brought on many premature births.  There is a matron in charge of the sick, and a medical inspector, who comes twice a day to visit the different wards.  I overheard him soundly berate a mother who kept her children too much indoors.  The food was good, and there was plenty of it.  Fresh cow’s milk was supplied to the children.  I noticed a large vessel of galvanised iron marked ’Boiled water for drinking purposes.’  The little children were romping and tumbling about with great energy.  The women were wonderfully patient, I thought, and firm in their adherence to the cause.  This in some cases was but vaguely understood, but there was a general belief that there was ‘goin’ to be some fighten,’ which was sure to make us all better off.  I heard but one complaint, and that from a hulking slouch of a man who had sneaked in from duty to take a nap on the foot of his sick wife’s pallet.  He complained of the food, showing me the remains of dainties given out to the sick woman, and which he had helped her to eat.  The woman looked up at me with haggard eyes:  ’It ain’t the vittles, but the pain that’s worrying me, ma’am.’

A touching sight were the yelping dogs of every breed, family pets tethered to the fence outside.  All canteens are closed by order of the Reform Committee as a precautionary measure, and where there was doubt of these precautions being observed, the liquors were bought and thrown away.

Hundreds of varying rumours are afloat, which rush and swirl along until lost in distorting eddies.

This afternoon a horseman went through the town distributing a Proclamation from the High Commissioner, Sir Hercules Robinson:—­

     Proclamation by

His Excellency the Right Hon. Sir Hercules George Robinson, Bart., Member of Her Majesty’s Most Hon. Privy Council, K.C.B., of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George, Governor, Commander-in-Chief of Her Majesty’s Colony of the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, and of the Territories, Dependencies thereof, Governor of the Territory of British Bechuanaland, and Her Majesty’s Commissioner, &c., &c.

’Whereas it has come to my knowledge that certain British subjects, said to be under the leadership of Dr. Jameson, have violated the territory of the South African Republic, and have cut telegraph wires, and done various other illegal acts; and

     ’Whereas the South African Republic is a friendly State in
     amity with Her Majesty’s Government; and whereas it is my
     desire to respect the independence of the said State: 

’Now therefore I hereby command the said Dr. Jameson and all persons accompanying him, to immediately retire from the territory of the South African Republic, on pain of the penalties attached to their illegal proceedings; and I do further hereby call upon all British subjects in the South African Republic to abstain from giving the said Dr. Jameson any countenance or assistance in his armed violation of the territory of a friendly State.

’God save the Queen.