I happen to be well acquainted with that period of history.  I wrote a story called “Lysbeth” concerning it, and to do this I found it necessary not only to visit Holland on several occasions, but to read all the contemporary records.  In the light of the information which I thus obtained, I state positively that the world has no record of a more glorious and heroic struggle than that made by the Dutch against all the power of Spain.  Well, the Boers are descended from these men and women (for both fought).  Also, they include a very large dash of some of the best blood of Europe, namely, that of the Huguenots.  For instance, Botha himself is of Huguenot descent.  It is impossible for a person like myself, who have that same blood in me, to talk with him for five minutes without becoming aware of his origin.  Long before he told me so I knew that he was in part a Frenchman.  Men so great are not easily conquered, as we know to our cost.  Why, it took quite 250,000 soldiers and three years of strenuous guerrilla warfare to enable Britain to defeat 40,000 or 50,000 Dutch farmers.  Therefore I have personally not the least fear of the ultimate result of the campaign against Southwest Africa.

I went as a lad as Secretary to the Governor of Natal.  That was in 1875.  Subsequently I accompanied Sir Theophilus Shepstone, one of the greatest men that ever lived in South Africa, on his famous mission to the Transvaal.  I am now, I believe, the only survivor of that mission, and certainly the only man who knows all the inner political history of that event.  Afterward I held office in the Transvaal, and was in the country during all the disastrous period of the first Boer war.  For instance, I dined with Gen. Colley the night before he started on his ill-fated expedition.  I think there were thirteen of us present at that historical dinner.  Within a few weeks six or eight of these were dead, including Colley himself, killed in the fight of Majuba, of which I heard the guns.  Of those present at that dinner party there now survive only Lady Colley, my wife, and myself.

Felt Like Rip Van Winkle.

After this I left Africa, and more than thirty years went by before I returned as a commissioner in the service of the Crown.  It was a very extraordinary experience; indeed, I felt like a new Rip Van Winkle, for nearly all my old chiefs and colleagues were dead, and another generation had arisen.  I can only say that I was deeply touched by the reception which I received throughout the country.  It was with strange feelings that almost on the very spot where I helped to read the proclamation of annexation of the Transvaal, in 1877, and with my own hands hoisted the British flag over the land, I listened to my health being proposed by the Dutch Chief Justice of the Transvaal territory, once more a part of the British Empire.  Such was my greeting everywhere.  Three and thirty years before I had left the shores of Africa, believing