th of
October, and included British Bechuanaland and Griqualand West, with the
diamond fields. On the 28th of October Mr Schreiner signed a
proclamation issued by Sir Alfred Milner as high commissioner, declaring
the Boer annexations of territory within Cape Colony to be null and
void.

Then came the British reverses at Magersfontein (on the 11th of
December) and Stormberg (on the 10th of December). The effect of these
engagements at the very outset of the war, occurring as they did within
Cape Colony, was to offer every inducement to a number of the frontier
colonial Boers to join their kinsmen of the republics. The Boers were
prolific, and their families large. Many younger sons from the colony,
with nothing to lose, left their homes with horse and rifle to join the
republican forces.

Meanwhile the loyal Cape colonists were chafing at the tardy manner in
which they were enrolled by the imperial authorities. It was not until
after the arrival of Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener at Cape Town on the
10th of January 1900 that these invaluable, and many of them
experienced, men were freely invited to come forward. So strongly did
Lord Roberts feel on the subject, that he at once made Colonel Brabant,
a well-known and respected colonial veteran and member of the House of
Assembly, a brigadier-general, and started recruiting loyal colonists in
earnest. On the 15th of February Kimberley was relieved by General
French, and the Boer general, Cronje, evacuated Magersfontein, and
retreated towards Bloemfontein. Cecil Rhodes was shut up in Kimberley
during the whole of the siege, and his presence there undoubtedly
offered an additional incentive to the Boers to endeavour to capture the
town, but his unique position and influence with the De Beers workmen
enabled him to render yeoman service, and infused enthusiasm and courage
into the inhabitants. The manufacture of a big gun, which was able to
compete with the Boer "Long Tom," at the De Beers workshops, under
Rhodes's orders, and by the ingenuity of an American, Mr. Labram, who
was killed a few days after its completion, forms one of the most
striking incidents of the period.

With the relief of Mafeking on the 17th of May, the Cape rebellion
ended, and the colony was, at least for a time, delivered of the
presence of hostile forces.

On the 20th of March Mr (afterwards Sir James) Rose-Innes, a prominent
member of the House of Assembly, who for several years had held aloof