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How they were attacked and massacred by the Zulus, and how they, in their turn, defeated the Zulus and broke their power, how Natal became a British colony, all this is ancient history. The pioneers, objecting to English rule, quitted Natal. Some of them forded the Vaal River and they founded the Transvaal or South African Republic.
He must have regretted that the strong hand and will of the man of Waterval Drift, Kitchener's Kopje, Sannah's Post, and Mostert's Hoek, were not with him on the right bank of the Vaal to animate the shrinking burghers of the South African Republic.
Meanwhile Frits had returned from the Free State, and my knee was cured. We each bought ourselves a sturdy pony, and left, with some other burghers, by train for Klerksdorp, from where we went on to Dewetsdrift, on the Vaal River. General Viljoen was guarding the drift there with some hundreds of burghers.
A day later they surrendered: the Orange Free State Rebellion, in all its futility, was over. Just before and during the Commander-in-Chief's long trek, other bodies of loyalist troops had been engaging the rebels. Both these actions took place in the neighbourhood of Pretoria. As a result of them and the death of Beyers in the Vaal River, the Rebellion in the Transvaal was virtually smashed.
He had put the Vaal between himself and Knox, who was on the right bank blindly nosing the drifts. He knew from recent experience that his pursuers, with their imperfect methods of acquiring information, would hunt by sight and not by scent, and he had the mobility of a hare as well as the instinct of a fox.
The hardest part of her task will be the passage of the Vaal, where a great battle will be fought, and the capture of Pretoria, which is reported to be well fortified.
The Free State Government rejected their overtures, but Pretorius was led to believe that so many of the Free State burghers were anxious for this union that all that was necessary for him to do, in order to effect it, was to march in with an armed force. He therefore placed himself at the head of a commando, and crossed the Vaal, where he was joined by a certain number of Free State burghers.
On our march to Zilverbank a farm on the Waterval River I did not require any guide, for I knew the surroundings, having lived there for two years. After breakfast on the following morning we went on to within four or five miles south of Hexrivier farm, about three miles to the north of the Vaal River. There we off-saddled; and shortly after General De la Rey took leave of us.
He lay perdu for some days near the left bank of the Vaal, while a net with spacious meshes was being cast to ensnare him.
Those three were, the dastardly murder of Captain Elliot, who was shot by his Boer escort while crossing the Vaal river on parole; the murder of a man named Malcolm, who was kicked to death in his own house by Boers, who afterwards put a bullet through his head to make the job "look better;" and the murder of a doctor named Barber, who was shot by his escort on the border of the Free State.
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