We sailed from Southampton in December, 1895, in the Tantallon Castle, then one of the most modern and up-to-date of the Castle liners.  The ship was crowded to its utmost capacity, and among the passengers, as I afterwards learned, were many deeply concerned in the plotting which was known to be going on at Johannesburg, either to extort concessions from President Kruger, or, failing this, to remove him altogether.  I knew very little about all this then, but before I had been many days on board it was not difficult to discover that much mystery filled the air, and I was greatly excited at arriving in South Africa in such stirring times.  There is no such place for getting to know people well as on a sea-voyage of eighteen days.  Somehow the sea inspires confidence, and one knows that information imparted cannot, anyway, be posted off by the same day’s mail.  So those who were helping to pull the strings of this ill-fated rebellion talked pretty freely of their hopes and fears during the long, dark tropical evenings.

I became familiar with their grievances—­their unfair taxation; no education for their children except in Dutch; no representation in Parliament—­and this in a population in which, at that time, the English and Afrikanders at Johannesburg and in the surrounding districts outnumbered the Dutch in the proportion of about 6 to 1.  They laid stress on the fact that neither the Boers nor their children were, or desired to become, miners, and, further, that for the enormous sums spent on developing and working the mines no proper security existed.  I must admit it was the fiery-headed followers who talked the loudest—­those who had nothing to lose and much to gain.  The financiers, while directing and encouraging their zeal, seemed almost with the same hand to wish to put on the brake and damp their martial ardour.  In any case, all were so eloquent that by the time our voyage was ended I felt as great a rebel against “Oom Paul” and his Government as any one of them.

Before leaving the Tantallon Castle, however, I must pass in review some of those whose home it had been with ourselves for the best part of three weeks.  First I remember the late Mr. Alfred Beit, interesting as the man who had made the most colossal fortune of all the South African magnates, and who was then already said to be the most generous of philanthropists and the kindest of friends; this reputation he fully sustained in the subsequent years of his life and in the generous disposition of his vast wealth.  I have often been told that Mr. Cecil Rhodes owed the inspiration of some of his colossal ideas to his friend Mr. Beit, and when it came to financing the same, the latter was always ready to assist in carrying out projects to extend and consolidate the Empire.  In these latter years, and since his comparatively early death, I have heard those who still bear the brunt of the battle lament his loss, and remark, when a railway was to be built or a new part of the country opened up, how much more expeditiously it would be done were Mr. Beit still alive.