THE PROJECTED TREK OF THE BOERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 10835, 19 August 1898, Page 3

THE PROJECTED TREK OF THE BOERS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—l sco by the papers that the Governor of the Cape lias forbidden the trek of the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State to lands belonging to the Chartered Company. These expeditions of the Dopper Boers, the lowest class of Boers, who still stick to the riding of the Old Testament, and believe they are destined to rule by that testament, march out. kill and make slaves of the blacks, and take their lauds for their own uso. These expeditions have gone on for years, mostly got up by the old-style Dopper parsons. Each year is the Transvaal becoming more and more intolerable to them. Tho gold mines have brought strangers of nil kinds in large numbers, and they are surrounding the Doppers. English is being spoken, wire fences are being run up all around them instead of the " knack mall," there are churches—Reformed Dutch I think thoy are called—all over the State, and instead of all meeting together once or twice a year, and waggons with oxen bringing the family and the minister preaching from a waggon, and a sort of fair being held for a week, there is weekly service in the churches. The Doppers used to own splendid herds of cattle, but the rinderpest has carried them off. Numbers own sheep, but ?re so pestered by the scab and other laws that life is a misery. So they must move 011 or become civilised. The former it preferable, but, then, all the country is taken up, and tlw parts they prefer are either German or English. The Germans they find worse Jinn Englishmen. Mr. Rhodes offers to buy til their farms in the Transvaal, and to give them farms in Mashonaland, but there they must come under British rule, and that i* just what they do not want. So, as I read it, they want to form a powerful body und trek to some part of British territory, fonii a settlement of their own, enslave tho natives, and set the British at defiance. This Sir Alfred Milne has protested against. As tho Doppers are Paul Kruger's chief supporters, lie, no doubt, will be in a fix. Kve.'y one of them that leaves is a great loss to loin; yet to remain is their ruin. Numbers have accepted Mr. Rhodes' offer, and are now prosperous settlers in Mashonaland. and thy make the best settlers ho can get, if thoy will only submit to the laws of the land, as they must if they settle under England or Germany.—l am, etc., Edwix Harrow.