2110-1-9-11

High Commissioner's Office Johannesburg,

Feb: 10:: 1902

My dearest Nan

Many thanks for your last letter. I heard also from Uncle Willie, whom I shall write to this week, from Dougie Malcolm, from Ernest Jones (who is certainly not drownded, as the infamous. J. Edgar said he was) & from the Bird - a most striking despatch, full of rural reflection and Johnsonian antitheses. I am so glad that at last you have been got to appreciate the "Underwoods," one of the most sterling books of poetry of last century. Mother still writes in

good spirits from Port Elizabeth.

I personally believe, and said so at the time, that the Johannesburg Plot was nonsense - the fiction of a few harebrained colonials who find disloyalty and treason in a dog's barking. That I was right is shown by how little has come of it, - a few trumpery sentences for hasty words. But then the violent man out here will tell you I am a pro-Boer, merely because I insist that no reconstruction is complete without taking account of the Boer. I believe his fangs are drawn and that in the future he will be the least dangerous element in S. Africa. So thinks Lord K, and so think H.E. at the

bottom of his heart. This is all confidential so don't repeat it.

Peterkin, a Linlithgow solicitor & a friend of Richard Brown's, came to see me last week. He married an Usher, a sister of R. Brown's partner. I got him made Residential Magistrate at Vicksburg, for wh. he was duly grateful. I am afraid I can do nothing for young Cunninghame, as such posts have all been filled up. I took little Marshall of Rachan out to dine with H. E. on Wednesday. He was very nervous & behaved very well. He gave us much news of Peeblesshire, and it was a pleasure to hear his honest Tweedside tongue, for he speaks as broad as possible. He was very amusing about the salmon-poaching episode. He says

that Peebleshire people are much impressed by it, and were saying "Shurely this is a terrible war, when they're catchin' Bowers about Brochtoun."

I am as busy as I know how just now, but very well. I am tanned so that you wouldn't recognise me - a deep tawny, with little white wrinkles round my eyes. I buy farms nearly every day for our Land Settlement. Yesterday H.E. asked me to go & see Leeuwenhof, a valuable farm 15 miles out. I set off early in the morning, and passed the furthest outpost about 9. They told me to go unarmed, as if I were caught I would be less mishandled. I had no proper directions about the road, but I struck a stream called the Jucskei and followed it down through awful country.

I passed a few lonely farms, and rode up to them, but found them shattered and not a human being anywhere. It was a very eerie business, for there were great eagles flapping around, and in a jungle I found two pariah dogs whom I had to keep off with my hunting-crop. By & by I reached open country, with a view for a great distance & then I found my whereabouts. Alan Breck fell into a hole & flung me, but otherwise I had no mishap. I reached my farm at 1 o'clock & [crossed out] ate my lunch in company with a disreputable Irish gentleman who lived in a blockhouse. I came home by a better way, and went up and had a long talk to H.E. This morning I bought