140 A NATURALIST IN THE TRANSVAAL. 



only mean that the victim was either " a very bad lot " 

 or of a very sensitive disposition. In the one case help 

 might be withheld ; in the other it is neither sought nor 

 accepted. 



It would be difficult for even the most fanatic oppo- 

 nent of Mr. Gladstone to imagine the deep, heartfelt, 

 scornful detestation of his very name among many old 

 British residents of this Republic. It is now but a 

 decade since the Boer war a war largely brought about 

 by the arrogance and lost by the imbecility of many 

 to whom British interests were then confided. I 

 constantly met men who had risked life, fortune, and 

 every hope in the cause of their old country, and who 

 in the darkest day were prepared to go on, who, badly 

 led, repined not, badly defeated were yet not beaten, 

 but who have never forgiven what they call the infamy 

 of the Gladstone surrender. I have found old English 



O 



settlers, who took part and were ruined in the war, 

 reviling the very name of their country ; others who 

 professing detestation of the Boers would yet help them 

 so they say to fight against any renewed attempt at 

 British supremacy ; and all this not partial, not isolated, 

 but common talk, which every traveller may hear who 

 cares to mix with the people and listen to their views. 

 I found it useless to argue ; I had not the facts for 

 defence. I recalled the old sugar-planting days of 

 Malacca more than twenty years before, when my 

 Scotch friends who managed the estates, and who were 

 as a rule Tory and Jacobite to the bone, would angrily 

 tell me they would travel twenty miles to see John 

 Bright hanged. 



The Kafir represents the labouring class of the Trans- 

 vaal. Wherever manual unskilled work is required it 

 is the Kafir who supplies it. He is the bricklayer's 

 labourer, the porter, the miner, the farm hand, the 

 shepherd, the scavenger, and even the common police- 

 man. He promenades Pretoria in the most wonderful 

 attire, for in the large towns he is not allow r ed to indulge 

 in his primitive costume. His greatest glory is in the 

 possession of an old soldier's tunic numbers of which 



