in Natal and at the Cape received the news with
astonishment, how shall I describe its effect upon the unfortunate loyal
inhabitants in the Transvaal, on whom it burst like a thunderbolt?

They did not say much however, and indeed, there was nothing to be said,
they simply began to pack up such things as they could carry with them,
and to leave the country, which they well knew would henceforth be
utterly untenable for Englishmen or English sympathisers. In a few weeks
they came pouring down through Newcastle by hundreds; it was the
most melancholy exodus that can be imagined. There were people of all
classes, officials, gentlefolk, work-people, and loyal Boers, but
they had a connecting link; they had all been loyal, and they were all
ruined.

Most of these people had gone to the Transvaal since it became a British
Colony, and invested all they had in it, and now their capital was lost
and their labour rendered abortive; indeed, many of them whom one had
known as well to do in the Transvaal, came down to Natal hardly knowing
how they would feed their families next week.

It must be understood that so soon as the Queen's sovereignty was
withdrawn the value of landed and house property in the Transvaal went
down to nothing, and has remained there ever since. Thus a fair-sized
house in Pretoria brought in a rental varying from ten to twenty pounds
a month during British occupation, but after the declaration of peace,
owners of houses were glad to get people to live in them to keep them
from falling into ruin. Those who owned land or had invested money in
businesses suffered in the same way; their property remains, neither
profitable or saleable, and they themselves are precluded by their
nationality from living on it, the art of "Boycotting" not being
peculiar to Ireland.

Nor were they the only sufferers, the officials, many of whom had taken
to the Government service as a permanent profession, in which they
expected to pass their lives, were suddenly dismissed, mostly with a
small gratuity, which would about suffice to pay their debts, and told
to find their living as best they could. It was indeed a case of _vae
victis_,--woe to the conquered loyalists.[*]

[*] The following extract is clipped from a recent issue of
the "Transvaal Advertiser." It describes the present
condition of Pretoria:--

"The streets grown over with rank vegetation, the water-
furrows uncleaned and unattended, emit