RECOLLECTIONS
OF
THE
BOER
WAR
213
Both agreed that the ball which killed Colley did not come from a Dutch rifle. My Boer informant said that he was last seen trying to rally a party of his own men who were running. They wheeled round and fired wildly. Colley was six or eight yards behind them. One of the balls struck him and he fell dead. Mr.— said that, seeing the day irreparably lost, and his own reputation shattered along with it, he was generally believed to have shot himself. Friend and foe alike loved Colley, and legends like these are an unconscious tribute to his me mory. The truth can never be known. We believe as we wish or as we fancy. Mr. — was so fine an officer, so clever a man, and so reserved about his personal affairs, that about him too ‘ myths’ were growing. He was credited in the mess room with being the then unknown author of ‘ Solomon's Mines.’ Mr. Haggard will forgive a mistake which, if he knows Mr. —, he will feel to be a compliment. From general conversation I gathered that the san guine views of the Colonial Secretary were not widely shared. The English interest was still something in Jamaica; but the phenomena of the Antilles were present there also, if in a less extreme form. There were 700,000 coloured people in the island, but 14,000 or 15,000 whites ; and the blacks there also were increasing rapidly, and the whites were stationary if not declining. There was the same uneasy social jealousy, and the absence of any social relation between the two races. There were mulattoes in the island of wealth and consequence, and at Government House there are no distinctions ; but the English residents of pure colonial blood would not associate with them, social exclusiveness increasing with political equality. The blacks disliked the mulattoes ; the mulattoes despised the blacks, and would not intermarry with them. The impression was that the mulatto would die out, that the tendency of