's talk of it any more, because we are good friends now,
and if we go on you will lie, and I shall lie, and then we shall
get angry. The war is over now, and I don't want to quarrel with the
English; if one of them takes off his hat to me I always acknowledge
it." He did not mean any harm in talking thus; it is what Englishmen
have to put up with now in South Africa; the Boers have beaten us, and
act accordingly.

This man also told us that the majority of the rifles they picked up
were sighted for 400 yards, whereas the latter part of the fighting had
been carried on within 200.

Sir George Colley's death was much lamented in the Colony, where he was
deservedly popular; indeed, anybody who had the honour of knowing that
kind-hearted gentleman, could not do otherwise than deeply regret his
untimely end. What his motive was in occupying Majuba in the way he did,
has never, so far as I am aware, transpired. The move, in itself, would
have been an excellent one, had it been made in force, or accompanied
by a direct attack on the Nek--but, as undertaken, seems to have been
objectless. There were, of course, many rumours as to the motives that
prompted his action, of which the most probable seems to be that, being
aware of what the Home Government intended to do with reference to the
Transvaal, he determined to strike a blow to try and establish British
Supremacy first, knowing how mischievous any apparent surrender would
be. Whatever his faults may have been as a General, he was a brave man,
and had the honour of his country much at heart.

It was also said by soldiers who saw him the night the troops marched
up Majuba, that the General was "not himself," and it was hinted that
continual anxiety and the chagrin of failure had told upon his mind. As
against this, however, must be set the fact that his telegrams to the
Secretary of State for War, the last of which he must have despatched
only about half-an-hour before he was shot, are cool and collected,
and written in the same unconcerned tone,--as though he were a
critical spectator of an interesting scene--that characterises all his
communications, more especially his despatches. They at any rate give no
evidence of shaken nerve or unduly excited brain, nor can I see that
any action of his with reference to the occupation of Majuba is out of
keeping with the details of his generalship upon other occasions. He was
always confident to rashness, and possessed by the idea th