FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 6:  This affair was the result of an interference by the English.  It arose out of the ill-treatment of a negro slave.  The Boers resisted arrest, there was a clash of arms, and four of the Boers were hanged.]

V

JANUARY 21.—­The Burghers are disbanding and returning to their homes.

Trade is thoroughly unsettled, and business of every kind is in an unsatisfactory condition.  Great disorder prevails in the town.  Scarcely a night but there is some sort of disturbance between citizens and police; the latter are mostly raw German recruits.

Dr. Jameson and his officers left Pretoria yesterday.  Dr. Jameson looked very downcast, and sat gazing stolidly before him until the train started.  They were cheered at many places along the route.  The United States Government has thanked Mr. Chamberlain for his offer to protect Americans in the Transvaal.

All travellers coming into the country must submit to a rigorous personal search for firearms at Vereeniging.  In one case even the infant of the party was overhauled for guns and ammunition before being handed over to the loving father, who had come down to meet his little family.

LATER.—­I came up to Pretoria this afternoon with Betty and the sick nurse.  We were stopped at the station while the officials examined our handbags for cannon.  This delay would have been irritating, but the men were so universally good-natured—­little dull-witted, with no appreciation of fitness, but good-natured.  We drove at once to the Grand Hotel, and I went to bed that I might look rested when I saw my husband on the morrow.  Lady de Wet and Dr. Messum, the prison physician, called to tell me the four men had been moved into the Jameson Cottage, but I was asleep, and not allowed to be roused.  There is comfort in being this much nearer to my poor prisoner.  The hotel is full of Reformers’ wives, and there is much excitement and coming and going.  We are warned to be cautious in what we say in public places, because of spies.  Every woman has a nervous look on her face, and some of them shut the windows and doors before uttering even the most commonplace remarks.

Pretoria lies in a shallow basin in the heart of the hills—­a fitting home for the Sleeping Princess.  It is hushed and drowsy and overrun by a tangle of roses.  Weeping willows edge the streets, which are wide and as neglected as a country road.  Open gutters carry off, or rather contain, the sewage of the town.  Its altitude is lower than that of Johannesburg, and the climate very relaxing.  Every month or couple of months the town is full of stir and life.  The Boers trek in from neighbouring farms with their long span of oxen, as many as eighteen and twenty being yoked to a wagon.  They buy and sell, and partake of the Nacht Maal, or sacrament, laagered around the Dopper Church; and with their dogs, Kaffirs, and oxen make of that square a most unsavoury spot.