ver the Vaal were turned loose, without any of the
above necessaries, to find their way down country. They met an
English transport rider named Mr. F. Wheeler, who was going to
Pietermaritzburg with his waggon, which had been looted by the
Boers, and who kindly gave them transport, provided them with food,
and is bringing them to the city, which, as I passed them at the
Drakensburg on Tuesday, they should reach on Sunday next--consisting
of one sergeant and sixty-one men, all that remain of our Leydenburg
detachment and headquarters of the 94th Regiment.--I have the honour
to remain, Sir, your obedient servant,

"R. H. LAMBART,
_Captain Royal Scots Fusiliers_."

Major Lambart's report speaks more eloquently than many descriptions
as to the character of the "simple-minded Boer." We discovered to
our cost during the Indian Mutiny that the "gentle native" was not
all our fancy painted him, and it may be as well to realise that our
simple-minded and pious brother in the Transvaal is scarcely so
righteous as we have been led to suppose.

[Illustration: THE ORANGE RIVER AT NORVAL'S PONT.

Photo by Wilson, Aberdeen.]

LAING'S NEK

Since we have been tracing the causes of the Boer rebellion, it may
be advisable to refer to a letter written on the 28th of December
1880 by Sir Bartle Frere to Mr. F. Greenwood, editor of the _St.
James's Gazette_. He therein throws a most important light on the
political position. He wrote: "In 1879, when I was among the Boers
in the Transvaal, I found that the real wire-pullers of their
Committee were foreigners of various nationalities, notably some
Hollanders (not Africanders), imbued with German Socialist
Republicanism, and an Irishman of the name of Aylward. I was told he
was a man of great natural ability, educated as a solicitor, an
ex-Fenian pardoned under another name (Murphy, I think), for turning
Queen's evidence against others who had murdered the policeman at
Manchester. Emigrating to the Diamond Fields, he was tried,
convicted, and suffered imprisonment there for homicide. When he
came out of prison he betook himself to the Transvaal and had a
command of foreign free lances under Mr. Burgers, then President of
the Transvaal Republic, in his unsuccessful attempt to take
Secocoeni's stronghold. After the annexation of the Transvaal he
came to England and published one of the few readable books on the