Note 98 — IV. Chronicles of Two Leaders of the Great Emigration, Louis Triegard and Pieter Uys.

Since the publication of my History of South Africa, a journal kept by Mr. Erasmus Smit from the 15th of November 1836 to the 31st of January 1839 has been brought to light and in 1897 was printed in Capetown. It forms an octavo pamphlet of one hundred and eight pages. Mr. Smit, a native of Amsterdam, had once been a lay missionary in the service of the London Society, later a schoolmaster at Oliphants Hoek, and was married to a sister of Mr. Gerrit Maritz. He was a man of fifty-eight years of age and infirm in health, but he joined his brother-in-law’s party, and left the colony with it, being engaged to perform religious services in the camp. During the stay of the emigrants at Thaba Ntshu he was exceedingly jealous of the reverend James Archbell, Wesleyan missionary there, whom he suspected of a design of wishing to supplant him. On the 21st of May 1837 Mr. Retief appointed him religious instructor of the emigrants, whereupon he ordained himself and thereafter administered the sacraments and performed all the duties of a clergyman. I have found nothing in his journal that enables me to add to the account of the emigration given in my History, but there are in it a few remarks that are of assistance to me in the preparation of this paper.