2110-1-8-5

c/o Lord Milner Johannesburg S Africa

Oct:18::1901

My Dear Stair [Gillon]

I thought I would write a line to catch the mail which goes today, to tell you of my safe arrival here, and my settling down to work. I had a very pleasant outward journey - it was as cool in the Tropics as Galloway - and we arrived in Cape Town to a Scots mist, which made me very homesick. My journey up country was fairly comfotable & uneventful, although Scheepers & Smuts were trying to cross th[e] line in the eastern part, and the train passed between lines of kaffirs and watchfires & soldiers

with fixed bayonets. At Bloemfontein I was just two days too early to see Andrew Macculloch, who is now up in the Pretoria region. Lots of soldiers I knew came in at roadside stations, formerly spruce & spare young men, but now so ragged & dusty that only their white teeth, clean nails & freedom from the loathsome habit of spitting! distinguished them from tramps.

On the whole I like Johannesburg very much. The town is raw and crude, but the air is so wonderful that a wooden shanty looks like a palace. All the neighbourhood is beautiful. We live out in a house 21/2 miles from the town along a great fir-wood with a view [crossed out] ww 40 miles of veldt ['with a view' crossed out] to a great range of jagged blue mountains, which might be

the Coolins. Life is very comfortable, save that the meat (being trek ox & sheep which have died of their own accord) is pretty miserable. I have been made honorary member of both th[e] Rand & th[e] New Clubs. The place is full of Scotsmen & Oxford people. Tullibardine is here, & young Dick-Cunningham [superscript 'also Tommy Cadell'], and Dalhousie, looking very ill, & Macdonell of B.N.C. The first hotel I entered I heard the cashier crying, "Whae belongs to this dowg?" & the hall-porter answered "I don't ken." Your friend Anderson of B.N.C. is an R.S.O. at Pretoria. One of Elibank's sons is a Secretary to Sir Godfrey Lagden. Basil Blackwood is here, & Algy Wyndham, who has just come & is to live with us. Milner is a delightful man to work for, and I find my work very interesting, & confidential. Now that one is on the spot, one

is more hopeful about the future of the country. There is such uncommon latent mineral & agricultural wealth, and if, as we hope, we can make the Transvaal overwhelmingly English, we shall be able to control any disloyal Dutch element in a parliament of a federated S. Africa. At present we are endeavouring to reconcile the interests of the small man & of the just capitalist. Nothing has influenced me more that the ability of the latter. I have dined with most of the partners in Ecksteins, young men with several millions each, & their acumen & good sense is remarkable, very different from the bloated Jew financiers of the pro-Boer, [superscript '& Bellocian'] imagination.

My book of 'Blackwood' stories will come out during th[e] winter or early spring. I hope you will like the dedication. The seas between us braid has rolled, my dear Stair. Write to me, like a kind man, & give me news about Auld Reekie & the Pentlands. I'm while[s] most mortal homesick.

Ever your

John Buchan