The origin of the war breaking out in the later months of the last year of the nineteenth century between the Boers and the British may be traced to the famous defeat of the latter at Majuba Hill in 1881, the influence of which was intensified by the failure of the Jameson Raid, that had a good cause, but was irresponsible and disorderly. The Boers were entirely persuaded by these incidental successes of their army that they could always get the better of those they called intruders into their own country, which they had made a long journey to find and shed a great deal of blood of the natives to conquer. Their preference in the two pilgrimages away from the Cape country was to become herdsmen, raising cattle, shooting game, farming in a rude way, and enjoying the right to which they attached great importance to hold property in man. The first chief objection they had to the English, who superseded the Dutch at the Cape, was that they had prejudices against human servitude, and the slaveholders were sensitive as to interference with their high privileges and thought themselves greatly aggrieved that their scriptural institution was disapproved. It is true the Boers established a civilization immensely superior to barbarism of the natives, but they indulged all the passions of slaveholders, and were but little advanced in civilization. Something akin to semi-barbarism seemed the normal condition of Africa for countless centuries, and the light dawned gradually in South Africa from the occupancy of territory by the Dutch, the Portuguese and the English successively, and it may be fairly said that broad daylight came with the English, who in the lower regions of the Dark Continent were the stronger and the more persevering antagonists of barbarous peoples and made the greatest advancements to civilization. It was the nerveless policy of dealing with South Africans following the British defeat at Majuba Hill that produced in the Boers contempt for English military capacity and the personal courage of English speaking people, and led them to enter upon the policy of restriction of English speaking immigrants that appeared in great numbers after the discoveries of diamond mines and gold mines, assuming indeed that new comers had no rights, civil or military, as citizens or squatters, that the Boers were bound to respect. [Sidenote: Boers' Policy Against Immigrants] So distinct was the impression the Boers made of their exclusive policy to govern the immense territory upon which they had settled for the purpose of raising cattle and ruling the natives, that the circulars sent abroad in the United States by the enemies of England to form public opinion favorable to the presumption of the Boers, presented the specific complaint urged on behalf of the Transvaal people and government that the British would not cease to be subjects of their "Empire," and must not be allowed a share in local