Owing to the discovery of gold, thousands of settlers were attracted to
the Transvaal, and the injustice done to these Uitlanders, as the
new-comers were called, led in time to serious trouble. The Uitlanders
complained that though they were the majority in the country, and were
made to pay by far the greater part of the taxes, they were denied nearly
all political rights. At the close of the year 1895 Dr Jameson made a most
unwise raid into the Transvaal, in support of a proposed rising of the
Uitlanders to obtain political rights. He was surrounded by the Boers and
obliged to surrender.

British settlers in the Transvaal were now treated worse than before.
Negotiations were carried on between the British government and the Boers,
but were suddenly broken off by the latter, who demanded that no more
British soldiers should be sent to South Africa. This demand being
refused, the Boers, supported by their brethren of the Orange Free State,
declared war against Britain, and invaded Natal and Cape Colony in October
1899.

Ladysmith, in the north of Natal, was invested by the Boers, the British
army there being under the command of General Sir George White. The Boers
also besieged Kimberley, an important town, containing valuable
diamond-mines, in the north-west of Cape Colony. Farther north a small
British garrison was hemmed in at Mafeking, a little town near the
Transvaal border.

Lord Methuen, with a British column, was sent to the relief of Kimberley,
and Sir Redvers Buller, with a strong army, set out to relieve Ladysmith;
but both these generals sustained reverses, the former at Magersfontein,
and the latter at the Tugela River.