the 30th--as usual, a fiercely hot day--we received the
astounding intelligence that Dr. Jameson, administrator of Mashonaland
and Matabeleland, had entered the Transvaal at the head of the Chartered
Company's Police, 600 strong, with several Maxim and Gardner guns. No
upheaval of Nature could have created greater amazement, combined with a
good deal of admiration and some dismay, than this sensational news. The
dismay, indeed, increased as the facts were more fully examined. Nearly
all the officers of the corps held Imperial commissions, and one heard
perfect strangers asking each other how these officers could justify
their action of entering a friendly territory, armed to the teeth; while
the fact of Dr. Jameson himself being at their head heightened the
intense interest. I did not know that gentleman then, but I must say he
occupied in the hearts of the people at Kimberley, and, indeed, of the
whole country, quite a unique position.

It was in the diamond-fields he had worked as a young doctor, usurping
gradually almost the entire medical practice by his great skill as well
as by his charm of manner. Then, as Mr. Rhodes's nominee, he had
dramatically abandoned medicine and surgery, and had gone to the great
unknown Northern Territory almost at a moment's notice. He had obtained
concessions from the black tyrant, Lobengula, when all other emissaries
had failed; backwards and forwards many times across the vast stretch of
country between Bulawayo and Kimberley he had carried on negotiations
which had finally culminated, five years previously, in his leading a
column of 500 hardy pioneers to the promising country of Mashonaland,
which up to that time had lain in darkness under the cruel rule of the
dusky monarch. During three strenuous years Dr. Jameson, with no
military or legal education, had laboured to establish the nucleus of a
civilized government in that remote country; and during the first part
of that period the nearest point of civilization, from whence they could
derive their supplies, was Kimberley, a thousand miles away, across a
practically trackless country. Added to this difficulty, the
administrator found himself confronted with the wants and rights of the
different mining communities into which the pioneers had gradually split
themselves up, and which were being daily augmented by the arrival of
"wasters" and others, who had begun to filter in as the country was
written about, and its great mining and