and evangelical organizations.J?
Accordingly, in 1842 a small British force
occupied
the harbor,
and in the following year a special commissioner
exacted a submission
from members
of the Volksraad
in their Pieter-
maritzburg
headquarters,
bringing Natal into the British Empire. He in-
cluded a stipulation
"that
there shall not be in the eye of the law any
distinction
of colour, origin, race, or creed; but that the protection of the
law, in letter and in substance, shall be extended impartially to all alike.">!
As that stipulation
indicated,
the evangelical lobby was still effective in
British politics in the early
I 840S.
After the British annexation,
nearly all the emigrants trekked back from
Natal across the Drakensberg
to the highveld, where they founded several
distinct settlements
at places chosen for the availability of water, timber,
pasture, and good soil. The Potgieters, anxious to make a complete break
with the British, were trying to establish a viable settlement
below the
escarpment
northeast of the Vaal River, from which they could open up a
regular line of communication
with the outside world via the Portuguese
settlement on Delagoa Bay. They were not successful. The lowlands of the
eastern Transvaal and the Limpopo River valley were breeding grounds for