Bloemfontein! A name of milk and honey, of flowers and dew! Every vowel breathed of pastoral simplicity, of luscious grasses and lowing kine, of gambolling game and purling stream. A name for a poet to conjure with! a talisman to awaken the mellow music of a Herrick and recall the soul of Walton to benevolent rejoicings in the "sights and sounds of the open landscape." Unfortunately, the mellifluous name was not derived from the German for flowers or from the melody of fountains. It owed its origin to a Boer peasant who stood godfather to the hamlet and also to an adjacent stream. Here in other days the innocent Voertrekker unpacked his waggons and set out his little farmstead, choosing green rising ground, an oasis in the sandy veldt, and the neighbourhood of a refreshing rivulet for comfort's sake, and not because he foresaw that in fifty years this spot would be the central scene in one of the largest dramas of the world! In the year 1845 the Union Jack first waved its protective folds over the homestead. At that period it was converted into the official abode of a British Resident, and from that time, with an expansion which was truly British, the tiny village developed till it became a town, and finally passed over, through British apathy and dislike for responsibility, to the hands of the Free Staters. And there it might and would have remained had not President Steyn, who owed us no grudge, and with whom we were on the best of terms, decided to put his finger in the diplomatic pie, in the hope that some of the plums would fall to his share. Thus, in his greed for power and his contempt for the British, he embroiled his country, and being unable to defend his capital, was forced to scurry off to his birthplace, Winburg, some miles to the east, where, with the assistance of his foreign mercenaries, he yet hoped to save himself from the consequences of his ill-advised interference. So it came to pass that on the 13th of March 1900, thirty-nine days after the commencement of his great march, Lord Roberts, with the magnificent British army in his wake, moved unopposed towards the capital of the Free State. [Illustration: THE FORMAL SURRENDER OF BLOEMFONTEIN. Drawing by J. Finnemore, from a Sketch by W. B. Wollen, R.I.]