On the same Sunday the utter uselessness of the compound system was proved. One hundred Chinamen bolted from the French Rand Mine. Somebody, it is supposed, had spread among them the report that the Boers were enlisting coolies at £4 a month to fight the English. In vain has the number of police in the Witwatersrand district been increased. Gangs of deserters are wandering about the country murdering and looting. "Last night," wrote a young South African policeman to his parents in England, "I captured six Chinamen who had run away from the mines. They are giving a lot of trouble--5000 of them started rioting last week, and 100 foot police and 200 South African Constabulary had to go to stop them, and a nice old job we had. They threw broken bottles and stones when we charged them. Some of our fellows were very badly cut. The Chinamen also made dynamite bombs and threw them at us, and we had to shoot into the crowd to drive them back. We aimed low and wounded a good many of them. They are nasty devils to tackle, and always show fight when there are a lot of them together. The six I captured were trekking across the veld. I chased them on horseback and they ran on top of a kopje and commenced to roll rocks down. I managed to get a shot at one with my revolver: the bullet struck him on the wrist. Then they all put up their hands and surrendered. I managed to get some niggers working in the mealie patch to escort them back to our camp. The niggers were very proud of themselves. When they passed through the other native kraals I think if I had not been there the Kaffirs would have assegaied them. They hate the Chinamen like poison." These are the sort of incidents that occur daily. All the measures taken by the Government and the mine owners to prevent desertion have proved ineffective. The country around the Witwatersrand Mines has taken upon itself the aspect of the whole of the colony during the late war. Mounted constables with loaded revolvers organize drives. The whole district is patrolled, and every effort is made to bring back the deserters to the compounds. But as soon as one lot has returned another escapes. Every day you may see a mounted policeman riding down towards the law courts, followed by a string of Chinese deserters. The Johannesburger lives in a daily state of terror. He rarely meets a Chinaman without immediately seeking the protection of the police and insisting on an inquiry being held then and there, as to whether the man has a permit to be at large in the Golden City.