" This extract is interesting, as showing the state of
feeling existing between the President and his officers previous to the
outbreak of the Secocoeni war. It also shows how entirely he was out of
sympathy with the citizens, seeing that as soon as his back was turned,
they, with Mr. Joubert and Paul Kruger at their head, at once undid all
the little good he had done.
When Mr. Burgers got to England, he found that city capitalists would
have nothing whatever to say to his railway scheme. In Holland, however,
he succeeded in getting 90,000 pounds of the 300,000 pounds he wished to
borrow at a high rate of interest, and by passing a bond on five hundred
government farms. This money was immediately invested in a railway
plant, which, when it arrived at Delagoa Bay, had to be mortgaged to
pay the freight on it, and that was the end of the Delagoa Bay railway
scheme, except that the 90,000 pounds is, I believe, still owing to the
confiding shareholders in Holland.
On his return to the Transvaal the President was well received, and for
a month or so all went smoothly.
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