ll endorse them to-day. Could we
have such men as willing fellow-citizens, they are worth more than all
the gold mines of their country.

This main Transvaal body consisted of the commando of Pretoria, which
comprised 1800 men, and those of Heidelberg, Middelburg, Krugersdorp,
Standerton, Wakkerstroom, and Ermelo, with the State Artillery, an
excellent and highly organised body who were provided with the best guns
that have ever been brought on to a battlefield. Besides their sixteen
Krupps, they dragged with them two heavy six-inch Creusot guns, which
were destined to have a very important effect in the earlier part of the
campaign. In addition to these native forces there were a certain number
of European auxiliaries. The greater part of the German corps were with
the Free State forces, but a few hundred came down from the north. There
was a Hollander corps of about two hundred and fifty and an Irish--or
perhaps more properly an Irish-American-corps of the same number, who
rode under the green flag and the harp.

The men might, by all accounts, be divided into two very different
types. There were the town Boers, smartened and perhaps a little
enervated by prosperity and civilisation, men of business and
professional men, more alert and quicker than their rustic comrades.
These men spoke English rather than Dutch, and indeed there were many
men of English descent among them. But the others, the most formidable
both in their numbers and in their primitive qualities, were the
back-veld Boers, the sunburned, tangle-haired, full-bearded farmers, the
men of the Bible and the rifle, imbued with the traditions of their own
guerrilla warfare. These were perhaps the finest natural warriors upon
earth, marksmen, hunters, accustomed to hard fare and a harder couch.
They were rough in their ways and speech, but, in spite of many
calumnies and some few unpleasant truths, they might compare with most
disciplined armies in their humanity and their desire to observe the
usages of war.

A few words here as to the man who led this singular host. Piet Joubert
was a Cape Colonist by birth--a fellow countryman, like Kruger himself,
of those whom the narrow laws of his new country persisted in regarding
as outside the pale. He came from that French Huguenot blood which has
strengthened and refined every race which it has touched, and from it
he derived a chivalry and generosity which made him respected and liked
even by his opponents. In