adequate reply to our enemy’s bombardment gradually preyed on the garrison.  By degrees, also, our extreme isolation seemed to come home to us, and not a few opined that relief would probably never come, and that Mafeking would needs have to be sacrificed for the greater cause of England’s final triumph.  Since Christmas black “runners” had contrived to pass out of the town with cables, bringing us on their return scrappy news and very ancient newspapers.  For instance, I notice in my diary that at the end of March we were enchanted to read a Weekly Times of January 5.  On another occasion the Boers vacated some trenches, which were immediately occupied by our troops, who there found some Transvaal papers of a fairly recent date, and actually a copy of the Sketch.  I shall never forget how delighted we were with the latter, and the amusement derived therefrom compensated us a little for the accounts in the Boer papers of General Buller’s reverses on the Tugela.  About the middle of February I was enchanted to receive a letter from Mr. Rhodes, in Kimberley, which I reproduce.

    [Transcription of letter: 

    “Kimberly “Jan 12 / 1900

    “DEAR LADY SARAH,

“Just a line to say I often think of you[.] I wonder do you play bridge, it takes your mind off hospitals, burials and shells.  A change seems coming with Buller crossing the Tulega.  Jameson should have stopped at Bulawayo and relieved you from North.  He can do no good shut up in Ladysmith[.] I am doing a little good here as I make De Beers purse pay for things military cannot sanction[.] We have just made and fired a 4 inch gun, it is a success.

    “Yrs (.).Rhodes]

This characteristic epistle seemed a link with the outer world, and to denote we were not forgotten, even by those in a somewhat similar plight to ourselves.

The natives and their splendid loyalty were always a source of interest.  Formed into a “cattle guard,” under a white man named Mackenzie, the young bloods did excellent service, and were a great annoyance to the Boers by making daring sorties in order to secure some of the latter’s fat cattle.  This particular force proudly styled itself “Mackenzie’s Black Watch.”  There were many different natives in Mafeking.  Besides the Baralongs before alluded to, we had also the Fingos, a very superior race, and 500 natives belonging to different tribes, who hailed from Johannesburg, and who had been forcibly driven into the town by Cronje before the siege commenced.  These latter were the ones to suffer most from hunger, in spite of Government relief and the fact that they had plenty of money; for they had done most of the trench-work, and had been well paid.  The reason was that they were strangers to the other natives, who had their own gardens to supplement their food allowance, and blacks are strangely unkind and hard to each other, and remain quite unmoved if a (to them) unknown man dies of starvation, although he be of their own colour.