The explosion was the result of neglect.  For four days fifty-five and a half tons of dynamite lay under a hot sun at the Netherlands Railroad junction, left in charge of an inexperienced youth of twenty who had ‘forgotten to remove it’ as was ordered the day before the explosion occurred.

Fordsburg is populated by poor Dutch and Boers.  With generous disregard of recent conflicts, the Uitlanders at once gave help and sympathy to the afflicted.  Seven of the members on the Relief Committee were Reformers; and Reformers’ wives were among the first to nurse the wounded.  President Kruger came over to Johannesburg to visit the scene of the accident.  He visited the wounded at the Wanderers’ and hospital, and seemed greatly affected.  He made a speech in which he begged the sufferers to turn their eyes to the Great Healer, who alone could comfort.  He also said that he was gratified to hear that the subscriptions in aid of the distressed had reached so high a figure; ’Johannesburg had come nobly to the rescue, and he was glad to know it.’  He quoted the words of the Saviour, ’Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.’  In benefiting others he declared they would benefit themselves.

FEBRUARY 23.—­I am housed with my ill husband.  Betty comes in and goes out in constant service to the sufferers from the dynamite explosion.  We can think of nothing else.  All the tragic stories we hear from friends and read in the papers fill our days with sadness.

A friend of my cook’s was visiting a neighbour at Fordsburg.  She stood on the threshold, an infant in her arms, and a three-year-old boy at her side.  The explosion came.  Her baby was killed outright, and the child clinging to her skirts dropped with one leg ripped entirely from the socket.  The mother was not even scratched.  Another woman was sewing on a sewing machine.  After recovering from the shock, she found herself unhurt, her house collapsed, and the sewing machine entirely disappeared.  Most of the houses fell outward and not inward, and those persons near the explosion describe their experience of the shock as falling asleep or going off in a trance.

The society women of Johannesburg are doing noble work.  Dr. Murray says it is astonishing how intelligently alert and self-sacrificing they are proving themselves to be.  A story has been told me of a Boer woman who was fearfully mangled; she bore the necessary surgical operation with fortitude, but wept copiously when a green baize petticoat, which she had recently made out of a tablecloth, was taken off.  Only a solemn promise from Mrs. Joel, her lady nurse, to keep the garment safe until her recovery, appeased her outcries.

I asked the officer in charge yesterday if I might see some of my friends who called, the sentinels having thus far denied them entrance.  ’Yes, but there are some women in the place whom I do not care to have come here.’  ‘And who might they be?’ I asked.  ’The wives of the Reformers,’ he answered.  ‘Then,’ I flashed out, ’I do not care to accept any favours at your hands; those women are my personal friends, and the only persons under existing circumstances whom I wish to see.’