The Dutch in the Fields “swore with an oath or something as good,” that they would not be “brought under the British yoke,” as they called it, and threatened to take arms and “deluge the Fields with blood” if their state was deprived of the governing powers over the dry diggings. The English on the Fields contrasted the proportions of the Dutch and English populations, and the long odds against the latter if the Dutch should show fight. The most timid were sure that the Dutch would rise to a man, and the lives and property of the English would be sacrificed; and if the truth be told many an English colonist then in these diggings would as soon have seen the Free State as the English flag flying over them, and no wonder, seeing that imperial rule had been in several instances the cause of disaster to South Africa. It is hard sometimes for colonists to remain loyal and true to their nationality when they are treated with contumely, distrusted and scoffed at by the chief and subordinates of the imperial colonial department, as has occurred more than once in this colony. However, the morning of the 17th of November broke upon the diamond fields—the day on which the Fields from Klipdrift to the Modder River, the whole area on which diamond diggings had been established, was to be proclaimed British. John Campbell, Esq., in his plaids and buckles, a model Highlander from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, slipped out of his office door, and with his colleagues was driven in a cart to the margin of the Colesberg Kopje. This illustrious commissioner, however, was not the man to “bell the cat;” that duty was taken upon himself by the late J.C. Thompson, then crown prosecutor and commissioner. The official car was surrounded by vehicles filled with loyals, loyals on horseback and loyals on foot, and Mr. Thompson read the proclamation from the scroll, which he unfolded and then nailed up to a hoarding close by. There had been a government _Gazette_ published, but its place of publication had not as yet been moved to the dry diggings from Klipdrift, but whether the proclamation was gazetted or not I have never yet been able to discover, for when Mr. G. W. Murray asked for it, when he was a member of the legislative council, he was told by the government that the files had been lost! Mr. Thompson, after nailing up a copy or the original proclamation, no one knew which, drove off in the triumphal British car to Du Toit’s Pan, followed by a long procession of horsemen and vehicles, amidst the shouts of the street mob and the melodious strains of an extemporized band, which, in honor of the occasion, was playing a colorable imitation of “The Campbells are coming.”