In
the new measures of government there was a succession of vexations also
to colonists attached to the old customs and ordinances. The expense of
the new colonial establishment was a grievance. The adjustment of the
currency aroused bitter complaint. The substitution of English for
Dutch in official papers, and the abolition of the old Dutch courts,
were heavy humiliations. But the keenest resentment was excited by the
measures designed for the protection of Hottentot bond servants and
free natives, and the emancipation act of 1833. There had been a rapid
increase in the importation of slaves from Guinea after the first
conquest of the Colony by the British, but in 1807 the last cargo of
slaves was landed at Cape Town, and the slave trade was formally
brought to an end by law in the following year. Still the colonists
continued to hold and breed slaves as their fathers had done, and there
were 35,745 slaves in the Colony when the emancipation act went into
effect on the first of December, 1834. These slaves were valued at £3,000,000, but only £1,200,000
were appropriated as compensation to their owners. The loss fell
heavily on many owners already sinking under the weight of mortgages,
and there were rumblings and outpourings of bitter indignation. The
deficiency in compensation was called Imperial confiscation, and the
Boers resented it sorely, not merely on the score of the loss measured
in money, but as a crowning instance of their political subjection.1
Alien Imperial rule was the deep-seated grievance which was the
underlying and impelling cause of the extraordinary exodus from Cape
Colony called the Great Trek.2
In
1835 Louis Triechard led out the first pioneer company of this
migration, and his advance into the wilderness bevond the bounds of the
Colony was followed by a succession of slow-moving caravans pushing
northeast to the head waters of the Orange River and the terraces of
Natal, and moving on, in course of years, across the Vaal to the
Limpopo water-shed. This out-push of pioneers in large parties,
overcoming all barriers of
1
" Annals of Natal." "South Africa," Theal. " The Great Trek," Henry
Cloete, her Majesty's High Commissioner for the Colony of Natal. 2 Ibid.
