"The scene which ensued baffles description. The men hoisted the colours half-mast high. The Union Jack was pulled down and dragged through the mud. The distinctive ribbons worn round the hats of the men as badges were pulled off and trampled underfoot. I saw men crying like children with shame and despair. Some went raving up and down that they were Englishmen no longer; others, with flushed and indignant faces, sat contemplating their impending ruin, 'refusing to be comforted.' It was a painful, distressing, and humiliating scene, and such as I hope never to witness again. While I write, the remembrance of it comes vividly before me; and as I recall to mind the weeping men and women, the infuriated volunteers, and the despairing farmers and storekeepers, half crazy with the sense of wounded national honour, and the prospect of loss and ruin before them, my blood boils within me, and I cannot trust myself to commit to paper what I think. The lapse of two years has but deepened the feeling which I then experienced. The subject may perhaps be only unpleasant to people at home, but to me personally, who have seen the ruin and dismay brought upon the too credulous loyalists, the recollections it stirs up are more bitterly mortifying than words can describe." Mr. Rider Haggard, who at this time was at Newcastle, has also recorded his experiences on the unhappy occasion. He says:--"Every hotel and bar was crowded with refugees who were trying to relieve their feelings by cursing the name of Gladstone with a vigour, originality, and earnestness that I have never heard equalled; and declaring in ironical terms how proud they were to be citizens of England--a country that always kept its word. Then they set to work with many demonstrations of contempt to burn the effigy of the right honourable gentleman at the head of her Majesty's Government, an example, by the way, that was followed throughout South Africa." Talking of the loyal inhabitants in the Transvaal on whom the news burst 'like a thunderbolt,' he explains that they did not say much--because there was nothing to be said! They simply packed up their portable goods and chattels, and made haste to leave the country, "which they well knew would henceforth be utterly untenable for Englishmen and English sympathisers." Here was another great trek--a pathetic exodus of British loyalists whom Great Britain had betrayed. Away they went, these poor believing and deceived people, to try and make new homes and new fortunes, for as soon as the Queen's sovereignty was withdrawn houses and land were not worth a song, and their chances of earning a living were now entirely over, on account of their mistaken loyalty. The condition of the town is thus described in a journal of the period:--