The prettily situated and well appointed hospital at Waterval Onder was originally erected for the use of men employed on the railway, but for months prior to the arrival of the British troops had been in possession of the Boer Government, and was full of sick and wounded burghers, with whom I had many an interesting chat and by whom I was assured that though we might think it strange they still had hope of ultimate success. Among the rest was a German baron, well trained of course, as all Germans are, for war, who on the outbreak of hostilities had consented at Johannesburg to be commandeered, burgher or no burgher, to fight the battles of the Boers, in the justice of whose cause he avowed himself a firm believer. He therefore became an artillery officer in the service of the Transvaal, and while so employed had been badly hit by the British artillery, with the result that his right arm was blown off, his left arm horribly shattered, and two shrapnel bullets planted in his breast. Yet seldom has extreme suffering been borne in more heroic fashion than by him, and he actually told me, in tones of admiration, that the British artillery practice was really "beautiful." On such a point he should surely be a competent judge seeing that he was himself a professor of the art, and had long stood not behind but in front of our guns, which is precisely where all critics ought to be planted. Their criticisms would then be something worth. [Sidenote: _Foreign Mercenaries._] The baron's case was typical of thousands more. Men from all the nations of Europe, and therefore all trained to arms, had been encouraged to settle in various civil employments under the Transvaal Government long before the war began--on the railway, at the dynamite works, in the mines; and so were all ready for the rifle the moment the rifle was ready for them. At once they formed themselves into vigorous commandoes, according to their various nationalities,--Scandinavian, Hollander, French, and German. Even after the war began these foreign commandoes were largely recruited from Europe; French and German steamers landed parties of volunteers for the burgher forces nearly every week at Lorenco Marques. The French steamer _Gironde_ brought an unusually large contingent, a motley crowd, including, so it is said, a large proportion of suspicious looking characters. But the most notorious and mischievous of all these queer contingents was "The Irish American Brigade." As far back as the day of Marlborough and Blenheim there was an Irish Brigade assisting the French to fight against the English, and with such fiery courage that King George cursed the abominable laws which had robbed him of such excellent fighting material. But at the same time there was about them so much of reckless folly that their departure from the Emerald Isle was laughingly hailed as "The flight of the wild geese." New broods of these same wild geese found their way to the Transvaal,