great liberality in this respect. In every other case, a few hundred guilders would have been lent with pleasure to a Controller who had been detained on his journey contrary to his expectations. But I was refused every assistance. I pressed some to tell me the cause of this distrust; and by little and little I got to know at last that in my money matters at Natal faults and oversights had been discovered, which now caused me to be suspected of dishonest administration. That there were faults in my administration I was not surprised to hear; the contrary would have surprised me; but I wondered that the Governor, who had himself witnessed how I had always to struggle far from my office with a discontented population, ready to revolt at any moment;—that he, who had himself given me credit for what he called ‘manliness,’ could accuse me of dishonesty, as he knew better than any one that there could be no other question than that of ‘force majeure.’ And though this force majeure was denied, though they wanted to make me responsible for faults that had happened at moments when I, often in danger of my life, far away from the cash or anything connected with it, had to intrust others with the administration of it,—even if it was expected that I, while doing one thing, ought not to have neglected the other, even then my only fault would have been a carelessness that had nothing in common with dishonesty. Moreover in those days there were many instances in which the Government took into
