In the evening I had a visit from a stranger, who announced himself to be Mr. Barnes, correspondent to the Daily Mail.  This gentleman handed me a letter from my sister, Lady Georgiana Curzon, dated Christmas Day of the previous year, which had at last reached me under peculiar circumstances.  It appeared that, when my resourceful sister heard I had been taken prisoner by the Boers, she decided the best way of communicating with me would be through the President of the South African Republic, via Delagoa Bay.  She had therefore written him a letter as follows: 

     “Christmas Day, 1899.

“Lady Georgiana Curzon presents her compliments to His Honour President Kruger, and would be very much obliged if he would give orders that the enclosed letter should be forwarded to her sister, Lady Sarah Wilson, who, according to the latest reports, has been taken prisoner by General Snyman.”

In this letter was enclosed the one now handed to me by Mr. Barnes.  The President, in the novel experience of receiving a letter from an English lady, had sent for the American Consul, and had handed him both epistles without a remark of any kind, beyond asking him to deal with them.  Thus the missive finally reached its destination.  This visitor had hardly departed when another was announced in the person of a Dr. Scholtz, whom, with his wife, I had met at Groot Schuurr as Mr. Rhodes’s friends.  This gentleman, who is since dead, had always seemed to me somewhat of an enigmatical personage.  German by origin, he combined strong sympathies with the Boers and fervent Imperialism, and I was therefore always a little doubtful as to his real sentiments.  He came very kindly on this occasion to pay a friendly call, but also to inform me that he was playing a prominent part in the abortive peace negotiations which at that stage of the war were being freely talked about.  Whether he had acted on his own initiative, or whether he had actually been employed by the authorities, he did not state; but he seemed to be full of importance, and proud of the fact that he had spent two hours only a few days before on a kopje in conference with Louis Botha, while the same kopje was being energetically shelled by the English.  He gave me, indeed, to understand that the successful issue of the interview had depended entirely on the amount the English Government was prepared to pay, and that another L2,000,000 would have ended the war then and there.  He probably did not enjoy the full confidence of either side, and I never verified the truth of his statements, which were as strange and mysterious as the man himself, whom, as events turned out, I never saw again.

It had been difficult to reach Pretoria, but the departure therefrom was attended by many formalities, and I had to provide myself, amongst other permits, with a railway pass, which ran as follows: 

     RAILWAY PASSES.

     The bearer, Lady Sarah.  Wilson (and maid) is permitted to
     travel at her own expense from Pretoria to Cape Town via the
     Vaal River.