naries._]

The baron's case was typical of thousands more. Men from all the nations
of Europe, and therefore all trained to arms, had been encouraged to
settle in various civil employments under the Transvaal Government long
before the war began--on the railway, at the dynamite works, in the
mines; and so were all ready for the rifle the moment the rifle was
ready for them. At once they formed themselves into vigorous commandoes,
according to their various nationalities,--Scandinavian, Hollander,
French, and German. Even after the war began these foreign commandoes
were largely recruited from Europe; French and German steamers landed
parties of volunteers for the burgher forces nearly every week at
Lorenco Marques. The French steamer _Gironde_ brought an unusually large
contingent, a motley crowd, including, so it is said, a large proportion
of suspicious looking characters. But the most notorious and mischievous
of all these queer contingents was "The Irish American Brigade." As far
back as the day of Marlborough and Blenheim there was an Irish Brigade
assisting the French to fight against the English, and with such fiery
courage that King George cursed the abominable laws which had robbed him
of such excellent fighting material. But at the same time there was
about them so much of reckless folly that their departure from the
Emerald Isle was laughingly hailed as "The flight of the wild geese."
New broods of these same wild geese found their way to the Transvaal,
and there made for themselves a name, not as resistless fighters, but as
irrestrainable looters. These men linked to the bywoners, or squatters,
the penniless Dutch of South Africa, did little to help the cause they
espoused, but many a time have caused every honest God-fearing burgher
to blush by reason of their irrepressible lawlessness.

[Sidenote: _A wounded Australian._]

Among the British patients in this hospital was a magnificent young
Australian, who it was feared had been mortally wounded in a small
scrimmage round a farmhouse not far away, but who apparently began
decidedly to mend from the time the general came to his bedside to say
he should be recommended for the distinguished service medal. "That
has done me more good than medicine," said he to me a few minutes
after. Nevertheless, when ten days later we returned from Koomati
Poort, he lay asleep in the little Waterval Cemetery, alas, like
Milton's Lycidas, "dead ere his prime."

These Austr