with the farming folk of Australia, America, and Great Britain.  What he may be in the Transvaal I know not, because I have not yet been there; but in Cape Colony and in the Free State he is much as I have depicted him, no better, no worse, than Americans and Australians, and as good a fighting man as either—­which is tantamount to saying that he is as good as anything on God’s green earth, if he only had military training.

Ask “Tommy” privately, when he comes home, if this is not so—­not “Thomas,” who has been on lines of communication all the time—­but “Tommy,” who has fought him, and measured heart and hand with him.  I think he will tell you much as I have told you.  For “Tommy” is no fool; he is not half such a braggart, either, as some of the Jingoes, who shout and yell, but never take a hand in the real fighting; those wastrels of England, who are at home with a pewter of beer in their hands—­hands that never did, and never will, grip a rifle.

Whilst at Trummel I took advantage of a couple of days’ camping to go out three miles from camp to have a look at a diamond mine.  I found a red-whiskered Dutchman in charge, who knew less English than I knew Dutch, and as my Dutch consists of about twelve words we did not do much in the conversational line; but I made him understand by pantomimic telegraphy that I wanted to have a look round, to size up things.  He took me to a “dump,” where the ore at grass was stored, and converted himself into a human stone-cracking machine for my benefit, until I had seen all that I wanted to see in regard to the “ore at grass.”  He was very much like mine managers the world over—­very ready to play tricks on anyone he considered “green” at the business.  It was not his fault that he did not know that I had been a reporter on gold, silver, copper, lead, tin, and coal mines for about twenty years.

Thinking, doubtless, that I was like unto the ordinary city fellow who comes at rare intervals to look at a mine, he made me a present of a piece of rock with some worthless garnets in it, also a sample of country rock pregnant with mundic; the garnets and the mundic glittered in the sunshine.  I rose to the bait, as I was expected to do, and intimated that I would like a lot of it.  This delighted the Dutchman, and he beamed all over his expansive face, all the time cursing me for the second son of an idiot, as is the way with mine managers.  But he stopped grinning before the afternoon wore out, for I set him climbing and clambering for little pieces of mundic and tiny patches of garnets in all the toughest places I could find in that mine, and went into ecstasies over each individual piece, until I had quite a load of the rubbish.  Then I intimated gently that I would be back that way when the war was over, and would surely send my Cape cart for them if he would be good enough to mind them for me.  I fancy an inkling of the truth dawned in that Dutchman’s soul at last, for he made no further reference to either garnets or mundic.  I satisfied myself with a sample of the matrix in which diamonds are found, and also with a specimen of the country rock for geological reference, but the garnets are on the heap still.