sented to President Kruger and
his Raad a petition for redress of grievances signed, as already
stated, by adult male Outlanders that are said to have outnumbered the
total Boer male population at that time of the whole Transvaal. Most
of those who signed were resident on the Rand; and as soon as war hove
in sight these "undesirables" were hurried across the border, leaving
behind them in many cases well-furnished houses and well-stocked
shops. More than ten thousand of them took up arms in defence of the
Empire, and what befell their property is best told by the one
Wesleyan minister who was privileged to remain all the time in the
town, was the first to greet me when with the Guards I marched into
the Market Square, and soon after established our first Wesleyan
Soldiers' Home in the Transvaal. He, the Rev. S. L. Morris, on that
point writes as follows:--

President Kruger proclaimed Sunday, May 27th, and the two
following days, as days of humiliation and prayer. Notices to
this effect were sent to officials and ministers, and doubtless
there were many who devoutly followed the directions. The conduct
of one large section of the Dutch people of Johannesburg was,
however, very strange. In Johannesburg, as in Pretoria, the last
ten years have seen the development of special locations where
the lowest class of Dutch people reside. For the most part these
are the families of landless Boers. Until recent years they lived
as squatters on the farms of their more thrifty compatriots.
Their life then was one of progressive degradation. Under the
Kruger policy hundreds of such families were encouraged to settle
in the neighbourhood of the towns. Plots of ground were given
them, and there they built rough shanties, and formed communities
which were a South African counterpart to the submerged tenth of
England. There was this difference, that these _bywoners_ became
a great strength to the Kruger party. The males of sixteen years
of age and upwards had all the privileges which were denied to
the most influential of the _Uitlanders_. It was the votes of
Vrededorp, the poor Dutch quarter, that decided the
representation of Johannesburg in the Volksraad. On the days of
humiliation and prayer, when the army under Lord Roberts was
within twenty miles of Johannesburg, the families of these poor
burghers broke into the