Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/261

 and thus was gradually constituted a little commonwealth of wandering adventurers, dwelling in tents or in frail huts of foliage, and like the Bedouins at the other end of the continent, following their herds arms in hand.

In 1848, after the battle of Boomplaats, which for a time extinguished the political independence of the Orange Free State, numerous fugitives from that region sought refuge with their kinsmen beyond the Vaal. Then in reply to the English, who had eet a price of £2,000 on the head of the leader, Pretorius, that sturdy Boer was elected president of the new republic. Four years later, in 1852,

the independence of the Transvaal was recognised by the British Government itself.

But the everlasting wars between the Dutch and the natives still continued, and were at times accompanied by atrocious massacres and wholesale extermination. Every advance made by the white intruders towards the north was marked by a trail of blood. Thus the dominant British power never lacked pretexts, and occasionally urgent reasons of state policy and humanity, to intervene and arbitrate between the hostile parties. After the discovery of the goldfields in the eastern districts of the republic, followed by a large immigration of British subjects, other interests were created. Hence interference became imperative when the victorious tribes in the north-east threatened to overrun the whole country, exhausted by a series of reverses in the field, and already on the verge of national bankruptcy.