ultimatum to Her Majesty's Government, in which it demanded the removal
of all troops from the Transvaal borders, fixing five o'clock the
following evening as a limit for their withdrawal. I had delayed my
departure too long; it was extremely doubtful whether another train
would be allowed to pass South, and, even when started, it would stand a
great chance of being wrecked by the Boers tearing up the rails. Under
these circumstances I was allotted comparatively safe quarters at the
house of Mr. Benjamin Weil, of the firm of the well-known South African
merchants. His residence stood in the centre of the little town,
adjacent to the railway-station. At that time bomb-proof underground
shelters, with which Mafeking afterwards abounded, had not been thought
of, or time had not sufficed for their construction. On all sides one
heard reproaches levelled at the Cape Government, and especially at
General Sir William Butler, until lately commanding the troops in Cape
Colony, for having so long withheld the modest reinforcements which had
been persistently asked for, and, above all, the very necessary
artillery.

At that date the Mafeking garrison consisted of about seven or eight
hundred trained troops. The artillery, under Major Panzera, comprised
four old muzzle-loading seven-pounder guns with a short range, a
one-pound Hotchkiss, one Nordenfeldt, and about seven ^{.}303 Maxims--in
fact, no large modern pieces whatever. The town guard, hastily
enrolled, amounted to 441 defenders, among whom nationalities were
curiously mixed, as the following table shows:

British 378
Germans 4
Americans 4
Russians 6