erms accorded by Cronje to Jameson. Mr.
Abel Erasmus is a gentleman so notorious that it would be quite
unnecessary to further describe him. He is the one whom Lord Wolseley
described as a fiend in human form, and threatened to "hang as high
as Haman." Abel Erasmus is the man who had desolated the Lydenburg
district; the hero of the cave affair in which men, women, and
children were closed up in a cave and burnt to death or suffocated; a
man who is the living terror of a whole countryside, the mere mention
of whose name is sufficient to cow any native. Mr. Schoeman is the
understudy of Abel Erasmus, and is the hero of the satchel case, in
which an unfortunate native was flogged well-nigh to death and
tortured in order to wring evidence from him who, it was afterwards
discovered, knew absolutely nothing about the affair. The Queen, or
Chieftainess, Toeremetsjani, is the present head of the Secocoeni
tribe and the head wife of the late chief, Secocoeni. This tribe, it
will be remembered, was the one which successfully resisted the Boers
under President Burger and Commandant Paul Kruger--a successful
resistance which was one of the troubles leading directly to the
abortive annexation of the Transvaal. The Secocoeni tribe were
afterwards conquered by British troops, and handed over to the tender
mercies of the Boer Government upon the restoration of its
independence.

It is necessary to bear these facts in mind in order to realise the
hideous significance of the unvarnished tale.

Now to the trial.

Mr. Advocate WESSELS, who acted for the natives, gauging pretty
accurately what the defence would be, called two witnesses to prove
the _prima facie_ case. Jesaja, one of the indunas flogged, whose
case was first on the roll, proved that he was flogged by order of
Commandant Cronje without any form of trial, and without any charge
or indictment being made against him, and that he received twenty-six
lashes, the extra one being given because he declined to say 'Thank
you' for the twenty-five. Commandant Trichard next gave evidence, and
from him Mr. WESSELS elicited that Cronje had gone through no form of
trial, but handed over Jesaja and the other twelve indunas to be
flogged by Erasmus and Schoeman.

Advocate: Do you positively swear that Commandant Cronje specified
the sentence of twenty-five lashes each?

Witness: Yes.

Which answer was quite in accordance with the pleas of Erasmus and
Schoeman, who stated specificall