He can do no good shut up in Ladysmith[.] I am doing a little good here as I make De Beers purse pay for things military cannot sanction[.] We have just made and fired a 4 inch gun, it is a success.
"Yrs (.).Rhodes] This characteristic epistle seemed a link with the outer world, and to denote we were not forgotten, even by those in a somewhat similar plight to ourselves.
The natives and their splendid loyalty were always a source of interest.
Formed into a "cattle guard," under a white man named Mackenzie, the young bloods did excellent service, and were a great annoyance to the Boers by making daring sorties in order to secure some of the latter's fat cattle.

This particular force proudly styled itself "Mackenzie's Black Watch." There were many different natives in Mafeking.

Besides the Baralongs before alluded to, we had also the Fingos, a very superior race, and 500 natives belonging to different tribes, who hailed from Johannesburg, and who had been forcibly driven into the town by Cronje before the siege commenced.

These latter were the ones to suffer most from hunger, in spite of Government relief and the fact that they had plenty of money; for they had done most of the trench-work, and had been well paid.

The reason was that they were strangers to the other natives, who had their own gardens to supplement their food allowance, and blacks are strangely unkind and hard to each other, and remain quite unmoved if a (to them) unknown man dies of starvation, although he be of their own colour.
The native stadt covered altogether an area of at least a square mile, and was full of surprises in the shape of pretty peeps and rural scenery.