2110-1-13-2

Come out here in May after your exam. I will join for a month's mountaineering such as you never dreamed of. Do try to come.

High Commissioner's Office, Johannesburg.

Jan: 10: 1903

My dear Stair

It was meat & drink (paté-de-f-g & Lafitte '74) for me to hear from you again. Your tobacco arrives most regularly and in the clouds of reek I see your honest face. I will not get a typewriter: you shall have my own vile fist & not the vicarious regularities of an automaton. Sae pit that in your pipe and smoke it, Gillon. I am so sorry to hear about Jock Lawrence. Give him my deepest sympathy. Poor Cubby's death was a sad blow. You know that I was bringing him out here: I had got Lord Milner persuaded to take him as an additional private secretary. And all the last hours of his delirium he dreamed that

he was coming out here to join me. He was one of the ablest men I have ever known, & a very kind & loyal friend, and his loss makes a great gap in the ranks of the Old Guard.

I have just come back from a wild tour in the mountains of the eastern North, and a short expedition into the fever flats beyond. It was devilish hot, but luckily I escaped fever though one member of my party got it very badly. I am becoming a hard old mosstrooper now; one day I spent 14 hours on end in the saddle, and was quite fresh next morning. I never saw anything like the scenery. A kind of celestial Scotland, where the main lines of the landscape are Scottish, but when you examine

details, you find the water-meadows full of tree-ferns & arums & orchids, & the little copses, which should be hazel or birk, full of trees 200 ft high & monkey-ladders, & strange ferns, & wild pig, bush buck & tiger-cats. It was a fascinating journey, & I project a country seat – the Dungeon of Buchan – on the edge of the mountains looking down 4000 feet on the fever plains.

I have had a long talk with Joe today, & have to resume it tomorrow. He has been very kind, & on the whole, I think, has done a great deal of good by his visit. But somehow

he has disappointed me. He is as clever as paint and sees a point a mile off. But he is too dapper & business-like; he seems to lack vision and daemonic power. I cannot imagine him leading men as Gladstone led them, or attracting men as Lord Milner attracts them, or moulding the future as Rhodes attempted. He is a business-like clever man from Birmingham, a man whom you want to make General Manager of the British Empire, but whom you know will remain for ever a general manager & not a director.

My love to all my friends. Smite Jamieson on the back for me as a faithless correspondent. With kindest regards to your family in all its ramifications with which I am acquainted.

Ever yours John Buchan