The cows and sheep are in charge of ten or a dozen dark-skinned herdsmen, most of them all but naked; while a like number of large wolfish-looking dogs completes the list of living things visible outside the waggons. But, were the end curtains raised, under their tilts would be seen women with children—of both sexes and all ages—in each the members of a single family, its male head excepted.
Of the last there are three, corresponding to the number of the waggons, of which they are the respective proprietors—the three men riding in advance. Their names, Jan Van Dorn, Hans Blom, and Klaas Rynwald. All Dutch names, and Dutch are they who bear them, at least by descent, for the scene is Southern Africa, and they are Boers.
Not of the ordinary class, though, as may be told by their large accompaniment of unattached cattle and sheep—over a hundred of the former, and three times as many of the latter. These, with other signs well-known to South Africans, proclaim them to be Vee-Boers (Note 2).
They are far away from any settlement of civilised or white men, the nearest being their own frontier town, Zoutpansberg, in the Transvaal, from which they are distant full three hundred miles northward. Nor are they in Transvaalian territory, but that of the Tebelé, beyond the Limpopo river, and journeying on north.
Why they are there calls for explanation, and a word will suffice. The world has of late heard much of the Transvaal Republic and its brave people; how distasteful to them was annexation to the English Government; indeed, so repugnant, that many plucked up the rooftrees they had but lately planted, and were off again, scarce thinking or caring whither, so long as they got beyond the reach of British rule.
It is on record—a painful one—that many of those political fugitives passed through hardships scarce conceivable, and not a few perished by the way—miserably perished, the victims of fatigue, hunger, and thirst. And it is of just such a party we purpose giving account of, their journeyings, adventures, and dangers, by flood and by field.
The time was just after the annexation, and our Vee-Boers, as introduced to the reader, were weeks away from their abandoned homes in the Transvaal.
That they had permission to enter the territory of the Tebelé, might be taken for granted, otherwise they would have been on dangerous ground. For its powerful and despotic chief was not the man to allow intrusion into his dominions, even by peaceful travellers.