Dutch East India Company's people; later, any native livestock dealers. See BEACHRANGERS, above. SAMBOK, SJAMBOK, a long lash of buffalo or hippopotamus hide, used at first for driving the waggon teams on the trek, and afterwards extended to the "apprentices" and the natives generally; from samba, buffalo (Hottentot). SLIM, quick, knowing, sly, "smart"; cf. Ger. schlimm, bad, crafty; doubtfully cognate with Old Eng. slim, “slime," whence the idea of muddy, slippery, in the material and moral sense; cf. the slangy a slippery customer," and "O world, thy slippery turns!" (Coriolanus, IV. iv.). SPRUIT, a gushing brook, or any rapid stream, as in Kornet Spruit; cognate with Eng. spurt, sprout.

STAD, a station, town, as in Marabastad; cf. Eng. stead (Hampstead), and Ger. Stadt.

SWAAB, a Swabian, in the sense of a dolt, a blockhead. Hes

(see above) and Swaab have reference to the immigrants in colonial times, from Hesse and Swabia, regarded by the "slim" burghers as yokels, stupid country louts.

TAAL, Cape Dutch, called by the Netherlanders Afrikaansch, as we sometimes speak of "American"; cognate to tell; cf. tale, Ger. Zahl.

TREK, TO TREK, drag or draw; to drag (a waggon with all
the household); i.e. to migrate to a new settlement.
TREKKER, emigrant farmer on the move.
UITLANDER, Outlander, a foreigner generally without full

rights of citizenship, but liable to taxation and (illegally)
to commandeering and other wrongs, for which there is no
redress, because the Chief-Justice is removable at the
pleasure of the Volksraad.

UM, river, prefixed as in Umkomanzi (Zulu).

VELD-I. Grassy open land, steppe, as in Hooge Veld, Bosch Veld, etc.; cf. Eng. field.

2. A mountain range with more rounded contours than the berg, as in Nieuwveld; cf. Eng. fell.

VLEY, VLEI, a shallow depression where the rains lodg after evaporation, leave a saline efflorescence; a sa cognate to Eng. valley.

VOOR-TREKKERS, those who led the van in the Great (1835-38); voor Eng. fore, as in forerunner. VREJ, VRY, free, as in Vrejheid, Vryburg.

WET, GRONDWET, law; "ground law," i.e. organic or mental law, and collectively the Constitution.

ZARP, a policeman, the police; a term coined by the E of Johannesburg from the initials Z. A. R. P. on the of the local police, standing for Zuid Afrikaa Republiek Politie, "South African Republic Police." ZEEKOE, "sea-cow," i.e. hippopotamus, as in the Zeekoe (see p. 185).

THE BOER STATES

CHAPTER I

AFRICA SOUTH OF THE ZAMBESI

The Plateau and Encircling Ranges-The Karroos-The Drakenberg Highlands-Political Divisions-Areas and Populations-The Boer States-General Remarks.

A

FRICA south of the Zambesi forms a

vast tableland some 1,360,000 square miles in extent, with a probable population of 7,000,000-850,000 Europeans, mainly of British and Dutch stock; 70,000 Asiatics; all the rest aborigines. The tableland has a mean altitude of about 4000 feet, and is buttressed seawards by a great mountain system, which generally follows the contour lines of the continent at distances of from 100 to 250 miles from the coast.

The inner encircling range, which falls through secondary parallel chains, or through

steeply scarped terraces, down to the board, is continuous on the east and s sides facing the Indian Ocean and the Au waters, and on the west side as far nort the Olifant River. Here the coast range Bokkeveld, Cedar, and Olifant, - with forming an unbroken rampart, rise to 6000 feet in some of their peaks, such the Sneeuw-kop (6100) and the Winter-h (6900).

But here the outer scarps have been grea eroded, and at Cape St. Martin, eighty m north of the Cape, the ceaseless action of waves has eaten into the land, complet effacing the old shore-line, and forming t fine but dangerous inlet of St. Helena Ba where the transport Ismore grounded December 1899, and rapidly went to pieces the reefs projecting like sharks' teeth abo the surface. North of the Olifant River t coast ranges become more fragmentary, an are completely interrupted at the broad ga where the Orange River reaches the Atlanti Here also the main range is least elevated presenting in some districts the aspect of lov rocky hills almost lost amid the shifting dune

of the sandy Namaqualand plains. Thus the Kamiesberg, south of the Orange estuary, falls to 4000 feet of absolute elevation-that is, scarcely more than 400 feet above the surrounding plateau.

But from this western range the rise in altitude is continuous through the Roggeveld, the Nieuwveld, the Sneeuwberg, and the Stormberg, which traverse Cape Colony from west to east, round to the Quathlamba (Kathlamba) or Drakenberg range, where the whole system culminates in peaks from 10,000 to over 11,000 feet high, at the converging frontiers of Basutoland, Natal, and the Free State.

The characteristic terrace formations are nowhere so highly developed as in the southwestern parts of Cape Colony, where the space intervening between the outer, central, and inner parallel ranges is everywhere occupied by those dry level plains which are called karroos (from a Hottentot word meaning arid land), and rise in successive tiers with the increasing altitude of the enclosing escarpments, expanding as they rise. On the maps two only are indicated-the Little and the Great Karroo. But there are in