WORKS BY H. RIDER HAGGARD.

The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

It has been suggested that at this juncture some students of South African history might be glad to read an account of the Boer Rebellion of 1881, its causes and results. Accordingly, in the following pages are reprinted portions of a book which I wrote so long ago as 1882. It may be objected that such matter must be stale, but I venture to urge, on the contrary, that to this very fact it owes whatever value it may possess. This history was written at the time by one who took an active part in the sad and stirring events which it records, immediately after the issue of those events had driven him home to England. Of the original handful of individuals who were concerned in the annexation of the Transvaal by Sir Theophilus Shepstone in 1877, of whom I was one, not many now survive. When they have gone, any further accurate report made from an intimate personal knowledge of the incidents attendant on that act will be an impossibility; indeed it is already impossible, since after the lapse of twenty years men can scarcely trust to their memories for the details of intricate political occurrences, even should they be prompted to attempt their record. It is for this reason, when the melancholy results which its pages foretell have overtaken us, that I venture to lay them again before the public, so that any who are interested in the matter may read and find in the tale of 1881 the true causes of the war of 1899.

I have written "which its pages foretell." Here are one or two passages taken from them almost at hazard that may be thought to justify the words:

"It seems to me, however, to be a question worthy of the consideration of those who at present direct the destinies of the Empire, whether it would not be wise, as they have gone so far, to go a little farther, and favour a scheme for the total abandonment of South Africa, retaining only Table Bay. If they do not, it is now quite within the bounds of possibility that they may one day have to face a fresh Transvaal rebellion, only on a ten times larger scale, and might find it difficult to retain even Table Bay."

And again: "The curtain, so far as this country is concerned, is down for the moment on the South African stage; when it rises again, there is but too much reason to fear that it will reveal a state of confusion which, unless it is more wisely and consistently dealt with in the future than it has been in the past, may develop into chaos."

One more quotation. In speaking of the various problems of South Africa, I find that I said that "unless they are treated with more honest intelligence, and on a more settled plan than it has hitherto been thought necessary to apply to them, the British taxpayer will find that he has by no means heard the last of that country and its wars."

Perhaps in a year from the present date the British taxpayer will be in a position to admit the value of this prophecy.