had some experience of my own in
several new lands like the South African interior, and I have lived long
enough to have seen the effects of what was good and what was bad policy
in them. I prefer peaceful relations between England and the Boers of
South Africa, if possible; I love what is just, fair, and best to and
for both Britons and Boers. I naturally admire large-minded enterprise.
I pity narrow-mindedness, and dislike to see a people refusing to
advance, when all the world is so sympathetic and helpfully inclined
towards them. These explanations, I think, will enable anyone to
understand the spirit of these letters.

A curious thing occurred in connection with my sudden departure for
South Africa. In the latter part of September, 1897, I was debating
with my family, at a seaside hotel near Dieppe, as to the place we
should visit after the adjournment of Parliament in 1898. After
discussing the merits of many suggestions, it was finally determined
that we should all try South Africa, because it was said to have such a
divine climate; the country was, moreover, so interesting politically,
and as it loomed so much in public interest it would be worth while to
obtain some personal knowledge of South Africans at home. We had
scarcely arrived at this conclusion, when the postman brought to us a
telegram, which, to our intense surprise, was a request from the
Bulawayo Festivities Committee that I would go to Bulawayo to attend the
celebration of the arrival of the Great Peninsular Railway at the
Capital of Matabele Land. We regarded it as a strange coincidence.

This opportunity to visit Bulawayo I considered rather premature, as
towards the end of autumn many engagements crowd upon one, but after
another animated family council it was resolved that I should accept the
invitation were it only to qualify myself as a pioneer for the ladies.

We left Southampton on the _Norman_ on the 9th October. I found then
that there were five other members of the House of Commons on board--
Messrs. Saunderson, Llewellyn, Hayes Fisher, Peace, and Paullton, and
the Duke of Roxburghe representing the House of Lords. Among the
passengers there were Boers from Pretoria and Cape Colony, British
Uitlanders from Johannesburg, English residents from the Cape and the
two Dutch Republics, Afrikander farmers and vine-growers, and
townspeople, some from the Cape District, others from the Eastern and
Western Provinces, and not a few fro