But the details of the measure were less honourable than the principle.  It was carried out suddenly, so that the country had no time to adjust itself to the new conditions.  Three million pounds were ear-marked for South Africa, which gives a price per slave of from sixty to seventy pounds, a sum considerably below the current local rates.  Finally, the compensation was made payable in London, so that the farmers sold their claims at reduced prices to middlemen.  Indignation meetings were held in every little townlet and cattle camp on the Karoo.  The old Dutch spirit was up—­the spirit of the men who cut the dykes.  Rebellion was useless.  But a vast untenanted land stretched to the north of them.  The nomad life was congenial to them, and in their huge ox-drawn wagons—­like those bullock-carts in which some of their old kinsmen came to Gaul—­they had vehicles and homes and forts all in one.  One by one they were loaded up, the huge teams were inspanned, the women were seated inside, the men, with their long-barrelled guns, walked alongside, and the great exodus was begun.  Their herds and flocks accompanied the migration, and the children helped to round them in and drive them.  One tattered little boy of ten cracked his sjambok whip behind the bullocks.  He was a small item in that singular crowd, but he was of interest to us, for his name was Paul Stephanus Kruger.

It was a strange exodus, only comparable in modern times to the sallying forth of the Mormons from Nauvoo upon their search for the promised laud of Utah.  The country was known and sparsely settled as far north as the Orange River, but beyond there was a great region which had never been penetrated save by some daring hunter or adventurous pioneer.  It chanced—­if there be indeed such an element as chance in the graver affairs of man—­that a Zulu conqueror had swept over this land and left it untenanted, save by the dwarf bushmen, the hideous aborigines, lowest of the human race.  There were fine grazing and good soil for the emigrants.  They traveled in small detached parties, but their total numbers were considerable, from six to ten thousand according to their historian, or nearly a quarter of the whole population of the colony.  Some of the early bands perished miserably.  A large number made a trysting-place at a high peak to the east of Bloemfontein in what was lately the Orange Free State.  One party of the emigrants was cut off by the formidable Matabeli, a branch of the great Zulu nation.  The survivors declared war upon them, and showed in this, their first campaign, the extraordinary ingenuity in adapting their tactics to their adversary which has been their greatest military characteristic.  The commando which rode out to do battle with the Matabeli numbered, it is said, a hundred and thirty-five farmers.  Their adversaries were twelve thousand spearmen.  They met at the Marico River, near Mafeking.  The Boers combined the use of their horses and of their rifles so cleverly