kinship and friendship. Many law-abiding Dutch burghers here have sons
and brothers who are citizens of the Free State, and therefore out with
the forces.

In the mean time the English doctor attends patients on the other side
of the border, and Boer riflemen ride across to buy goods at the British
stores.

The proclamation published yesterday morning forbidding trade with the
Republics is thus difficult and impolitic to enforce hereabouts.

Railway and postal communication is now stopped, but the last mail
brought a copy of the Bloemfontein 'Express,' with an appeal to the
Colonial Boers concluding with the words:--

"We shall continue the war to the bloody end. You will assist us. Our
God, who has so often helped us, will not forsake us."

What effect this may have is yet doubtful, but it is certain that any
rising of the Colonial Dutch would send the Colonial British into the
field in full strength.

Burghersdorp, through which I passed yesterday, is a village of 2000
inhabitants, and, as I have already put on record, the centre of the
most disaffected district in the colony. If there be any Dutch rising in
sympathy with the Free State it will begin here.


_Later._