many substantial townsmen and wine and grain farmers became involved
in the social life emanating from government house, whereas eastern Af-
rikaners of all classeswere alienated from the British regime and regarded it
as responsible for all their misfortunes. As a result, nearly all the Afrikaners
who left the colony were easterners. About one quarter of the Afrikaner
inhabitants of the eastern districts took part in the remarkable exodus that
historians call the Great Trek.79
Piet Retief, one of the emigrant leaders, informed the Grahamstown
Journal that they were leaving because of "the turbulent and dishonest
conduct of vagrants," because of the losses they had sustained through the
emancipation of their slaves, and because of "the plunder which we have
endured from the Caffres and other coloured classes." He added a com-
plaint of the sort that would recur again and again, down to the late
twentieth century: "We complain of the unjustifiable odium which has
been cast upon us by interested and dishonest persons, under the cloak of
religion [that is, the missionaries], whose testimony is believed in England,
to the exclusion of all evidence in our favour; and we can foresee, as a result
of this prejudice, nothing but the total ruin of our country."80
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