, part of the
city now stands. On the opposite side of the town is a new fort; but
that also crowns a kopje. This metropolis of what was then the Orange
Free State, thus intensely African in its situation and surroundings,
was nevertheless an every way worthy centre of a worthy State.

Many of its public buildings are notably fine, as for instance the
Government Offices over which it was my memorable privilege to see the
Union Jack unceremoniously hoisted; and the Parliament Hall, on the
opposite side of the same road, erected some twelve years ago at a
cost of L80,000. The Grey College, which accommodates a hundred boy
boarders, is an edifice of which almost any city would be proud; and
"The Volk's Hospital," that is "The People's Hospital," is also an
altogether admirable institution. From the commencement of the war
this was used for the exclusive benefit of sick or wounded Boers and
of captured Britishers who were in the same sore plight. Among these I
found many English officers, who all bore witness to the kind and
skilful treatment they had uniformly received from the hospital
authorities; but when the Boer forces hurried away from Bloemfontein
they were compelled to leave their sick and wounded behind; with the
result that as at Jacobsdal, the English patients at once ceased to be
prisoners, while the Boer patients at once became prisoners. So do the
wheels of war and fortune go whirling round!

With a white population of under ten thousand all told, a large
proportion is of British descent; and presently a positively
surprising number of Union Jacks sprang forth from their hiding-places
and fluttered merrily all over the town. Everybody was thankful that
no bombardment had taken place; but many even of the British residents
regarded with sincere regret the final extinction of the independence
of this once self-governed and well-governed Republic.

[Sidenote: _Famished men and famine prices._]

The story has now everywhere been told of the soldier lad who, when he
caught sight of his first swarm of locusts, wonderingly exclaimed as
he noted their peculiar colour, "I'm blest if the butterflies out here
haven't put on khaki." Bloemfontein very soon did the same. Khaki of
various shades and various degrees of dirtiness saluted me at every
point. Khaki men upon khaki men swarmed everywhere. Brigade followed
brigade in apparently endless succession; but all clad in the same
irrepressible colour, till it became qu