indicative of the satisfaction he experienced in keeping the representative of Her Majesty outside in the rain and mud.  Upon occasions when he was afforded admission he was hustled through the yard by a warder and not allowed to hold private conversation with any of the prisoners.  On several occasions he complained that he was refused admission by order of the gaoler, and the spectacle of England’s representative being turned away by an ignorant and ill-conditioned official like Du Plessis was not an edifying one.  It is only necessary to say that upon an occasion when Du Plessis adopted the same tactics towards the Portuguese Consul that gentleman proceeded at once to the Presidency and demanded as his right free admission to the gaol whenever he chose to go, and the right was promptly recognized although there was no subject of his Government at the time within the precincts.  Indeed the Portuguese Consul stated openly that he called for the purpose of visiting as a friend one of the Reform prisoners, giving the name of one of the recalcitrants most objectionable to the Government.  The American Consul too carried matters with a high hand on the occasion of his visit to Pretoria, and it seemed as though the Paramount Power was the only one which the Transvaal Government could afford or cared to treat with contempt.

The period of gaol life afforded the Reformers some opportunity of studying a department of the Transvaal Administration which they had not before realized to be so badly in need of reform.  The system—­if system it can be called—­upon which the gaol was conducted may be gathered from the gaoler’s own words.  When one of the prisoners had inquired of him whether a certain treatment to which a white convict had been subjected was in accordance with the rules of the gaol and had received an answer in the affirmative, he remarked that he did not think many of the Reformers could exist under such conditions.  Du Plessis replied:  ’Oh no!  Not one of you would be alive a month if the rules were enforced.  No white man could stand them.  Indeed,’ he added, ’if the rules were properly enforced, not even a nigger could stand them!’

Some subsequent experience of gaol-life induced the Reformers to accept this view as tolerably correct.  It is known for instance that after the Malaboch war sixty-four of the tribe were incarcerated in Pretoria Gaol.  Some twenty were subsequently released, but of the remainder twenty-six died within the year.  Bad food vile sanitary arrangements and want of clothing and shelter contributed to this end.  Malaboch was a petty chief against whom an expedition was organized, ostensibly because he had refused to pay his taxes.  The expedition is chiefly notorious on account of the commandeering of British subjects which led to the visit of Sir Henry Loch already described.  It resulted—­as these expeditions inevitably do—­in the worsting of the natives, the capture of the chief and his headmen, and the parcelling out of his tribe as indentured servants among the Boers.