place
of the retiring Boers who recrossed the Drakensberg. In 1848, by
proclamation of Sir Harry Smith, her Majesty's High Commissioner and
Governor of Cape Colony, all the territory between the Vaal and Orange
rivers and the Quathlamba division of the Drakensberg was formally
declared to be part of the British dominions under the name of the
Orange River Sovereignty. The Boers had been spreading out towards the
Vaal in many trekking parties north of the Drakensberg, and the
British supremacy was not recognized until it was forcibly asserted by
arms in the battle of Boomplatz, July 22, 1848. Then part of the Boers
sullenly submitted, but many, headed by Andries Pretorius, preferred to
pass beyond the farthest assertion of English dominion by crossing the
Vaal and entering the wilderness stretching to the Limpopo.
There
was then not even a glimmer of anticipation that the great stretch of
veld and karroo between the Orange and the Vaal contained by far the
richest diamond fields in the world. The controlling ministry in Great
Britain at the time did not even consider it worth the cost of keeping
and defending, and on October 21, 1851, Earl Grey wrote to Sir Harry
Smith that " its ultimate abandonment should be a settled point in
imperial policy." The territory beyond the Vaal was rated still more
cheaply, and on January 17, 1852, the local independence of the
inhabitants of the Transvaal was formally recognized by the Sand River
Convention, signed by two assistant commissioners for Sir Harry Smith,
and by appointed delegates for the Transvaal pioneers. The state
organization of these settlers was first christened Hollandsche
Afrikaansche Republiek, but this name was changed to Zud Afrikaansche
Republiek in September, 1853. In the preceding month of July, Andries
Pretorius, the pioneer leader who broke the Zulu power, died, but his
great service was honorably recognized in the choice of his eldest son,
Marthinus Wessels Pretorius, as the first president of the new
Republic, and in the establishment of its capital of Pretoria.
On March 31, 1852, Lieutenant General George Cathcart succeeded Sir Harry Smith as High Commissioner and Governor
