everything he saw, and instead of supporting the lieutenant governor disparaged him, and actually held a conference with the rebel leaders. This conference did not take place in the presence of any of the authorities, and the insurgents declared at the time that their course of conduct had secured Mr. Froude’s[59] approval. This was before they broke out in actual revolt. A quotation from Mr. Froude’s writings, which appears in a book of which one of the most bitter opponents of the government is the author, strengthens the belief that Mr. Froude actually did encourage the rebels, whether intentionally or not. The passage is as follows: “The English government in taking up Waterboer’s cause, have distinctly broken a treaty which they renewed before in a most solemn manner, and the colonial office, it is painfully evident to me, has been duped by an ingenious conspiracy.” The “ingenious conspiracy” was one of those flights of imagination in which the eminent historian occasionally indulges with most mischievous results to the colonies that he has visited and attempted to describe. There was no such thing as an “ingenious conspiracy to delude the colonial office,” as may be gathered from the facts before stated respecting the action of Sir Philip Wodehouse in the matter of the wrong done Waterboer by the Boers of the Free State. The chieftainship of Andreas Waterboer, the father of Nicholas, was confirmed by the British government before Nicholas was born, as is shown in the earlier portions of these pages. This is wandering from the subject of the revolt, but the necessity for this digression will be manifest to the reader.