we have selected to work upon exterior lines. We have
lived in the present, secure for the future. Who has attempted to
follow the train of thought which has been uppermost in the native
mind? Yet it would have been simple enough to have analysed their
minds. Will it not have been somewhat of this kind?--"The Boers were
few and the British were many. Yet it has taken the British months to
stamp out the Boers who were few. Moreover, we have done all the
scouting for the British--without us they themselves could have done
nothing. Also of what value are the British soldiers? They are paid
30s. a-month. We--and we are black men--are paid by the British L3 and
L4 a-month. Therefore we must be twice or three times as good as the
British soldiers! And look how the British treat us. How different to
the treatment we received at the hands of the Boers. The British must
be afraid of us!" And in the abstract this reasoning is sound. We do
treat the native as if we were afraid of him. We do treat him so that
he might justly compare himself favourably with the British soldier.
We take it for granted that this illiterate black son of the south
will know, as we do, all the troubles and standards of the labour
market: will discern the reason, which to us is obvious, of his
princely pay. But this is where our crass stupidity overtakes us. The
native does not arrive at his conclusions through the same channel of
thought as we do ourselves. How could he? And as we only use him to
suit our own convenience, and remain reckless of the interpretation
which he places upon our actions, we shall only have ourselves to
blame, when, having pandered to the inherent vanity of the black, we
suddenly find him at our throats. Not that we believe that the natives
are sufficiently advanced to render our hold in the country insecure.
But they have been pampered by us enough to make them imagine vain
things, and vain imaginings may result at no distant period in a
repetition of that rapine, pillage, and massacre of isolated white
settlements, which has ever furnished the saddest stones in the cairn
of our great Empire.

As the sun rose it brought news from the Prieska Road. The helio
twinkled out another message from the general: "Good water at
Rietvlei, four miles on. Move on to Rietvlei, form your brigade there,
and await orders from me." Almost at the same moment the helio from
the summit of Minie Kloof called us up. "Have brought along two
squadrons