olitic to enforce hereabouts.

Railway and postal communication is now stopped, but the last mail
brought a copy of the Bloemfontein 'Express,' with an appeal to the
Colonial Boers concluding with the words:--

"We shall continue the war to the bloody end. You will assist us. Our
God, who has so often helped us, will not forsake us."

What effect this may have is yet doubtful, but it is certain that any
rising of the Colonial Dutch would send the Colonial British into the
field in full strength.

Burghersdorp, through which I passed yesterday, is a village of 2000
inhabitants, and, as I have already put on record, the centre of the
most disaffected district in the colony. If there be any Dutch rising in
sympathy with the Free State it will begin here.

_Later._

And so there's warlike news at last.

A Boer force, reported to be 350 strong, shifted camp to-day to within
three miles of the bridge across the Orange river. Well-informed Dutch
inhabitants assert that these are to be reinforced, and will march
through Aliwal North to-night on their way to attack Stormberg Junction,
sixty miles south.

The bridge is defended by two Cape policemen with four others in
reserve.

The loyal inhabitants are boiling with indignation, declaring themselves
sacrificed, as usual, by the dilatoriness of the Government.

Besides the Boer force near here, there is another, reported to be 450
strong, at Greatheads Drift, forty miles up the river.

The Boers at Bethulie, in the Free State, are believed to be pulling up
the railway on their side of the frontier, and to be marching to Norvals
Pont, which is the ferry over the Orange river on the way to Colesberg,
with the intention of attacking Naauwpoort Junction, on the
Capetown-Kimberley line; but as there are no trains now running to
Bethulie it is difficult to verify these reports, and, indeed, all
reports must be received with caution.

The feeling here between the English and Dutch extends to a commercial
and social boycott, and is therefore far more bitter than elsewhere.
Several burghers here have sent their sons over the border, and promise
that the loyal inhabitants will be "sjambokked" (you remember how to
pronounce it?) when the Boer force passes through.

So far things are quiet. The broad, sunny, dusty streets, fringed with
small trees and lined with single-storeyed houses, are dotted with
strolling inhabitants, both Dutch and natives, engrossed in their
ordina