CHAPTER XXXI. 



A GENERAL SURVEY AND SUMMARY 

 OF EVENTS. 



I could write pages of the events preceding, during 

 and after the war of 1880, but no good purpose would 

 be served. Enough has been written about the 

 military and political muddles of these times, as 

 well as of the nepotism and bribery, the concession - 

 mongering which was rampant in the Transvaal 

 after the retrocession ; the policy which led up to 

 the Jameson raid, and subsequently the great war 

 of 1900, when the Republics took the offensive. The 

 whirligig of time brings strange things to pass ! In 

 1857 Kruger raided the Free States, in 1896 Jameson 

 raided Kruger. The Boers raided Bechuanaland and 

 Zululand with Kruger's approval and tried Matabe- 

 land. Rhodes and Jameson annexed and populated 

 it. Jameson and his friends paid tens of thousands 

 in fines. Kruger & Co. paid nothing and obtained 

 land ! During the sixty odd years of my sojourn in 

 it, South Africa has never had rest, never known 

 real peace, or been able to concentrate its energies 

 on industrial and commercial development like other 

 countries. One never knows what will happen ! I 

 remember Sir Garnet Wolseley discussing with me 

 the advisability of proclaiming the country up to 

 the Zambesi River as an annexure or portion of the 

 Transvaal. I pointed out that in the event of a 

 Liberal Government coming into power, and that if 

 according to Gladstone's speeches the Transvaal were 

 given back, it would involve the session of what is 

 now Rhodesia and would probably become German 



