preferred not to listen to them: either had in the end to pay bitterly for this refusal to hear and learn the truth. [Sidenote: 1854-1877.] _The Zulu War._] And thus there grew up in South Africa two independent Dutch communities, outside the pale of our Empire, and this, too, in a country which nature clearly meant to be one organic whole. [Sidenote: Their attitude toward us.]