ling to Johannesburg
in the company of General Piet Cronje and his faithful wife. General
Cronje told me that he was proceeding to the western districts of the
Republic to take up the command of the Potchefstroom and Lichtenburg
burghers. His instructions, he said, were to protect the Western
frontier.

I left General Cronje at Johannesburg on the 29th September, 1899, and
never saw him again until I met him at St. Helena nearly two and a
half years afterwards, on the 25th March, 1902. When I last saw him we
greeted each other as free men, as free and independent legislators
and officers of a free Republic. We fought for our rights to live as a
nation.

Now I meet the veteran Cronje a broken old man, captive like myself,
far away from our homes and our country.

Then and Now!

Then we went abroad free and freedom-loving men, burning with
patriotism. Our wives and our women-folk watched us go; full of sorrow
and anxiety, but satisfied that we were going abroad in our country's
cause.

And Now!

Two promising and prosperous Republics wrecked, their fair homesteads
destroyed, their people in mourning, and thousands of innocent women
and children the victims of a cruel war.

There is scarcely an Afrikander family without an unhealable wound.
Everywhere the traces of the bloody struggle; and, alas, most poignant
and distressing fact of all, burghers who fought side by side with us
in the earlier stages of the struggle are now to be found in the ranks
of the enemy.

These wretched men, ignoring their solemn duty, left their companions
in the lurch without sense of shame or respect for the braves who fell
fighting for their land and people.

Oh, day of judgment! The Afrikander nation will yet avenge your
treachery.

CHAPTER III.

THE INVASION OF NATAL.

After taking leave of my friend Cronje at Johannesburg Station, my
first duty was to visit my various field cornets. About four o'clock
that afternoon I found my commando was as nearly ready as could be
expected. When I say ready, I mean ready on paper only, as later
experience showed. My three field cornets were required to equip 900
mounted men with waggons and provisions, and of course they had _carte
blanche_ to commandeer. Only fully enfranchised burghers of the South
African Republic were liable to be commandeered, and in Johannesburg
town there was an extraordinary conglomeration of cosmopolitans
amenable to this gentle process of enlistment.