O.S.  NUGENT,
     Major, Provost Marshal
     (For Major-General, Military
     Governor of Pretoria).

     To R.S.O. 
     Pretoria
     June 25, 1900.

Everything being then pronounced in order, I said good-bye to Mrs. Godley, who was returning by road to Zeerust and Mafeking, and, accompanied by Captain Seymour Fortescue, who had a few days’ leave, and by Major Bobby White, I left on June 25 for Johannesburg.  The train was painfully slow, and rarely attained a speed of more than five or six miles an hour.  At Elandsfontein the engine gave out entirely, and a long delay ensued while another was being procured.  At all the stations were small camps and pickets of bronzed and bearded soldiers, and on the platforms could be seen many officers newly arrived from England, distinguished by their brand-new uniforms, nearly all carrying the inevitable Kodak.  At length we arrived at Johannesburg as the daylight was fading, and found excellent accommodation at Heath’s Hotel.  In the “Golden City,” as at Pretoria, the shops were open, and seemed wonderfully well supplied, butter and cigarettes being the only items that were lacking.  I remember lunching the next day at a grill-room, called Frascati’s, underground, where the cuisine was first-rate, and which was crowded with civilians of many nationalities, soldiers not being in such prominence as at Pretoria.  The afternoon we devoted to seeing some of the principal mines, including the Ferreira Deep, which had been worked by the Transvaal Government for the last eight months.  For this purpose they had engaged capable managers from France and Germany, and therefore the machinery was in no way damaged.  At a dinner-party the same evening, given by Mr. A. Goldmann, we met a German gentleman who gave an amusing account of the way in which some of the city financiers had dashed off to the small banks a few days before Lord Roberts’s entry, when the report was rife that Kruger was going to seize all the gold at Johannesburg as well as that at Pretoria.  They were soon seen emerging with bags of sovereigns on their backs, which they first carried to the National Bank, but which, on second thoughts, they reclaimed again, finally confiding their treasure to the Banque de la France.

FOOTNOTES: 

[36] Colonel Baden-Powell had been promoted to the rank of Major-General.

[37] Now Earl of Derby.

[38] Now Major-General Haig.

[39] Now Major Brinton.

CHAPTER XVI

     MY RETURN TO CIVILIZATION ONCE MORE—­THE MAFEKING
     FUND—­LETTERS FROM THE KING AND QUEEN

     “Let us admit it fairly,
     As business people should,
     We have had no end of a lesson: 
     It will do us no end of good.” 
     KIPLING.