Andries Pretorius knew full well that he couldn't resist the British invasion. He had been to Europe and seen Britain's strength, so he understood that even if the Boers fought to the last man, they still couldn't defeat such a powerful enemy.
Yet Andries Pretorius kept retreating, while the British kept advancing. Every patch of land the Boers developed, every pasture they conquered, cost them blood and sweat.
Migration was never easy. Along the way, they had to face all manner of poisonous insects, savage beasts, and the dreaded malaria.
Many Boers lost their lives on the journey. Nor was all the land suitable for development—not with the technology of the time, at least.
The soil was too barren to support a large population and their livestock, and famine soon struck. As people and animals starved to death, disease followed in its wake, and they were forced to abandon the land they had only just claimed and press farther inland.
Louis Trichardt's experience was the most representative. When they first left the Cape Colony, there were nearly two hundred of them.
To avoid the British and the native peoples, they chose a relatively isolated tract of land. Louis Trichardt and the other Boers worked tirelessly for a year, only to find that much of their wheat failed to form ears when harvest season came.
So they had no choice but to live off hunting. Before long, game grew scarce too, while a disease called Sleeping Sickness began spreading among their livestock.
Cattle were the Boers' most precious wealth, so they had no choice but to migrate again. But something went wrong along the way, and they strayed from their original route.
First Louis Trichardt's father died, then his wife, then two of his children. By the time his party wandered