said:  “That is what I want.  That is all I ask of you.  The rest will come in time.  We must have a beginning, and that will be the beginning.  If you people get your rights, the Customs Union, Railway Convention, and other things will all come in time.”  He then added that we must take our own time about this movement, and that he would keep Jameson on the frontier as long as it was necessary as a moral support, and also to come to our assistance should we get ourselves into a tight place.  We asked him how he hoped to recoup himself for his share of the expense in keeping Jameson’s force on the border, which should be borne by us jointly.  He said that seeing the extent of his interests in the country, he would be amply repaid by the improvement in the conditions which it was intended to effect.’

It has since been suggested that the object of the movement was to ‘steal the country’ and to annex it to Rhodesia, in order to rehabilitate the Chartered Company.  The suggestion is too ludicrous for serious discussion.  It must be obvious to anyone that the persons most concerned in the movement, and whose interests lay in the Rand, would be the very last to consent to any such scheme.  There appears to be no conceivable basis upon which such an arrangement could have been entered into, and it is quite clear that no sensible business man having interests in a rich country in a comparatively advanced state of development would consent to share that certainty with a new country such as Rhodesia, the value of which, however promising, has still to be proved.  Notwithstanding the ludicrous nature of the charge, it is quite certain that the Boers have a deep-rooted conviction of its truth.

The arrangements with Dr. Jameson were made with him in person.  During the month of September he visited Johannesburg, and it was then agreed that he should maintain a force of some 1,500 mounted men fully equipped, a number of Maxims, and some field artillery; that he was, in addition to this, to have with him 1,500 spare rifles and a quantity of spare ammunition; and that about 5,000 rifles, three Maxim guns, and 1,000,000 rounds of ammunition were to be smuggled into Johannesburg.  It was calculated that in the town itself there would be, perhaps, 1,000 rifles privately owned.  Thus, in the event of a junction of forces being effected, Johannesburg would be able to command about 9,000 armed men, with a fair equipment of machine-guns and cannon.  Nor was this all, for on the original plan it was intended to seize the fort and magazines at Pretoria.  And circumstances favoured the plans of the Johannesburg men.  The surrounding wall of the fort, a mere barrack, had been removed on one side in order to effect some additions; there were only about 100 men stationed there, and all except half a dozen could be counted on as being asleep after 9 p.m.  There never was a simpler sensational task in the world than that of seizing the Pretoria fort—­fifty men could have done it.  But there was more to be done than the mere taking.  In the fort there were known to be some 10,000 rifles, ten or twelve field-pieces, and 12,000,000 rounds of small-arm ammunition; and it was designed to seize the fort and the railway on the night of the outbreak and, by means of one or two trains, to carry off as much of the material as possible and destroy the rest.