liminary to knowing what it is; and those who will follow me in seeing how the Transvaal and its inhabitants have reached their present stage of being will, at least, be all the better qualified to abstain from prophesying as to their future history.

"To equip so small a book with a preface is, I am half afraid, to sin against proportion." And perhaps I should not have ventured upon erecting a portico to my small edifice, but that I have the pleasant duty of exposing in it the names of those earlier writers who have chiefly aided in my task. First, I must pay my thanks to Mr. G. M. Theal, without whose impartial and philosophic labours no adequate account of the early days of South African colonisation would as yet be practicable. His History of South Africa, with its various corollary volumes, must always be the classical book on the subject, and I have freely borrowed from his toil. Amongst other works that are standards in their kind are Mr. W. P. Greswell's Geography of Africa South of the Zambesi, and

Mr. A. H. Keane's South Africa in the useful geographical compendium of Mr. Stanford; Messrs. Hatch and Chalmers's Gold Mines of the Rand, Mr. Goldmann's History of the Witwatersrand, and, for those who love statistics, the excellent Argus Annuals and the indispensable Statesman's Year Book. To the compilers of many bulky volumes of Blue Books and official publications of all kinds I desire to express gratitude, tempered by fatigue. Among books dealing specially with the Transvaal I am to mention Mr. Nixon's Complete Story of the Transvaal and Among the Boers, which present a view of Transvaal history, from 1852 to 1884, that is singularly impartial in regard to the strong opinions of the author; Mr. Carter's very interesting Narrative of the Boer War, the Life of Sir Bartle Frere, and Mr. Aylward's readable Transvaal of To-day (1881), which is only trustworthy when its statements have independent corroboration. Many who have travelled amongst the Boers, from the humorous Thunberg and the laborious Sparrmann to that very destructive

b

Nimrod, Mr. Gordon Cumming, and that delightful writer Captain W. C. Harris, deserve the thanks which must especially be given to Mr. Bunbury, who has left a graphic account of the Boers at the time of the Great Trek, and to the noble Dr. Livingstone, whose Missionary Travels and Personal Life, by the Reverend Dr. Blaikie, are a mine of information and pleasure. A modern traveller, Mr. W. L. Distant, has also been of much service, besides many others who will, I trust, accept this acknowledgment in full of their claims.

LONDON

W. E. G. F.

March 18, 1896.