venom. In a few instances the lyddite was far more
harrowing than the shafts, and in the vast majority of instances both were
born of ignorance. There are unclean, uncouth, and unregenerate Boers, and
I doubt whether any one will stultify himself by declaring that there are
none such of Britons and Americans. I have been among the Boers in times
of peace and in times of war, and I have always failed to see that they
were in any degree lower than the men of like rank or occupation in
America or England. The farmers in Rustenburg probably never saw a dress
suit or a _decollete_ gown, but there are innumerable regions in America
and Great Britain where similarly dense ignorance prevails. I have been in
scores of American and British homes which were not more spotlessly clean
than some of the houses on the veld in which it was my pleasure to find a
night's entertainment, and nowhere, except in my own home, have I ever
been treated with more courtesy than that which was extended to me, a
perfect stranger, in scores of daub and wattle cottages in the Free State
and the Transvaal. I will not declare that every Boer is a saint, or that
every one is a model of cleanliness or virtue, but I make bold to say that
the majority of the Boers are not a fraction less moral, cleanly, or
virtuous than the majority of Americans or Englishmen, albeit they may be
less progressive and less handsome in appearance than we imagine ourselves
to be.

As I have stated, the politics of the war has found no part in the
following pages, and an honest effort has been made to give an impartial
account of the proceedings as they unfolded themselves before the eyes of
an American. The struggle is one which was brought about by the
politicians, but it will probably be ended by the layman who wields a
sword, and who knows nothing of the intricacies of diplomacy. The Boers
desire to gain nothing but their countries' independence; the British have
naught to lose except thousands of valuable lives if they continue in
their determination to erase the two nations. Unless the Boers soon decide
to end the war voluntarily, the real struggle will only begin when the
Imperial forces enter the mountainous region in the north-eastern part of
the Transvaal, and then General Lucas Meyer's prophecy that the bones of
one hundred thousand British soldiers will lay bleaching on the South
African veld before the British are victorious may be more than realised.

One word mor