add my little effort to the ponderous
tomes of War literature, I have written down that which I saw with my
own eyes, and that which I personally experienced. If seeing is
believing, the reader may lend credence to my recital of every
incident I have herein recounted.

During the last stages of the struggle, when we were isolated from the
outside world, we read in newspapers and other printed matter captured
from the British so many romantic and fabulous stories about
ourselves, that we were sometimes in doubt whether people in Europe
and elsewhere would really believe that we were ordinary human beings
and not legendary monsters. On these occasions I read circumstantial
reports of my death, and once a long, and by no means flattering,
obituary (extending over several columns of a newspaper) in which I
was compared to Garibaldi, "Jack the Ripper," and Aguinaldo. On
another occasion I learned from British newspapers of my capture,
conviction, and execution in the Cape Colony for wearing the insignia
of the Red Cross. I read that I had been brought before a military
court at De Aar and sentenced to be shot, and what was worse, the
sentence was duly confirmed and carried out. A very lurid picture was
drawn of the execution. Bound to a chair, and placed near my open
grave, I had met my doom with "rare stoicism and fortitude." "At
last," concluded my amiable biographer, "this scoundrel, robber, and
guerilla leader, Viljoen, has been safely removed, and will trouble
the British Army no longer." I also learned with mingled feelings of
amazement and pride that, being imprisoned at Mafeking at the
commencement of hostilities, General Baden-Powell had kindly
exchanged me for Lady Sarah Wilson.

To be honest, none of the above-mentioned reports were strictly
accurate. I can assure the reader that I was never killed in action or
executed at De Aar, I was never in Mafeking or any other prison in my
life (save here at St. Helena), nor was I in the Cape Colony during
the War. I never masqueraded with a Red Cross, and I was never
exchanged for Lady Sarah Wilson. Her ladyship's friends would have
found me a very poor exchange.

It is also quite inaccurate and unfair to describe me as a "thief" and
"a scoundrel". It was, indeed, not an heroic thing to do, seeing that
the chivalrous gentlemen of the South African Press who employed the
epithets were safely beyond my view and reach, and I had no chance of
correcting their quite errone