Difficulties of an Argentine railway engineer—Why Argentina has the Irish gauge—A sudden contrast—A more violent contrast—Names and their obligations—Capetown—The thoroughness of the Dutch pioneers—A dry and thirsty land—The beautiful Dutch Colonial houses—The Huguenot refugees—The Rhodes Fruit Farms—Surf-riding—Groote Schuur—General Botha—The Rhodes Memorial—The episode of the Sick Boy—A visit from Father Neptune—What pluck will do.

A railway engineer in the Argentine Republic is confronted with peculiar difficulties. In the first place, in a treeless country there is obviously no wood for sleepers. A thousand miles up the giant Parana there are vast tracts of forest, but either the wood is unsuited for railway-sleepers, or the means of transport are lacking, so the engineer is forced to use iron pot-sleepers for supporting his rails. These again require abundant ballast, and there is no ballast in a country devoid of stone and with a soil innocent of the smallest pebble. The engineer can only use burnt clay to ballast his road, and as a result the dust on an Argentine railway defies description. In my time, when carriages of the English type were in use, the atmosphere after an hour's run was as thick as a dense London November fog, and after five or six hours' travelling the passengers alighted with faces as black as niggers'. Whilst waiting for a train, its approach would be announced by a vast pillar of dust appearing in the distance. This pillar of dust seemed almost to reach the sky, and any passengers of Hebraic origin must really have imagined themselves back in the Sinai peninsula, and must have wondered why the dusky pillar was approaching them instead of leading them on.

The difficulties connected with the working of railways did not end here. Most people know that a swarm of locusts can stop a train, for the bodies of these pests are full of grease, and after the engine-wheels have crushed countless thousands of locusts, the wheels become so coated with oil that they merely revolve, and refuse to grip the rails. Let the driver open his sand-box never so widely, the wheels cannot bite, and so the train comes to a standstill. Oddly enough, a bird, too, causes a great deal of trouble. The "oven-bird" makes a large domed nest of clay, the size of a cocoa-nut. In that treeless land the oven-birds look on telegraph-posts as specially provided by a benign Providence to afford them eligible nesting-sites, and from some perversity of instinct, or perhaps attracted by the gleam of the white earthenware, they invariably select one of the porcelain insulators as the site of their future home, and proceed to coat it laboriously with clay, thus effectually destroying the insulation. Now the working of a single-line is entirely dependent on the telegraph, and the oven-birds, with their misplaced zeal, were continually interrupting telegraphic communication, so on the Great Southern Railway of Buenos Ayres every single telegraph-post was surmounted with a wooden box, mutely proclaiming itself the most desirable building-site that heart of bird could wish for, and silently offering whatever equivalents to a gravel soil and a southern aspect could suggest themselves to the avian intelligence. In spite of this these misguided fowls retained their affection for the insulators, and the Great Southern had during the nesting season to employ a gang of men to tear the nests down.

Unlike the majority of railways, both in North and South America, which have adopted the 4 ft. 8-1/2 ins. gauge, the standard gauge of the Argentine Republic is the Irish one of 5 ft. 3 ins., and the reason of this is rather singular. In 1855, during the Crimean War, a short railway was laid down from Balaclava to the British lines. The firm of contractors who built this railway for the British Government had constructed some three years previously a small railway in Ireland, for which they had never been paid. They accordingly seized the engines and rolling-stock, which, owing to the difference in gauge, were useless in England. It occurred to the contractors that they might utilise this material by building the Crimean Railway to the Irish gauge of 5 ft. 3 ins., and they accordingly proceeded to do so. Two years after the Crimean War the same firm secured the contract for building the first railway in the Argentine, a short line, twenty-one miles long, from Buenos Ayres to the River Tigre. As they considered that their Crimean rolling-stock was still in good order, they obtained permission to build the Tigre Railway to the Irish gauge, and these much-travelled coaches and engines which had started their railway career in Ireland, were shipped from the Crimea to the Plate, and eventually found themselves, to their vast surprise, rolling between Buenos Ayres and Tigre. The first time that I was in Buenos Ayres, in 1883, two of the original Crimean engines were still running on this little railway, the "Balaclava" and the "Eupatoria," the latter re-christened "Presidente Mitre." The newer railways followed the lead of the pioneer, and so it comes about that Ireland and the Argentine Republic have the same standard gauge.

The vast solitudes of Espartillar were within eight hours of Buenos Ayres, three by wagon and five by rail, so it was possible to wander out one night to the star-lit camp, where the silence was only broken by the screech of an occasional night-bird, or the beat of the wings of myriads of flighting ducks, without the slightest trace of man or his works perceptible in the great, grey, still, unpeopled world, and to be sitting the next night in evening clothes in a garish, over-gilt, over-decorated restaurant, humming with the clatter of plates and the chatter of high-pitched Argentine voices, as a noisy string-band played selections from the latest Paris operette. It was difficult to realise that this ostentatiously modern town, with its meretricious glitter, and its population of pale-faced town-breds, was only a hundred miles from the place where, amongst brown, sunburnt folk, we had been living a primitive life tempered by quiet transplanted English comfort.

To me there is always something rather attractive in sudden contrasts in surroundings. My memory goes back forty years to Russia, when I was on a bear-shooting expedition with Sir Robert Kennedy. Kennedy had killed two bears, and we were making our way back to Petrograd that night, for next evening there was to be one of the famous "Bals des Palmiers" at the Winter Palace which we neither of us wished to miss. So it came about that one evening we were sitting in a two-roomed peasant's house, thigh-booted and flannel-shirted, in the roughest of clothes, devouring sustenance for our night's sledge journey out of pieces of newspaper by the light of a little smoky oil-lamp, whilst around us stood half the village, whispering endless comments, and gaping open-eyed on those mysterious strangers from the unknown world outside Russia. The room was lined with rough unpainted boards nailed over the log walls; one quarter of it was occupied by a huge stove, on the top of which the children were sleeping; it was very dirty, and the heat in combination with the fetid atmosphere was almost unendurable. A dimly lit picture, all in sombre browns, relieved by the scarlet shirts of the men, and the gaudy printed calicoes of the women, just visible in the uncertain light of the flickering lamp, and of the red glow from the stove. Then came an all-night drive in sledges through the interminable forest of pines, the piercing cold lashing our faces like a whip, and the stars blazing in the great expanse of dull-polished steel above us with that hard diamond-like radiance they only assume when the thermometer is down below zero.

Twenty-four hours later we were both in the vast halls of the Winter Palace in full uniform, as bedizened with gold as a nouveau riche's drawing-room. Though the world outside may have been frost-bound, Winter's domain stopped at the threshold of the Palace, for once inside, banks of growing hyacinths and tulips bloomed bravely, and the big palms, from which the balls derived their name, stood aligned down the great halls, as though they were in their native South Sea Isles, with a supper-table for twelve persons arranged under each of them. Those "Bals des Palmiers" were really like a scene from the Arabian Nights, what with the varied uniforms of the men, the impressive Russian Court dresses of the women, the jewels, the lights, and the masses of flowers. The immense scale of everything in the Winter Palace added to the effect, and the innumerable rooms, some of them of gigantic size, rather gained in dignity by being sparsely tenanted, for only 1,500 people were asked to the "Palmiers." There was nothing like it anywhere else in Europe, and no one now living will ever look on so brilliant a scene, set in so vast a cadre. There was really a marked contrast between the two consecutive evenings Kennedy and I had spent together.

One of the ladies of the British Embassy in Petrograd inquired of a Court official what the cost of a "Bal des Palmiers" amounted to. The chamberlain replied that for 1,500 people the cost would be about 9,000 pounds, working out at 6 pounds per head. This included a special train all the way from Nice with growing and cut flowers, and another special train from the Crimea with fruit. A very expensive item was the carriage by road from Tsarskoe Selo of one hundred specially grown large palm trees in specially constructed frost-proof vans; there was also the heavy cost of the supper and wine, which for the "Bals des Palmiers" was provided on a far more sumptuous scale than at the ordinary Court entertainments and balls.

Ichabod! Ichabod!

Certain names carry their own responsibilities; for instance, when a town proudly proclaimed itself the "City of Good Airs" it should live up to its title. The Buenos Ayres of the early "eighties" was a notoriously insanitary place without any system of proper drainage. Some of the "Good Airs" fairly knocked one down when one encountered them. That has all now been rectified; Buenos Ayres is at present admirably drained, and is one of the healthiest cities of South America.

Certain names, again, have their drawbacks. Helen Lady Dufferin, the mother of my old Chief and godfather, was the grand-daughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and in common with her two sisters, the Duchess of Somerset and Mrs. Norton, she had inherited her full share of the Sheridan wit. As I have pointed out elsewhere, people of a certain class in London maintained in those days far closer relations with persons of a corresponding class in Paris than is the custom now. Lady Dufferin had innumerable friends in Paris, and amongst the oldest of these friends was Comte Joseph de Noailles. Whenever the Comte de Noailles came to London, Lady Dufferin was the first person he went to see. When they were both in their old age, the Comte de Noailles arrived in London, and, as usual, went to dine with his friend of many years. As it was a warm evening in July, he walked to Lady Dufferin's house from his hotel, carrying his overcoat on his arm. On leaving the house, the old gentleman forgot his cloak, and Lady Dufferin received a note the next morning asking her to be good enough to send back the cloak by the bearer. The note was signed "Joseph de Noailles." Lady Dufferin returned the cloak with this message, "Monsieur, lorsqu' on a le malheur de s'appeler Joseph, on ne laisse pas son manteau chez une dame."

Joseph naturally suggests Egypt, and Egypt recalls Africa, and on the whole African continent there is surely no more delectable spot than the Cape peninsula. Capetown with its suburbs is dominated everywhere by the gigantic flat-topped rock of Table Mountain. Go where you will amongst the most splendid woodland, coast and mountain scenery in the world, that ever-changing rampart of rock is still the central feature. Jan Van Riebeck, the original Dutch pioneer of 1652, must have yielded to the irresistible claims of Table Bay as a harbour with a very bad grace, before founding his new settlement on the slopes of Table Mountain. Every racial and inherited instinct in him must have positively itched to select in preference some nice low swampy site, for choice in the Cape Flats, if not actually below sea-level, at all events at sea-level, where substantial brick dams could be erected against the encroaching waters, where he could construct an elaborate system of canals, and where windmills would have to pump day and night to prevent the place becoming submerged. The Dutch, both in Java and in Demerara, had yielded to this misplaced affection for a sea-level site, and had constructed Batavia and Georgetown strictly according to their racial ideals, with a prodigal abundance of canals. Though this doubtless gave the settlers a home-like feeling, the canal-intersected town of Batavia is so unhealthy under a broiling tropical sun that it has been virtually abandoned as a place of residence.

Capetown has none of the raw, unfinished aspect so many Colonial towns wear, but has a solid, grave dignity of its own, and its suburbs are unquestionably charming. The settled, permanent look of the town is perhaps due to the fact that there is not a single wooden house or fence in Capetown, everything is of substantial brick, stone and iron. The Dutch were admirable town-planners; since the country has been in British hands our national haphazard carelessness has asserted itself, and the city has been extended without any apparent design whatever. I was certainly not prepared for the magnificent groves of oaks which are such a feature of Capetown and its vicinity. These oaks, far larger than any to which we are accustomed, bear witness to the painstaking thoroughness of the Dutch. Before an oak capable of withstanding the arid climate and burning sun of South Africa could be produced, it had to be crossed and re-crossed many times. The existing stately tree is the fruit of this patient labour; it grows at twice the pace of our oaks, and attains far larger dimensions; it is quite useless as a timber tree, but produces enormous acorns which, in windy weather, descend in showers from the trees and batter the corrugated iron roofs of the houses with a noise like an air-raid.

The Union of South Africa is unfortunate in having the great range of the Drakensberg running parallel to the coastline for hundreds of miles, for until the Zambesi is reached there are practically no navigable rivers at all. This barrier mountain range, and the recklessness of the early settlers in cutting down the forests, are together responsible for the aridity of South Africa. She is, indeed, as Ezekiel said of old, "planted in the wilderness, in a dry and thirsty ground." The Cape peninsula is comparatively well-watered; between the giant rocky buttresses of Table Mountain little clear streams gush down, and there are several brooks, proudly termed "rivers" locally, quite visible to the naked eye. Everything in this world is relative. I remember at Alkmaar in North Holland ascending an artificial mound perhaps seventy feet high, planted with trees. In the dead-flat expanse of the Low Countries, this hillock is looked on by the natives of Alkmaar much as Mont Blanc is regarded by the inhabitants of Geneva, with feelings of profound veneration; so in South Africa the tiniest brooklet is the source of immense pride to the dwellers on its banks, and rightly so, for it is the very life-blood of the district, and literally Isaiah's "rivers of water in a dry place." I always carefully avoided any allusion to the sixteen different burns running through the park at Baron's Court, for it might have looked like arrogance to boast of this super-abundance of water in my old home, where, between ourselves, a wholly dry day was rather a notable rarity. Where the aridity is most noticeable is in the great oak and fir woods at Groote Schuur, the lordly pleasure-house which Cecil Rhodes built for himself at Rondebosch, under the slopes of the Devil's Peak. Here, under the trees, the ground is absolutely bare; not even the faintest sign of grass, not the smallest scrap of vegetation. Rondebosch Parish Church might have been lifted bodily from England; it is an exceedingly handsome building of a very familiar type, yet in the churchyard there was not one blade of green; nothing but naked earth between the graves. Fortunately the Australian myrtle has been introduced, a shrub that can apparently dispense with moisture, so thanks to it every garden in the Capetown suburbs is surrounded by a hedge of vivid perennial green. These suburbs have a wonderfully home-like look, embowered as they are in oak trees, and the buildings are all of the solid familiar type; even the very railway stations, except for their nameboards, might be at Wandsworth Common, Balham, or Barnes, instead of at Rosebank, Rondebosch, and Claremont, though Balham and Barnes are not fortunate enough to have the purple ramparts of Table Mountain or the Devil's Peak towering over them, whilst, on the other hand, they fortunately escape the all-pervading South African dust.

I like the name "The Tavern of the Ocean," formerly given to Capetown; and what a welcome break it must have afforded in the wearisome voyage from Europe to the Dutch East Indies, or to India proper! The Netherlands Dutch seem only to have regarded it as a half-way house, a sort of unimportant railway "halt" between Europe and the East, where the necessary fresh water and green vegetables could be supplied to passing vessels. It was not until Simon Van der Stel was appointed Governor in 1678 that any idea of developing the Cape as a colony was ever entertained. Van der Stel has left his impress deep on the country. Though the vine had been already introduced by Van Riebeck, it is to Van der Stel that the special features of Cape scenery are due, for we owe to him the splendid groves of oak of to-day, and he originated the Dutch Colonial type of building, of which so many fine specimens still remain. These old Dutch houses are a constant puzzle to me. In most new countries the original white settlers content themselves with the most primitive kind of dwelling, for where there is so much work to be done the ornamental yields place to the necessary; but here, at the very extremity of the African continent, the Dutch pioneers created for themselves elaborate houses with admirable architectural details, houses recalling in some ways the chateaux of the Low Countries. Where did they get the architects to design these buildings? Where did they find the trained craftsmen to execute the architects' designs? Why did the settlers, struggling with the difficulties of an untamed wilderness, require such large and ornate dwellings? I have never heard any satisfactory answers to these questions. Groot Constantia, originally the home of Simon Van der Stel, now the government wine-farm, and Morgenster, the home of Mrs. Van der Byl, would be beautiful buildings anywhere, but considering that they were both erected in the seventeenth century, in a land just emerging from barbarism seven thousand miles away from Europe, a land, too, where trained workmen must have been impossible to find, the very fact of their ever having come into existence at all leaves me in bewilderment.

These Colonial houses, most admirably adapted to a warm climate, correspond to nothing in Holland, or even in Java. They are nearly all built in the shape of an H, either standing upright or lying on its side, the connecting bar of the H being occupied by the dining-room. They all stand on stoeps or raised terraces; they are always one-storied and thatched, and owe much of their effect to their gables, their many-paned, teak-framed windows, and their solid teak outside shutters. Their white-washed, gabled fronts are ornamented with pilasters and decorative plaster-work, and these dignified, perfectly proportioned buildings seem in absolute harmony with their surroundings. Still I cannot understand how they got erected, or why the original Dutch pioneers chose to house themselves in such lordly fashion. At Groot Constantia, which still retains its original furniture, the rooms are paved with black and white marble, and contain a wealth of great cabinets of the familiar Dutch type, of ebony mounted with silver, of stinkwood and brass, of oak and steel; one might be gazing at a Dutch interior by Jan Van de Meer, or by Peter de Hoogh, instead of at a room looking on to the Indian Ocean, and only eight miles distant from the Cape of Good Hope. How did these elaborate works of art come there? The local legend is that they were copied by slave labour from imported Dutch models, but I cannot believe that untrained Hottentots can ever have developed the craftsmanship and skill necessary to produce these fine pieces of furniture. I think it far more likely to be due to the influx of French Huguenot refugees in 1689, the Edict of Nantes having been revoked in 1685, the same year in which Simon Van der Stel began to build Groot Constantia. Wherever these French Huguenots settled they brought civilisation in their train, and proved a blessing to the country of their adoption. In England they taught us silk-weaving and clock-making, starting the one in Spitalfields, the other in Clerkenwell. In Dublin, where a strong colony of them settled, they introduced the making of tabinet, or "Irish poplin," and I am told that the much-sought-after "Irish" silver was almost entirely the work of French Huguenot refugees. Here, at the far-off Cape, the Huguenots settled in the valleys of the Drakenstein, of the Hottentot's Holland, and at French Hoek; and they made the wilderness blossom, and transformed its barren spaces into smiling wheatfields and oak-shaded vineyards. They incidentally introduced the dialect of Dutch known as "The Taal," for when the speaking of Dutch was made compulsory for them, they evolved a simplified form of the language more adapted to their French tongues. I suspect, too, that the artistic impulse which produced the dignified Colonial houses, and built so beautiful a town as Stellenbosch (a name with most painful associations for many military officers whose memories go back twenty years) must have come from the French. Stellenbosch, with its two-hundred-year-old houses, their fronts rich with elaborate plaster scroll-work, all its streets shaded with avenues of giant oaks and watered by two clear streams, is such an inexplicable town to find in a new country, for it might have hundreds of years of tradition behind it! Wherever they may have got it from, the artistic instinct of the old Cape Dutch is undeniable, for a hundred years after Van der Stel's time they imported the French architect Thibault and the Dutch sculptor Anton Anreith. To Anreith is due the splendid sculptured pediment over the Constantia wine-house illustrating the story of Ganymede, and all Thibault's buildings have great distinction; but still, being where they are, they are a perpetual surprise, for in a new country one does not expect such a high level of artistic achievement.

Many of the fine old Colonial homesteads are grouped together in what are now the Rhodes Fruit Farms in the Drakenstein. So attractive are they that I do not wonder that a very near relative of mine has bought one of them for his son; and I envy my great-nephew who will one day sit under the shadow of his own vines and fig trees at Lormarins, amongst groves of peaches, apricots and plums. I cherish pleasant recollections of a visit to Boschendaal, also in the Fruit Farm district, a delightful old house, standing over a jungle of a garden where a brook babbles through thickets of orange and lemon trees, and amongst great tangles of bougainvillaa and pink oleanders, and in whose shady dining-hall I was hospitably entertained by a Dutch farmer on an omelette of ostrich's egg (one egg is enough for six people), on "most-bolajie" (bread made with sweet new wine instead of with water), and other local delicacies, including "mabos," or alternate slices of dry salted peaches and dry sweetened apricots. This condiment is cynically known as married life. In the voorhuis of Boschendaal lay nineteen fine leopard skins, and Mr. Louw, the courtly mannered old farmer, who would be described by his countrymen as an "oprechter Burger," explained to me in slow and laborious English that he had killed every one of these leopards with his own hand within one mile of his own house.

A most attractive land were it not for the aridity. Should I settle there I should be forever regretfully recalling the lush greenery of English meadows in June, or of English woods in spring-time.

Just conceive of Van der Stel's astonishment when he first reached the Cape! He must have been used to a small, dead-flat, water-logged land, with odoriferous canals at every turn, and thousands of windmills pumping day and night for all they were worth to keep the country afloat at all; after a voyage of seven thousand miles he found himself in a land of mighty mountain ranges, of vast, illimitable distances, parched by a fierce sun, and nearly waterless. It must have needed immense courage to start the founding of a New Holland in such (to him) uncongenial surroundings. As a tribute to the adaptable South African climate, I may say that I have myself seen, on Sir Thomas Smartt's well-watered farm, apple trees and orange trees fruiting and ripening in the same field.

When I was invited to go surf-bathing at Muizenberg, I rubbed my eyes, for I had vague ideas that this pastime was confined to South Sea Islanders. Recollections of Ballantyne's books crowded in on me; of apparently harmless sandal-wood traders, who unblushingly doubled the part of bloodthirsty pirates with their peaceful avocations; of bevies of swarthy but merry maidens rolling in on their planks on the top of vast surges; of possibly some hideous banquet of taro roots and "long pig" (baked over hot stones under a cover of plantain leaves) to follow on these primitive pastimes; even perhaps of some coloured captive maiden, wreathed in hibiscus flowers, loudly proclaiming her distaste at the idea of being compulsorily converted into "long pig." I should, of course, have had to rescue her after exhibiting prodigies of valour, to find this dumb but devoted damsel clinging to me like a leech, remaining a most embarrassing appendage until she had learned sufficient English to answer "I will," when I could have united her to a suitable mate, a copper-coloured yet contented bride.

When Capetown swelters in heat, Muizenberg is generally ten degrees
cooler, though, most obligingly, the water of the Indian Ocean at
Muizenberg is ten degrees warmer than that of the Atlantic at
Capetown, owing to the Antarctic current setting in to the latter.

At Muizenberg we found half the population of South Africa in the water in front of the biggest bathing-house I have ever seen. The handling of the surf-plank requires some care, for it is a short, heavy board, and in the back-wash is apt to fly back on the unwary, hitting them on their food-receptacle, and effectually (to use a schoolboy term) "bagging their wind." You walk out in the shoal water up to your shoulders, and as a big sea comes in, you throw yourself chest foremost on to your plank, and are then carried along on the top of the roller at the pace of a leisurely train (an Isle of Wight train), to be deposited with a bang on the sandy beach. It is really capital fun, but alas for my flower-wreathed South Sea Island maidens! Excluding our own party I only saw many amply waisted ladies disporting themselves staidly in the water, and the surrounding cinemas and tea-shops might have been at Brighton, except that they were far smarter and much better kept. Owing to the strongly marked facial characteristics of some of the customers in these places, who were mostly from Johannesburg, I at first imagined that I must have wandered inadvertently into Jerusalem, or that I had perhaps drifted to some fashionable health resort on the shores of the Dead Sea.

Groote Schuur, the stately house built by Cecil Rhodes for himself, and by his will bequeathed as the official home of the Premier of South Africa, became very familiar to me. These modern adaptations of the Dutch Colonial style have one marked advantage over their originals. In the old houses the stoep is merely an uncovered terrace on which the house stands. In the modern houses the stoep is a shady, pillared, covered gallery, which in hot weather becomes the general living-room of the family. Having built his house, Cecil Rhodes employed agents to hunt up in Holland fine specimens of genuine old Dutch furniture with which to plenish it. Some of these agents surely exceeded their instructions in the matter of grandfather clocks. They must have absolutely denuded the Low Countries of these useful timepieces, for at every step at Groote Schuur a fresh solemn-faced Dutch clock ticks gravely away, to remind one how time is passing. Rhodes collected a very fine library, but he had a curious fad for typewritten copies of his favourite books, which fill an entire bookcase in the library. Rhodes paid an immense price for the splendid set of seventeenth-century Brussels tapestries in the dining-room, illustrating the "Discovery of Africa," and the magnificent Cordova leather in the drawing-room must also have been a costly acquisition. The deep ravine running beside the house he had planted with blue hydrangeas throughout its length; when these are in flower, interspersed with scarlet and orange cannas, they form the most glorious mass of colour imaginable, as do the hedges of pink and white oleanders in the garden, each one with its smaller, attendant clipped hedge of pale-blue plumbago.

To me, I confess, the most interesting thing in the house was General Botha himself. When he talked of the future of South Africa in slow, rather laboured English (for this medium was always a little difficult for him), one felt that one was in the presence of a really great man. His transparent honesty, and his obvious sincerity of purpose, stood out as clearly as his strong common sense. On looking at his powerful, almost stern, face, one realised that here was a man who would allow nothing to turn him from his purpose once he was convinced that he was right; a man, too, to whom anything in the way of underhand intrigue, or backstairs negotiations, would be temperamentally repugnant. The chivalrous foeman had become the most loyal ally, and an ally of whom the entire British Empire should be proud. There was nothing tortuous about the farmer turned soldier, and the soldier turned statesman.

Of Mrs. Botha I should not like to say too much, lest I might be accused of flattery. As I shall presently relate, she was wonderfully kind to a very sick lad whom I brought out to Africa with me.

There is a curious custom in South Africa of drinking tea at eleven o'clock in the morning. So engrained is the habit that the streets of Capetown at eleven o'clock are black with business men rushing from their offices to the nearest tea-shop in search of this reviving draught; in fact, I believe that in offices there is a rigid line of demarcation between the seniors who go out for this indispensable cup of tea and the juniors who have to have it brought them.

At Groote Schuur at eleven o'clock there was always a great gathering for this important ceremony, and naturally the Dutch element usually predominated. I could never find any trace of racial bitterness amongst the men; with some of the women it was rather different. Onlookers are apt to be more bitterly partisan than those who have taken actual part in the conflict.

A mile or so from Groote Schuur House stands the beautiful Rhodes Memorial, on the slopes of the Devil's Peak. This austere temple of milk-white granite, with the great flight of steps flanked by bronze lions leading up to it, and its backing of pine trees, is in absolute harmony with its surroundings, and its very severity seems typical of the rugged energy of the man whose memory it commemorates. I cannot help wishing, though, that Mr. Herbert Baker, its architect, had built it on rather a larger scale, for its gigantic environment appears to dwarf the monument when seen from a few miles off. Watts's figure of "Physical Energy," to be appreciated, must be seen here in the position for which it was designed. Standing at the foot of the great flight of stairs, with its background of purple mountain, and Africa stretching away endlessly below it, it is really magnificent. The replica erected in Kensington Gardens, and placed with singular infelicity on grass between an avenue of elm trees, gives but little idea of the effect of the original, towering high over what Rhodes maintained was the finest view in the world, a view extending over the immense expanse of the Cape Flats, and embracing two oceans, with the splendid mountains of Hottentot's Holland in the background. If the bronze rider, gazing with shaded eyes over the Africa that Rhodes loved, is typical of his life, the calm white austerity of the temple in the background seems symbolical of the peace which that restless soul has now found.

The vineyards, oaks and wheatfields of the comparatively well-watered Cape peninsula are not representative of the rest of the Union. Once the train has laboriously clambered 3,000 feet up the Hex River Pass, real Africa commences. Endless tracts of rolling arid veld, with an atmosphere so clear that it is impossible for a newcomer to determine whether the kopje seen in the distance is five miles, ten miles, or twenty miles away. I quite understand the fascination of these bare stretches of veld and the irresistible attraction which Africa exercises over her children, for it is unlike anything else in the world.

I have a theory that when Moses "removed the swarms of flies from Pharaoh," he banished them to the southern extremity of the continent, where the flies, imagining that their services might some day be required again to plague the Egyptians, have kept themselves in a constant state of mobilisation ever since. In no other way can the plague of flies in South Africa be accounted for.

The wonderful effect of the dry air of the Cape peninsula, and of the drier air of the High Veld in cases of tuberculosis is a matter of common knowledge, for was not Cecil Rhodes himself a standing example of an almost miraculous recovery? All of which brings me to the episode of the Sick Boy, and if I dwell on it at some length I do so intentionally for the comfort and better encouragement of those battling with the same disease. I first met the Sick Boy (hereinafter for the sake of brevity termed the "S.B.") at the house of one of my oldest friends, who had an annual cricket-party for the benefit of his son. Amongst the schoolboy eleven staying in the house was a tall and very thin lad of sixteen, who showed great promise as a bowler. My hostess told me that this boy was suffering from tuberculosis, that he had had to leave Eton at fifteen to undergo a very severe internal operation from which he had only just recovered, and that when the party broke up, he was going straight into a nursing-home to prepare for another equally severe operation. Every time he played cricket he had to be put to bed at once after the match, and to be fed on warm milk. The lad had tremendous pluck; in spite of his weakness he insisted on taking part in the games and amusements of the other boys, and proved very good at all of them.

Three years later I met the S.B. again. He had spent the interval entirely in sanatoria and nursing-homes, except for a few months at St. Moritz in the Engadine, and had undergone six major operations, the last one entailing the removal of his left ear, though the external ear had been left. The unfortunate lad, who seemed to have had most of the working "spare parts" of his anatomy removed, was a walking triumph of modern operative surgery, but his disease had clearly made advances. He was then living in an open-air hut at his father's place, and his condition was obviously critical. As I was myself going to South Africa, I proposed to his father (he had lost his mother as a child) that the boy should accompany me, pointing out the wonders the dry South African climate had effected in similar cases, and the advantages of a long sea-voyage. So it was settled. As I was fully alive to the responsibilities I was incurring I took my valet with me, in case additional help should be required. Billy, the S.B., came on board, long, lanky, and pitiably emaciated. His abnormally brilliant colour, and his unnaturally bright eyes betrayed the progress the disease had made with him. He revived at once in the warmth, and I had considerable difficulty in restraining his super-abundant vitality, for he played deck-cricket all day, and entered himself for every single event in the ship's sports, regardless of his very narrow available margin of strength. After arriving in Africa, as the S.B. could not have stood the noise and racket of a big hotel, we found most comfortable quarters in a quiet little place in the delightful suburb of Rondebosch. I wished to go up-country, and as it was obvious that the S.B. could never have stood the heat, fatigue, and dust of long railway journeys during the height of the South African summer, I found myself in a difficult position. I had the most stringent directions from the doctors as to what the S.B. might or might not do. He was on no account to ride, either a horse or a bicycle; bathing might prove instantly fatal to him; he was only to play cricket, golf, or lawn-tennis in strict moderation, followed each time by a compulsory rest. I knew the S.B. well enough by now to realise that, the moment my back was turned, he would want to do all these things, if merely to show that he could do them as well as anybody else, quite regardless of consequences. Mrs. Botha came to the rescue, and with extraordinary kindness, told me to send the S.B. to Groote Schuur, where she would undertake to look after him. As I have hinted earlier, I have seldom come across so delightful a family as the Bothas, father, mother, sons and daughters alike; so fortunate Billy the S.B. was transferred with his belongings to Groote Schuur, where he was immensely elated at being allowed to use Cecil Rhodes' sumptuous private bathroom. This bathroom was entirely lined with Oriental alabaster; the bath itself was carved out of a solid block of green marble, and the very bath-taps were exquisitely chiselled bronze Tritons, riding on dolphins. When I returned to Capetown I found the S.B. quite one of the Botha family, being addressed by everybody by his Christian name. He played lawn-tennis and billiards daily with the General, and should he prove refractory (a not infrequent occurrence) the General had only to threaten, "I shall have to make you smoke another of my black cigars, Billy," for the S.B. to capitulate instantly with a shudder, for he had gruesome recollections of the effects one of these powerful home-grown cigars had produced on him upon a previous occasion.

When we sailed from South Africa, Mrs. Botha came down herself to the liner to see that Billy's cabin was comfortable, and that he had all the appliances he required, such as hot-water bottles, etc., and she presented him with a large parcel of home-made delicacies for his exclusive use on the voyage home. Nothing could have exceeded her kindness to this afflicted lad, of whose very existence she had been unaware three months earlier.

Before we had been at sea a week, the S.B. managed to get a sunstroke. He grew alarmingly ill, and the ship's doctor told me that he had developed tubercular meningitis, and that his recovery was impossible. I gave the S.B. a hint as to the gravity of his case, but the boy's pluck was indomitable. "I am going to sell that doctor," he said, "for I don't mean to die now. I have sold the doctors twice already when they told me I was dying, and I am going to make this chap look silly, too, for I don't intend to go out." Soon after he relapsed into unconsciousness. Meningitis affects the eyes, and the poor S.B. could not bear one ray of light, so the cabin was carefully darkened, and the electrician replaced the white bulbs in the cabin and alley-way with green ones. As we were approaching the equator the heat in that closed-up cabin was absolutely suffocating, the thermometer standing at over 100 degrees. Still the sick lad felt chilly, and had to be surrounded with hot-water bottles, whilst an ice-pack was placed on his head. I and my valet took it in turns to sit up at nights with him, as every quarter of an hour we had to trickle a teaspoonful of iced milk and brandy into his mouth. As each morning came round, the doctor's astonishment at finding his patient still alive was obvious, and he assured me again and again that it could only be a question of hours. One morning my valet, whose turn as night-nurse it was, awoke me at 4 a.m. with the news that "Mr. William has come to again, and is screaming for beef-tea." I went into the cabin, where I found the S.B. quite conscious, and insistently demanding beef-tea. By sheer grit and force of will the lad had pulled himself out of the very Valley of the Shadow. We got him the best substitute for beef-tea to be obtained on a liner at 4.30 a.m., and two hours later he was clamouring for more. His progress to recovery was uninterrupted as soon as we were able to carry him into the open air, his eyes protected by some most ingenious light-proof goggles, cleverly fashioned on board by the second engineer. The S.B. had learnt from the doctor of some strictly private arrangements which I had made with the captain of the ship should his disease unfortunately take a fatal turn. I found him one morning rolling about in his bunk with laughter. "It is really the most comical idea I ever heard of in my life," he spluttered, shaking with merriment. "Fancy carrying me home in the meat-safe! Just imagine father's face when you told him that you had got me down in the refrigerator! I never heard anything so d——d funny," and as fresh humorous possibilities of this novel form of home-coming occurred to him, he grew quite hysterical with laughter. He was immensely amused, too, at learning that during the most critical period of his illness I had got the captain to stop the ship's band, and to rope-off the deck under his cabin window. I will not deny that the S.B. required a good deal of supervision; for instance, when at length allowed a little solid food, I found that he had selected as a suitable invalid repast, some game-pie and a strawberry ice, which had, of course, to be sternly vetoed; he had entered, too, for every event in the ship's sports, and though he was so weak that he could barely stand, he had every intention of competing. I have seldom met any one with such wonderful personal courage as that boy, and he would never yield one inch to his enemy; the strong will was for ever dominating the frail body.

On this voyage we had a number of young people on board who were crossing the equator for the first time, so Neptune kindly offered to leave his ocean depths and to board the ship in the good old-fashioned orthodox style to further these young folks' education. Just as we crossed the Line, the ship was hailed from the sea, her name and destination were ascertained, and she was peremptorily ordered to heave to, Neptune naturally imagining that he was still dealing with sailing ships. The engines were at once stopped, and Neptune, with his Queen, his Doctor, his Barber, his Sea Bears and the rest of his Court, all in their traditional get-up, made their appearance on the upper deck, to the abject terror of some of the little children, who howled dismally at this alarming irruption of half-naked savages with painted faces. I myself enacted Neptune in an airy costume of fish-scales, a crown, and a flowing beard and wig of bright sea-green. Of course my Trident had not been forgotten. Amphitrite, my queen, was the star-comedian of the South African music-hall stage, and the little man was really extraordinarily funny, keeping up one incessant flow of rather pungent gag, and making the spectators roar with laughter. All the traditional ceremonies and good-natured horseplay were scrupulously adhered to, and some twenty schoolboys and five adults were duly dosed, lathered, shaved, hosed, and then toppled backwards into a huge canvas tank of sea-water, where the boys persisted in swimming about in all their clothes. The proceedings were terminated by Neptune and his entire Court following the neophytes into the tank, and I am afraid that we induced some half-dozen male spectators to accompany us into the tank rather against their will, one old German absolutely fuming with rage at the unprecedented liberty that was being taken with him. During these revels the S.B., though only just convalescent, and still in his bunk, had to be locked into his cabin, or he would have insisted on taking part in them, and would have certainly died an hour afterwards.

Upon the outbreak of war in August, 1914, the S.B. made three attempts to obtain a commission, only to be promptly rejected by the medical officers when they examined him. He then tried to enlist as a private, under a false name, but no doctor would pass him, so he went as a workman into a Small Arms' Factory, and made rifle-stocks for a year. The indoor life and the lack of fresh air aggravating his disease, he was forced to abandon this work, when, by some means which I have never yet fathomed, he managed to get a commission in the Royal Air Force. The doctors, being much overworked, let him through without a medical examination, and in due time the S.B. qualified as a pilot, when, owing to engine trouble, he promptly crashed in his seaplane into the North Sea, in January, and was an hour in the water before being rescued. This icy bath somehow arrested the progress of his disease, and he was subsequently sent to the Dardanelles. Here, whilst attempting to bomb Constantinople, the S.B. got shot down and captured by the Turks. During his eighteen months of captivity he underwent the greatest privations from cold and hunger, being insufficiently clad and most insufficiently fed. Upon his release after the Armistice, he was examined by a British doctor, who told him, to his amazement, that every trace of his dire disease had vanished, nor were the most eminent specialists of Harley Street subsequently able to distinguish the faintest lingering signs of tuberculosis. He was completely cured, or rather by his strong willpower he had completely cured himself.

Billy (the term of S.B. being clearly no longer applicable) is now married to a pretty and charming wife; he is the proud father of a sturdy son, and is putting on weight at an alarming rate, his waistcoat already exhibiting a convexity of outline that would be justifiable only in the case of an alderman. He is a partner in a prosperous West End business, and will be most happy to book any orders you may give him for wine.

I have purposely dwelt at length on the case of the S.B. in order to encourage other sufferers from this disease to realise how strong the personal factor is in their cases, and how much they can help themselves. Here was an apparently hopeless case of tuberculosis, and yet a lad by his indomitable grit and personal courage fought his enemy, continued to fight him, and finally conquered him, all by sheer determination never to give in. Let others in his position take heart of grace and continue the struggle, and may they, too, rout their enemy as the S.B. did. Nil desperandum! I may add that an ice-cold bath of an hour in the North Sea in January, and eighteen months' incarceration in a Turkish prison, are not absolutely essential items in the cure.