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called Karl, who lives half a mile from us & comes to play in our garden. He is short & broad, with a square good-humoured face, like Blazes, & a deep bass voice. I found him rooting among our dahlias & haled him into the house where he was given cake. He has the manner of a statesman - grave, courteous and sardonic. He wears clothes rather like theMhor, talks good English, but prefers the Taal, and is the most courageous creature I ever met. - a kind of Kim.

There has been a great plot here to sieze the town & murder everybody, & about 100 arrests have been made. Bruce Hamilton made a good bag of Boers last week in the Ermelo district. General Maxwell told me that many soldiers who were captured by the Boers & released came back a convinced proBoer. The truth is that while there are a certain number of men bandits in the field - Germans, Irish Fenians, Boer ruffians, & English (& Scots, I am afraid) deserters - who wreck trains & behave like swine, Botha, Delarey & de Wet play the game like gentlemen, and must be treated as such. There are moments when one almost wishes

one would change sides - it must be such a glorious thing to fight a losing battle for what is after all a noble object. They are not fighting for Kruger & his gang now, but for their country, and it is the irony of fate that we must stamp out the resistance.

Our niggers are the queerest lot of fellows. Charlie, the groom, refused the other day to obey our butler's orders on the ground that he was "only a piccaninny boss". Harry the gardener asked us the other day for a sword. He wanted it to cut the lawn, because he couldn't manage a scythe & he found shears too slow. Probably, being well read in the Elizabethan dramatists, he was thinking of Shirley's line "Some men with swords may reap the field". Chilbori, the under-groom, wears the most

[printed letterhead - image of UK royal coat of arms] [printed letterhead] HIGH COMMISSIONER'S OFFICE [printed letterhead] JOHANNESBURG,

remarkable clothes you ever saw - cast-off khaki breeches no boots, a pair of puttee leggings, cast-off khaki breeches, an old shirt of Hugh Wyndham's, & nothing else. Jim, the kitchen boy, thought I was going to put him in gaol, because I asked for his vaccination certificate. They are all heathen, except Charlie, who is a Christian. He asked leave one day to go to church. He came back drunk, for wh. he was pursued by Basil Blackwood round the garden with a sjambok. Tuesday [underlined]. H.E. is far from well to day, & has not come down to the office

I have been up to his house twice already, & will have to go again. I hope to get down to the Orange River Colony next week to inspect some Refugee Camps.

Thursday. I have just got your letter to-day wh. I ought to have had last Saturday. I am very sorry indeed to hear about Aunt, and shall write at once. I hope you may get the house well let. I am afraid you will all have a very dull time