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Great Britain and her Empire 547 to them is nothing but the Dutch word for "peasant." The Eng- lish introduced their own language and carried through certain reforms, including the abolition of slavery in 1833. This the Boers did not like, and ten thousand of them moved northward across the Orange River into an unpromising region known now as the Orange Free State. During the succeeding years large numbers of them moved still farther north. This migration carried the Boers across the Vaal River, where they founded the Trans- vaal colony. England for a time recognized the independence of both the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. The region seemed so desolate and unfruitful that Parliament thought it hardly worth while to attempt to keep control of it. 991. The Boers and the Uitlanders. In 1885, however, gold was discovered in the southern part of the Transvaal, and many foreigners (Uitlanders, chiefly English) began to rush into the Dutch colony. They got along badly with the Boers, who lived a rude, wild life and had very little government. The Uitlanders arranged a conspiracy in 1895 to get the Transvaal constitution changed so that they would have a voice in the government. Cecil Rhodes, a man of vast wealth and the prime minister of Cape Colony, appears to have encouraged a Dr. Jameson to organize a raid into Transvaal with a view of compelling the Boers to let the Uitlanders share in the government. Jameson's raid failed, and the Boers captured the insurgents. Under Paul Kruger, the president of the Transvaal Republic, the Boers began to make military preparation to defend themselves and entered into an alliance with their neighbors of the Orange Free State to the south of them. 992. The Boer War (ISQQ). The English now began to claim that the Boers would not be satisfied until they had got control of all the British possessions in South Africa. The Boers, with more reason, as it seemed to the rest of the world, declared that England was only trying to find an excuse for annexing the two republics which the Dutch farmers had built up in the wilderness after a long fight with the native savages. Finally, in 1899, the