172 Eecollections of Adventures 



might get. This business almost ruined me for the 

 third time in my life. On the 14th May 1881, I 

 wrote to the Royal Commission presided over by Sir 

 Hercules Robinson, showing my position prior to the 

 annexation and the losses I had suffered since then, 

 and during the war, but no notice was taken of my 

 letter. After our pleasant voyaging in the East and 

 in Europe, this coming back to a ruined home in 

 South Africa, and with a large family to provide for 

 and no prospect of improving my position, was almost 

 too much for me. The brave little mother and I 

 went through a sad and anxious time. 



After the 1880 war when nearly all my diaries, 

 private and political papers, family relics, etc., were 

 destroyed, myself nearly ruined, and the country so 

 miserably poor, that it was a hard struggle to keep 

 my family, I turned to anything I could think of to 

 earn a livelihood. I tried various branches of 

 farming, and did some prospecting. A bad drought 

 in 1883 handicapped me. I was tired to death, and 

 getting to hate the couutry, and all connected with 

 it. There was no justice obtainable from the local 

 officials; even the Bench was not respected, and I 

 wanted to sell out and leave, but there was nobody 

 to buy, no trust, no hope, for the future of the 

 country, under misrule. At the retrocession, the 

 bulk of English-speaking people who could, left the 

 Transvaal. There was no money in the Exchequer 

 and no credit, and the granting of concessions 

 became the order of the day on everything conceiv- 

 able from jam to dynamite, from land areas to 

 brandy monopoly and a few patriotic foreigners did 

 well. If I could have sold out, I with my brothers 

 intended going to New Zealand but were unable to 

 do so, as we could get no one to buy anything. 



