themselves, their characteristics and their failings.  At Johannesburg I had been specially struck by men, who knew them from long experience, telling me how fully they appreciated the good points of the burghers—­for instance, their bravery, their love of their country, and their simple, unquestioning, if unattractive faith, which savoured of that of the old Puritans.  Against these attributes their pig-headedness, narrow-mindedness, laziness, and slovenliness had to be admitted.  All these defects militated against their living in harmony with a large, increasing, and up-to-date community like the Johannesburg Uitlanders.  Still, one could not forget that the Transvaal was their country, ceded to them by the English nation.  They left Cape Colony years ago, to escape our laws, which they considered unjust.  It is certain we should never have followed them into the Transvaal but for the sudden discovery of the gold industry; it is equally true they had not the power or the wish to develop this for themselves, and yet without it they were a bankrupt nation.  There is no doubt that the men who made the most mischief, and who for years embarrassed the President, were the “Hollanders,” or officials sent out from the mother-country of the Dutch.  They looked on the Transvaal only as a means for getting rich.  Hence the fearful state of bribery and corruption among them, from the highest official downwards.  But this very bribery and corruption were sometimes exceedingly convenient, and I remember well, when I revisited Johannesburg in 1902, at the conclusion of the war, hearing people inveigh against the hard bargains driven by the English Government; they even went so far as to sigh again for the good old days of Kruger’s rule.  Now all is changed once more, after another turn of the kaleidoscope of time, and yet it is well to remember that such things have indeed been.

CHAPTER V

     THREE YEARS AFTER—­LORD MILNER AT CAPE TOWN BEFORE THE
     WAR—­MR. CECIL RHODES AT GROOT SCHUURR—­OTHER INTERESTING
     PERSONAGES

     “There are many echoes in the world, but few voices.” 
          
                                        GOETHE.

On May 6, 1899, we sailed from Southampton on the S.S. Norman.  We purposed to spend a few months in Rhodesia, but such is the frailty of human plans that eventually we stayed in South Africa for one year and three months.

Dr. Jameson was our fellow-passenger to Cape Town, and with him we travelled up to Bulawayo, and passed five weeks there as the guests of Major Maurice Heaney.[13] Part of this time we spent on the veldt, far from civilization, sleeping in tents, and using riding ponies and mule waggons as transport.  I can recommend this life as a splendid cure for any who are run down or overworked.  The climate of Rhodesia in the month of June is perfection; rain is unknown, except as the accompaniment of occasional thunderstorms;