accounts came to hand of the exodus from Johannesburg of men, women, and
children travelling twenty in a compartment meant for eight, while
others, not so fortunate, had to put up with cattle-trucks. The Boers
were said to have shown themselves humane and magnanimous. Mr.
Chamberlain, the papers wrote, was strengthening the hands of the
President, to avert civil war, which must have been dangerously near;
but the most important man of the moment in South Africa was grudgingly
admitted to be "Oom Paul." His personal influence alone, it was stated,
had restrained his wild bands of armed burghers, with which the land was
simply bristling, and he was then in close confabulation with Her
Majesty's High Commissioner, Sir Hercules Robinson, whom he had summoned
to Pretoria to deal with such refractory Englishmen. The journals also
took advantage of the occasion to bid Kruger remember this was the
opportunity to show himself forgiving, and to strengthen his corrupt
Government, thereby earning the gratitude of those Afrikanders, for
whom, indeed, he was not expected to have any affection, but to whom he
was indebted for the present flourishing financial state of his
republic, which, it was called to mind, was next door to bankrupt when
England declared its independence in 1884. If such articles were
translated and read out to that wily old President, as he sipped his
coffee on his stoep, with his bland and inscrutable smile, it must have
added zest to his evening pipe. I read in Mr. Seymour Fort's "Life of
Dr. Jameson" that the Raid cost the Chartered Company £75,000 worth of
material, most of which passed into the hands of the Boer Government,
while the confiscated arms at Johannesburg amounted to several thousand
rifles and a great deal of ammunition. Respecting the guns taken from
Jameson's force, curiously enough, we surmised during the siege of
Mafeking, four years later, that some of these were being used against
us. Their shells fired into the town, many of which did not explode, and
of which I possess a specimen, were the old seven-pound studded M.L.