My recollections go back to the time when, as a boy of nine, I left the land of my birth with my. parents and my uncles and Theunis kruger.
Till then we had lived at Vaalbank Farm, in the Colesberg District in Cape Colony, where I was born, on the 10th of October 1825, as the third child of Caspar dan Hendrik Kruger and Elissa Steijn, his wife, daughter of Douw Steijn, of Bulhock Farm, behind the Zuurberg in Cape Colony. "My parents were simple farmers, and I grew up at the farm like {ocber farmers' lads, looking after the herds and lending a hand in the fields. With the exception that an old woman prophesied to my mother that her son Stephanus Johannes Paulus way destined for a superior position in life, I do not we that any one could have had the st notion that God would entrust ino with a special mission The first event of importance in my life was our departing from home, our trek. was too young at the time to occupy myself much with the reason of the great emigration. But I know that my arents said they emigrated because the lish first sold the slaves and, after 0: the money, set these slaves in, and that the money which had awarded in compensation was made able in England. where it could be rether personally or through an azont. The expenses entailed by. this method of paynient in ¥ cases ainountto more than the capital, so that a great many preferred to sacrifien what as dus to them, rather than be put to buch trouble and vexation. But they sed to continue to live under such masters, Added to this, the iffirs repeatedly raided the colony and generally after the Boors had themselves recovered their cattle, declared the collective herds to be so much booty, out of which the British Government must recover their war-costs before the rest could be distributed among the former Proprietors, who had themselves joined in the fighting in order to get back their wu. The discontent caused by this un-st proceeding took a firm hold of the Uorr mind, expecially as each child, when quite young, receives, as his personal property. x couple of sheep, oxen or horses front his parents, which ho tends with special care and to which his heart becomes tached. Among the stolen beasts were naturally those belonging to the children, and, when those presents, made sacred by custom, were detained in such an arbitrary way and used for the purposes of a war-indemnity, much bitterness was caused. And so nig parents and relatives left house home for a wild and unknown coun-and set out, about twenty of them, with nearly thirty thousand African sheep and a few hundred horses and cattle which they had received largely in ox-change for the goods they left behind.
The exodus over the Orange River commenced in May 1835.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.