ble, however, that the information of the
British Intelligence Department was not far wrong. According to this
the fighting strength of the Transvaal alone was 32,000 men, and of the
Orange Free State 22,000. With mercenaries and rebels from the colonies
they would amount to 60, 000, while a considerable rising of the Cape
Dutch would bring them up to 100,000. In artillery they were known to
have about a hundred guns, many of them (and the fact will need much
explaining) more modern and powerful than any which we could bring
against them. Of the quality of this large force there is no need to
speak. The men were brave, hardy, and fired with a strange religious
enthusiasm. They were all of the seventeenth century, except their
rifles. Mounted upon their hardy little ponies, they possessed a
mobility which practically doubled their numbers and made it an
impossibility ever to outflank them. As marksmen they were supreme. Add
to this that they had the advantage of acting upon internal lines with
shorter and safer communications, and one gathers how formidable a
task lay before the soldiers of the empire. When we turn from such an
enumeration of their strength to contemplate the 12,000 men, split into
two detachments, who awaited them in Natal, we may recognise that, far
from bewailing our disasters, we should rather congratulate ourselves
upon our escape from losing that great province which, situated as it
is between Britain, India, and Australia, must be regarded as the very
keystone of the imperial arch.

At the risk of a tedious but very essential digression, something must
be said here as to the motives with which the Boers had for many years
been quietly preparing for war. That the Jameson raid was not the cause
is certain, though it probably, by putting the Boer Government into a
strong position, had a great effect in accelerating matters. What had
been done secretly and slowly could be done more swiftly and openly when
so plausible an excuse could be given for it. As a matter of fact, the
preparations were long antecedent to the raid. The building of the forts
at Pretoria and Johannesburg was begun nearly two years before that
wretched incursion, and the importation of arms was going on apace.
In that very year, 1895, a considerable sum was spent in military
equipment.

But if it was not the raid, and if the Boers had no reason to fear the
British Government, with whom the Transvaal might have been as friendly
as