ASH WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 19. The dynamite explosion was something terrific. Fifty-five tons exploded at one time, wounding 700 people, killing 80, and leaving 1,500 homeless. It ripped a chasm in the earth deep enough to hold an Atlantic steamer with all her rigging. The Kaffirs thought the sun had burst. Betty says the noise of the report was something awful. Little Jacky was digging in the garden at the time. He returned to the house at once with a very troubled face. The coachman coming from town an hour later told of the dreadful catastrophe. Jacky took his aunt aside: ’Aunt Bet, I heard that great big noise when I was diggin’ and I thought I had dug up hell.’

The explosion was the result of neglect. For four days fifty-five and a half tons of dynamite lay under a hot sun at the Netherlands Railroad junction, left in charge of an inexperienced youth of twenty who had ‘forgotten to remove it’ as was ordered the day before the explosion occurred.

Fordsburg is populated by poor Dutch and Boers. With generous disregard of recent conflicts, the Uitlanders at once gave help and sympathy to the afflicted. Seven of the members on the Relief Committee were Reformers; and Reformers’ wives were among the first to nurse the wounded. President Kruger came over to Johannesburg to visit the scene of the accident. He visited the wounded at the Wanderers’ and hospital, and seemed greatly affected. He made a speech in which he begged the sufferers to turn their eyes to the Great Healer, who alone could comfort. He also said that he was gratified to hear that the subscriptions in aid of the distressed had reached so high a figure; ’Johannesburg had come nobly to the rescue, and he was glad to know it.’ He quoted the words of the Saviour, ’Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.’ In benefiting others he declared they would benefit themselves.

FEBRUARY 23. I am housed with my ill husband. Betty comes in and goes out in constant service to the sufferers from the dynamite explosion. We can think of nothing else. All the tragic stories we hear from friends and read in the papers fill our days with sadness.

A friend of my cook’s was visiting a neighbour at Fordsburg. She stood on the threshold, an infant in her arms, and a three-year-old boy at her side. The explosion came. Her baby was killed outright, and the child clinging to her skirts dropped with one leg ripped entirely from the socket. The mother was not even scratched. Another woman was sewing on a sewing machine. After recovering from the shock, she found herself unhurt, her house collapsed, and the sewing machine entirely disappeared. Most of the houses fell outward and not inward, and those persons near the explosion describe their experience of the shock as falling asleep or going off in a trance.

The society women of Johannesburg are doing noble work. Dr. Murray says it is astonishing how intelligently alert and self-sacrificing they are proving themselves to be. A story has been told me of a Boer woman who was fearfully mangled; she bore the necessary surgical operation with fortitude, but wept copiously when a green baize petticoat, which she had recently made out of a tablecloth, was taken off. Only a solemn promise from Mrs. Joel, her lady nurse, to keep the garment safe until her recovery, appeased her outcries.

I asked the officer in charge yesterday if I might see some of my friends who called, the sentinels having thus far denied them entrance. ’Yes, but there are some women in the place whom I do not care to have come here.’ ‘And who might they be?’ I asked. ’The wives of the Reformers,’ he answered. ‘Then,’ I flashed out, ’I do not care to accept any favours at your hands; those women are my personal friends, and the only persons under existing circumstances whom I wish to see.’

(We were under this gentleman’s surveillance for some time, and he afterwards proved very friendly, so my husband says, but I never spoke to him again. I did not like him. His voice was unpleasant and he had a high, hard nose, and I do not fancy people with hard, high noses.)

A poor little two-year-old baby was found wandering among the ruins at Fordsburg, with only a slight scratch on her wrist. It is supposed that she has been lying unconscious under the debris.

A Malay woman was discovered cowering over the ruins of what was once her home, crooning to a dead child at her breast.

The Netherlands Railroad Company, under whose auspices the accident took place, have donated 50,000 dollars to the Relief Fund; and the Transvaal Government has set aside 125,000 dollars for the same purpose; the Uitlanders, 325,000 dollars, which was collected within a few hours after the explosion.

FEBRUARY 25. Business continues stagnant.

A deputation of mining men go to Pretoria in regard to the depression in the mining industry resulting from the imprisonment of the leaders. I hear many of the mines will have to shut down.

England’s Queen and President Kruger have exchanged messages over the explosion.

A Kaffir has been found in the wrecked station at Fordsburg; although he had been imprisoned five days in the debris, he was still alive, and revived promptly after being given food. (He succumbed however, some days later to pneumonia brought on by the exposure).

1,500 of the survivors from the dynamite disaster are now encamped at the Agricultural Show Yard. The Relief Committee are doing all possible to assuage their sufferings. Poor people! many of them are utterly crushed, and sit about dazed and listless; while the little children, unconscious of the despair surrounding them, frolic about with the chickens, and make mud-pies as if nothing had happened. But for the thoughtless elasticity of childhood, how few of us could live to grow up!