To the Boers, who had just made the country valuable by clearing it of the Zulus, this high-handed action of the British Government had the appearance of persecution, and they naturally resented it, although they were almost powerless to oppose it by force of arms.
The Boer leader, Commandant-General Pretorius, who had been chosen by the first "Volksraad"--a governing body elected while the journey from Cape Colony to Natal was being made--led a number of his countrymen to the outskirts of Durban and formed a camp near that of the British garrison. He sent a message to Captain Smith, the commander of the British force of several hundred soldiers, and demanded the surrender of his position. In reply Smith led one hundred and fifty of his soldiers in a moonlight attack on the Boer forces and was completely routed.
The Boers then besieged Durban for twenty-six days and killed many of the English soldiers, but on the twenty-seventh day a schooner load of soldiers from Cape Colony augmented the forces of Captain Smith, and Pretorius was compelled to relinquish his efforts to secure control of the territory that his countrymen had a short time previously won from the Zulus.
Disheartened by their successive failures to secure a desirable part of the country wherein they might settle, the Boers again "trekked" northward over the Dragon Mountain. There they occupied the territory south of the Vaal River which had a short time previously been deserted by Potgieter and his party, who had journeyed northward with the intention of joining the Portuguese colony at Delagoa Bay, on the Indian Ocean.
These pilgrims were attacked by the deadly fever of the Portuguese country, and after remaining a short time in that region moved again and settled in different localities in the northern part of the territory now included in the South African Republic. Moselekatse and his Matabele warriors having been driven out of the country by the other "trekking" parties, the extensive region north of the Vaal River was then in undisputed possession of the Boers.
The farmers who left Cape Colony in 1835 and 1836 in different parties and after various vicissitudes settled across the Vaal were less than sixteen thousand in number, and were scattered over a large area of territory. The nature of the country and the enmity of the leaders of the parties prevented a close union among them, although a legislative assembly, called a "Volksraad," was established after much disorder. The four principal "trekking" parties had sought four of the most fertile spots in the newly discovered territory, and established the villages of Utrecht, Lydenburg, Potchefstrom, and Zoutpansberg.