CHAPTER XVI.
MY RETURN TO CIVILIZATION ONCE MORE--THE MAFEKING FUND--LETTERS FROM THE KING AND QUEEN "Let us admit it fairly, As business people should, We have had no end of a lesson: It will do us no end of good." KIPLING.
On June 27 I left Johannesburg under the escort of Major Bobby White, who had kindly promised to see me safely as far as Cape Town.

We travelled in a shabby third-class carriage, the only one on the train, which was merely composed of open trucks.

Our first long delay was at Elandsfontein, practically still in the Rand District.

There the officer in charge came up with the pleasing intelligence that the train we were to join had broken down, and would certainly be four hours late; so we had to get through a very weary wait at this most unattractive little township, whose only interesting features were the distant chimneys and unsightly shafts of the Simmer and Jack and the Rose Deep Mines, and far away, on the horizon, the little white house, amid a grove of trees, which had been Lord Roberts's headquarters barely a month ago, and from which he had sent the summons to Johannesburg to surrender.

All around, indeed, was the scene of recent fighting, and various polite transport officers tried to while away the tedium of our enforced delay by pointing out various faint ridges, and explaining that _there_ the Gordons had made their splendid charge, or, again, that farther back General French had encountered such a stubborn resistance, and so on, _ad libitum_.