Burgers was able, active, enlightened and impulsive; a visionary rather than a man of affairs or sound judgment. He foresaw a great future for the country, but he neglected practical steps to ensure ordered progress ; he took up, with all its entanglements, the policy of intrigues with native chiefs beyond the border, and was unable to control the tribes within the border. He held firmly to the belief in having an outlet to the sea free from British control, and in 1875 proceeded to Europe with the project of rais ing a loan for the construction of a railway to Delagoa bay, though no survey for a railway had been made. He was empowered by the volksraad to raise £300,000, but with great difficulty he ob tained in Holland the sum of £90,000 only, and that at a high rate of interest. With this inadequate sum some railway plant was obtained, which subsequently lay derelict for ten years at Delagoa bay. While in Europe, Burgers visited France and Ger many, and found in the latter country an awakening interest in South Africa ; it was the period of the first stirrings of a colonial policy in Germany. On his return to the Transvaal in 1876
Burgers found that the condition of affairs in the State was worse than ever. The acting-president had in his absence been granted leave by the volksraad to carry out various measures opposed to the public welfare ; native lands had been indis criminately allotted to adventurers, and a war with Sikukuni (Secocoeni), a native chief on the eastern borders of the country, was imminent. A commando was called out, which the president himself led. The expedition was an ignominious failure, and many burghers did not hesitate to assign their non-success to the fact that Burgers' views on religious questions were not sound. Indeed a party of Boers—some 30o—had trekked across the Kalahari into Angola largely because they disliked the rule of a heretical predikant. Burgers then proceeded to levy taxes, which were never paid; and to enrol troops, which never marched. The Transvaal was in a bad way; financially it was well-nigh bank rupt.