powder, and almost as useless as catapults. It was not a
new Raid these costly weapons were purchased to repel; neither men nor
nations employ sledge-hammers to drive home tinned-tacks. It was a
mighty Empire they were intended to assail; and a mighty Republic they
were intended to create.

When the fateful hour arrived for the hurling of the Ultimatum, in
very deed "not a gaiter button" was found wanting on their side; and
every fighting man was well within reach of his appointed post.
Fierce-looking farmers from the remotest veldt, and sleek urban
Hollanders, German artillerists, French generals, Irish-Americans,
Colonial rebels, all were ready. The horse and his rider, prodigious
supplies of food stuffs, and every conceivable variety of warlike
stores, were planted at sundry strategic points along the Natal and
Cape Colony frontiers. War then waited on a word and that word was
soon spoken!

[Sidenote: _Coming events cast their shadows before._]

As early as September 18th, 1899, the Transvaal sent an unbending and
defiant message to the British Government. On September 21st the
Orange Free State, after forty years of closest friendship with
England, officially resolved to cast in her lot with the Transvaal
against England. On September 29th through railway communication
between Natal and the Transvaal was stopped by order of the Transvaal
Government. On September 30th twenty-six military trains left Pretoria
and Johannesberg for the Natal border; and that same day saw 16,000
Boers thus early massed near Majuba Hill. Yet at that very time the
British forces in South Africa were absolutely and absurdly inadequate
not merely for defiance but even for defence. On October 3rd, a full
week before the delivery of the Ultimatum, the Transvaal mail train to
the Cape was stopped at the Transvaal frontier, and the English gold
it carried, valued at L500,000, was seized by the Transvaal
Government. Whether that capture be regarded merely as a premature act
of war or as highway robbery, it leaves no room for doubt as to which
side in this quarrel is the aggressor; and when at last the challenge
came, even chaplains could with a clear conscience, though by no means
with a light heart, set out for the seat of war.

[Sidenote: _The Ultimatum._]

Surely never since the world began was such an Ultimatum presented to
one of the greatest Powers on earth by what were supposed to be two of
the weakest. At the very time that armed an