How fully these citizen soldiers hazarded their lives for the empire every cemetery in South Africa bears sad and silent witness, including the one I know so well in Pretoria. Indeed that particular burial-place is to me the most pathetic spot on earth, and enshrines in striking fashion the whole history of the Transvaal, whereof only one or two illustrations can here be given. In a tiny walled enclosure--a cemetery within a cemetery--filled with the soldier victims of our earlier wars, I found a slab whereon was this inscription:-- "To the memory of Corporal Henry Watson, Who died at Pretoria 17th May 1877; aged 25 years. He was the first British Soldier to give up his life in the service of his Country, _on the annexation_ of the Transvaal Republic!" Near by on another slab I read:-- "In loving memory of John Mitchell Elliott Aged 37. Captain and Paymaster of the 94th Regiment, Who was killed for Queen and Country while crossing the Vaal River on the night of Dec. 29th, 1880." There, too, I found one other slab which recorded in this strange style the closing of a most ignoble chapter in our imperial history:-- "This Cemetery was planted, and the graves left in good repair by the men of the Royal Scots Fusiliers, _prior to the evacuation_ of Pretoria, 1881." Two brief decades rush away, and once again that same cemetery opens wide its gates to welcome new battalions of British soldiers, each of whom like his forerunner of 1877 "gave up his life in the service of his country"; but these late-comers represent every province and almost every hamlet of a far-reaching empire, as well as every branch of the service; while over all and applicable to all alike is the epitaph on the tomb of the Hampshire Volunteers, "We answered duty's call!" [Sidenote: _Death and Life in Pretoria._] The Dutch section of that cemetery also witnessed some sensational scenes during the period now referred to. On July 20th Mrs Kruger, the ex-President's wife, died, and as one of a prodigious crowd I attended her homely funeral. She was herself well-nigh the homeliest woman in Pretoria, and one of the most illiterate; but precisely because she was content to be her simple God-fearing self, put on no airs, and intermeddled not in matters beyond her ken, she was universally respected and regretted.