e rising as I actually saw, and have, for reasons
already stated, confined myself to a narrative of the main facts, and a
statement of the theories put forward, abstaining from comments on the
conduct of individuals. The expedition of the British South Africa
Company's police took place after I left the country. Of it and of what
led to it oral accounts have been given by some of the principal actors,
as well as by many independent pens, while the visible phenomena of the
Johannesburg movement have been less described and are certainly less
understood. I have dwelt on them the more fully not only because they
are a curious episode in history which will not soon lose its interest,
but also because the political and industrial situation on the
Witwatersrand remained in 1897 substantially what it was in November
1895. Some few reforms have been given, some others promised. But the
mine owners did not cease to complain, and the Uitlanders were excluded
from the suffrage as rigorously as ever. The Transvaal difficulty
remained, and still disturbed the tranquillity of South Africa. The
problem is not a simple one, and little or no progress had been made
towards its solution.

[Footnote 78: Since the first edition of this book appeared, Mr. Selous
has told me--and no one's authority is higher, for he has lived much
amongst them--that this statement is exaggerated, and that, great as has
been and is the dislike of the Boers to the British Government, the
average Boer is friendly to the individual Englishman.]

[Footnote 79: I was told that their frequent term (when they talk among
themselves) for an Englishman is "rotten egg," but some persons who had
opportunities of knowing have informed me, since this book was first
published, that this is not so. Another common Boer name for an
Englishman is "red-neck," drawn from the fact that the back of an
Englishman's neck is often burnt red by the sun. This does not happen to
the Boer, who always wears a broad-brimmed hat.]

[Footnote 80: Their laws at one time forbade the working of gold mines
altogether, for they held with the Roman poet (_aurum inrepertum et sic
melius situm_) that it does least harm when undiscovered.]

[Footnote 81: I have elsewhere analysed (in the _Forum_ for April, 1896)
this constitution, and discussed the question whether it is to be
regarded as a true Rigid constitution, like that of the United States,
of the Swiss Confederation, and of the Orange Free St