Following are the names of the various Brigades:—­

Australian, Scotch, Africander, Cycle, Colonial, Natal, Irish, Northumbrian, Cornish, and Bettington’s Horse and the Ambulance Corps.  Most of the mines are closing down.  Women and children are still flying from the town.  Alas! some men, too, who are heartily jeered by the crowd at the railroad station.[2]

St. John’s Ambulance Society is advertising for qualified nurses or ladies willing to assist.

Natives are in a state of great panic.  One of the Kaffir servants in the hotel gave me a tremendous shock this morning by rushing into my room to fling himself at my feet, sobbing and imploring me not to allow the Boers to kill him.

Later.—­The sultry day has cooled down into a calm, moonlit night.

This evening the Reform Committee received a deputation from the Government consisting of Messrs. Marais and Malan; these gentlemen showed their authority from the Government, and were duly accredited.  They are both progressive Boers and highly respected by the Uitlanders.  They stated that they had come with the olive branch, that the Government had sent them to the Reform Committee to invite a delegation of that Committee to meet in Pretoria a Commission of Government officials, with the object of arranging an amicable settlement of the political questions.  They emphatically asserted that the Government would meet the Reform Committee half-way—­that the Government was anxious to prevent bloodshed, &c.  That they could promise that the Government would redress the Uitlander grievances upon the lines laid down in the Manifesto, but that of course all the demands would not be conceded at once, and both sides must be willing to compromise.  The Reform Committee met to consider this proposal, and after long discussion decided to send a deputation to Pretoria.  These gentlemen leave with Messrs. Malan and Marais on a special train to-night for Pretoria.

Johannesburg is quiet as ever was country town.  The streets deserted.  Nothing to suggest a city girt around by a cordon of soldiers, and yet such it is.

At midnight my husband ran in for a moment to see how we had stood the strain of the day.

‘Is the news from Jameson really true?’ I asked, still hoping it was rumour.

‘I am afraid so.’

’And are those heavy wagons just going down the street carrying the big guns to the outskirts?’

‘Yes.  Good-night, dear.’  He was gone.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 1:  The sufferings of this hapless crowd were acute.  Provisions were hard to obtain at the way stations.  The water supply gave out.  A little child died of exposure, and the heart-broken mother held the lifeless body twenty-four hours on her lap.  There was no room to lay it to one side.  Another woman gave birth to an infant.]

[Footnote 2:  The Cornish miners were politely presented at Kimberley and other places en route with bunches of white feathers by the howling mob.  One Cornishman afterwards related that he was pulled out at every station and made to fight.  After the fourth mauling he turned round and went back to Johannesburg, preferring to take his chances with the Boers.]