The rumour that a Boer force is within the vicinity of Kimberley has done much to assist in the speedy formation of local forces, and now that the train mules and private bullock teams have been requisitioned for the Imperial service, there is much solemn speculation upon the date of hostilities. The fact is that no one here can, with any certainty, predict an hour. A shot anywhere will set the borderside aflame. Moreover, the Boers are daily growing more impudent. At Borderside, where the frontiers are barely eighty yards apart, a field cornet and his men, who are patrolling their side of the line, greet the pickets of the Cape Police who are stationed there with exulting menaces and much display of rifles. But if the Dutch be thirsting in this fashion for our blood, people at home can rest confident in the fact that there will be no holding back upon the part of our men once the fun begins. Seldom has such a determined and ferocious spirit animated any British force as that one which is now stimulating the troops in South Africa. Every man is sick of the Cabinet's delay, but they find consolation in the fact that the slow movement of the Ministerial machine is undertaken to avoid any precipitation of the crisis before the forces to be engaged have arrived upon the scene. Then it is every man's ambition to take his own share in "whopping" Kruger. I did not hurry to leave Kimberley; but the place where the diamonds come from, the least admirable of any town on earth, is no longer essential to my existence. It has neither charm nor elegance, and it is sufficiently irregular in its construction to be the most barbarous example of architecture in South Africa. It greets the traveller enveloped in the haze of heat, and it bids him farewell through a cloud of sand. But if one has once imagined what the appearance of the mining town may be, let him give it a wide berth. It is a conglomerate jumble of tin houses with dusty streets dedicated to modern industry, and palpitating with the mere mechanical energy of native labour. [Illustration: Major Lord Edward Cecil, C.S.O.]