The man in search of the spoils of war was not so numerous, but he made his presence felt by stealing whatever was portable and saleable. When he became surfeited with looting houses in conquered territory and stealing horses, luggage, and goods of lesser value in the laagers he returned to Johannesburg and Pretoria and assisted in emptying residences and stores of their contents. This style of soldier-of-fortune never went into a battle of his own accord, and when he found himself precipitated into the midst of one he lost little time in reaching a place of safety. Almost on a par with the looter was the adventurer, whose chief object of life seemed to be to tell of the battles he had assisted in winning. He was constantly in the laagers when there was no fighting in progress, but as soon as the report of a gun was heard the adventurer felt the necessity of going on urgent business to Pretoria. After the fighting he could always be depended upon to relate the wildest personal experiences that camp-fires ever heard. He could tell of amazing experiences in the wilds of South America, on the steppes of Siberia, and other ends of the earth, and after each narrative he would make a request for a "loan." The only adventures he had during the war were those which he encountered while attempting to escape from battles, and the only service he did to the Boer army was to assist in causing the disappearance of commissariat supplies. The men who fought with the Boers because they were deeply in sympathy with the Republican cause were in far greater numbers than those with other motives, and their services were of much value to the federal forces. The majority of these were in the country when the war was begun, and were accepted as citizens of the country. They joined commandos and remained under Boer leaders during the entire campaign. In the same class were the volunteers who entered the Republics from Natal and Cape Colony, for the purpose of assisting their co-religionists and kinsmen. Of these there were about six thousand at the beginning of hostilities, but there were constant desertions, so that after the first six months of the war perhaps less than one-third of them remained. The Afrikanders of Natal and Cape Colony were not inferior in any respect to the Boers whose forces they joined, but when the tide of war changed and it became evident that the Boers would not triumph, they returned to their homes and farms in the colonies, in order to save them from confiscation. Taking into consideration the fact that four-fifths of the white population of the two colonies was of the same race and religion as the Boers, six thousand was not a large number of volunteers to join the federal forces.