the old Boer's quaint phraseology takes an unconscious touch of humour-as, for instance, when he deplores the vacillations of English statesmen with regard to their policy in South Africa. He says:

One day England blew hot and the next cold. One moment she insisted on swallowing us, and the next moment she insisted on disgorging us. For example, the Orange Free State was declared British territory because a Governor said, You can never escape British jurisdiction.' Then we were abandoned because the next Governor said 'the country was a howling wilderness.' The Transvaal was annexed, and Sir Garnet Wolseley declared: The rivers will sooner run back in their course than that England will give up the Transvaal.' Shortly after that the Transvaal was retroceded, after Majuba, because the British Ministry said, 'We have been unjust in annexing this country.' It is the jerky hand on the reins which makes us jib.

Mr. Botha emphatically declares that this weak and spasmodic policy has made the Boer distrustful and contemptuous of British statesmen; nor, indeed, is it easy to see how he could be anything else. Other grave mistakes and blunders are pointed out with equal clearness and force, yet the conclusion this shrewd old patriot arrives at is that under no other than the British flag is peace and prosperity possible for South Africa. It is to try and persuade his deluded countrymen of this fact that he publishes what may be considered a passionate appeal to those who still have any regard for the true welfare of the war-torn States.

It is significant that in his trenchant indictment of the policy of those who are responsible for the war and its far-reaching effects of misery and ruin, Mr. Botha makes no mention whatever of the Uitlanders' grievances, nor even of the deplorable Jameson Raid, as among the causes which led to the outbreak of hostilities in October 1899. He puts the right saddle on the right horse, and that horse was simply the personal ambition of Mr. Kruger and his small but mischievous band of followers. Even greater is his condemnation of Ex-President Steyn, whose motives are shown as being still meaner and more personal than Kruger's.

Mr. Botha lays great stress on the necessity, in considering the situation and how it came to pass that a whole people naturally pastoral and peaceful could have been so duped by a handful of self-seeking adventurers, of realising how ignorant is the typical Boer. He ascribes this amazing ignorance to the complete isolation of the veldt, which has existed from generation to generation, and which makes the people, as he tersely puts it, so much easier to mislead than to lead.' He quotes, as an example within his own immediate experience,

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how they threatened to stone him because he was in favour of railways in the Orange Free State. This ignorance of the true course of events is fostered by the newspapers, which Mr. Botha truly designates as 'pernicious rags, largely subsidised by Kruger;' and he deplores that his 'poor people through want of education have to swallow undiluted the poison prepared for them by such unscrupulous schemers.'

Another cause of the strength of the wave of rebellion which is laying the country waste is to be found, Mr. Botha says, in the abuse of pulpit influence. A religious people's religion is being used to urge them to their destruction.' Of this he gives examples. His statement has unconsciously been borne out even further than it goes by a deeply interesting letter from the correspondent of the Daily Mail,' Mr. Edgar Wallace, who describes, in a recent issue of that journal, a religious service which he attended at a little village near Port Elizabeth a few weeks ago, and where the righteousness of resistance to the oppressor' was openly preached, and every sort of appeal, based on lies, to ignorance and passion was urged with truly dramatic effect. With both press and pulpit thus using all their strength to press tighter the bandage over the people's eyes, is it any wonder that they are still blind and deaf to the voice of common sense, and greedily swallow such statements as Mr. Steyn's when he told the burghers at Kroonstad, less than a year since, that 'the British had lost 64,000 in killed, whilst we had only lost 200, and asked them to see the hand of God in this;' or such assertions as that 60,000 Russians, Americans, and Frenchmen were on the water coming to their aid and might be expected any day, that China had invaded and occupied England, and that God was killing the British all over the world with bubonic plague?

In his impeachment of the two ex-Presidents, Mr. Botha leaves to Mr. Steyn the benefit of the doubt as to whether he is more fool or knave, though the balance of evidence inclines towards the latter assumption. In his account, however, of Oom Paul's career and motives, the trumpet gives forth no-uncertain sound, and in a few lines he draws a picture of the combination of avarice, ambition, and hypocrisy which, joined to an indomitable will, go to make up the character of the man on whose head, as he plainly shows, rests the responsibility for a frightful war. To Mr. Botha's simple practical mind it is an amazing thing that such a man should have English sympathisers, and should be

received and fêted in the civilised countries to which he has fled with well-lined pockets, to avoid the consequences of his own actions; actions from which he alone has not suffered. We are shown the hypocritical old 'dopper' visiting the sufferers after the great dynamite explosion, shedding what the Pretorians themselves laughed at as crocodile tears over his 'poor burghers,' and heading a subscription list with a promise of ten pounds which is unpaid to this day. Nor would he disgorge a shilling of the millions he had accumulated for the relief of the starving wives and children of the said poor burghers when he sent them out on commando.

One point will strike most readers of the little pamphlet as disclosing an unknown situation, and that point is that all thoughtful and intelligent Freestaters recognise that England and English rule offer them their best chance of true freedom and independence, and that Transvaal aggressive bullying has always been much more of a danger to them than English interference. Mr. Botha is also quite alive to the difficulty of the intriguing foreign element in South Africa, an element which has largely contributed to bring about the grievous situation which he deplores, and he deliberately states that if it were possible to imagine that England's restraining influence were withdrawn, we should no doubt witness in South Africa scenes such as I have read of in South America;' nor does he for a moment admit that we could have taken any other action than that which the ultimatum forced upon us.

Mr. Botha relies confidently on the fairness and justice of the English people in their after-dealings with the country he speaks of as conquered. He looks forward with steadfast hope to the days when we shall set the strength of our hand and all the best of our brain to make South Africa from the Cape to the Zambesi into one harmonious whole, in which, in a few years' time, there will be no discord between Boer and Englishman.' But even on his own showing this is a herculean task. May we prove capable of accomplishing it!

THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINYA

II. DELHI.

DELHI lies thirty-eight miles to the south-west of Meerut, a city seven miles in circumference, ancient, stately, beautiful. The sacred Jumna runs by it. Its grey, wide-curving girdle of crenellated walls is pierced with seven gates. It is a city of mosques and palaces and gardens, and crowded native bazaars. Delhi in 1857 was of great political importance, if only because the last representative of the Grand Mogul, still bearing the title of the King of Delhi, resided there in semi-royal state. The Imperial Palace, with its crowd of nearly 12,000 inmates, formed a sort of tiny royal city within Delhi itself, and here, if anywhere, mutiny might find a centre and a head.

Moreover, the huge magazines, stored with munitions of war, made the city of the utmost military value to the British. Yet, by special treaty, no British troops were lodged in Delhi itself; there were none encamped even on the historic Ridge outside it.

The 3rd Cavalry, heading the long flight of mutineers, reached Delhi in the early morning of the 11th of May. They spurred across the bridge, slew the few casual Englishmen they met as they swept through the streets, galloped to the King's palace, and with loud shouts announced that they had slain all the English at Meerut, and had come to fight for the faith.'

The King, old and nervous, hesitated. He had no reason for revolt. Ambition was dead in him. His estates had thriven under British administration. His revenues had risen from a little over 40,000l. to 140,000l. He enjoyed all that he asked of the universe, a lazy, sensual, opium-soaked life. Why should he exchange a musky and golden sloth, to the Indian imagination so desirable, for the dreadful perils of revolt and war? But the palace at Delhi was a moral plague-spot, a nest of poisonous insects, a vast household in which fermented every bestial passion to which human nature can sink. And discontent gave edge and fire to every other evil force. A spark falling into such a magazine might well produce an explosion. And the shouts of 1 Copyright, 1901, by the Rev. W. H. Fitchett, in the United States of America.

the revolted troopers from Meerut at its gates supplied the necessary spark.

While the old King doubted, and hesitated, and scolded, the palace guards opened the gates to the men of the 3rd Cavalry, who instantly swept in and slaughtered the English officials and English ladies found in it. Elsewhere mutiny found many victims. The Delhi Bank was attacked and plundered, and the clerks and the manager with his family were slain. The office of the 'Delhi Gazette' shared the same fate, the unfortunate compositors being killed in the very act of setting up the 'copy' which told of the tragedy at Meerut. All Europeans found that day in the streets of Delhi, down to the very babies, were killed without pity.

There were, as we have said, no white troops in Delhi. The city was held by a Sepoy garrison, the 38th, 54th, and 74th Sepoy regiments, with a battery of Sepoy artillery. The British officers of these regiments, when news of the Meerut outbreak reached them, made no doubt but that Hewitt's artillery and cavalry from Meerut would follow fierce and fast on the heels of the mutineers. The Sepoys were exhorted briefly to be true to their salt, and the men stepped cheerfully off to close and hold the city gates against the mutineers.

The chief scene of interest for the next few hours was the main-guard of the Cashmere gate. This was a small fortified enclosure in the rear of the great gate itself, always held by a guard of fifty Sepoys under a European officer. A low verandah ran around the inner wall of the main-guard, inside which were the quarters of the Sepoys; a ramp or sloping stone causeway led to the summit of the gate itself, on which stood a small tworoomed house, serving as quarters for the British officer on duty. From the main-guard two gates opened into the city itself.

The guard on that day consisted of a detachment of the 38th Native Infantry. They had broken into mutiny, and assisted with cheers and laughter at the spectacle of Colonel Ripley, of the 54th N.I., with other officers of that regiment, being hunted and sabred by some of the mutinous light cavalry who had arrived from Meerut. Two companies of the 54th were sent hurriedly to the gate, and met the body of their colonel being carried out literally hacked to pieces.

Colonel Vibart, one of the officers of the 54th, has given in his 'Story of the Sepoy Revolt' a vivid account of the scene in the VOL. X.-NO. 56, N.S.

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