Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II TWO PIONEERS OF SECRET SERVICE The First Transvaal Secret Agent—His Doubtful Origin—His Disinterestedness—His Slanders on Sir Owen Lanyon—Smit a Religious Crank—His Slanders have a Reactionary Effect—General Viljoen's First Conception of an Englishman—General Joubert's Mistrust of Smit—Edgson, Lanyon's Intelligence Agent—His Futile Warning of the Bronkhorst Spruit Ambuscade—The Attempted Murder of Edgson —The Mystery of the Murder of his Proxy—Smit and the Stellaland Freebooters—Sir Owen Lanyon's Suggested Black Blood—Smit and Thackeray's Father Holt It was in the days of the first British occupation that the Transvaalers learned and practised the rudiments of political secret service. The first exponent of the art was one of their own people—a typical slim Boer of pronounced Huguenot type, though not in name. Cornelis Smit or Smidt—for he spelt it either way— was one of those builders whose personality is lost sight of in the contemplation of his work. It is true the nature of that work was secrecy, and the avoidance of anything like publicity and advertisement, and outside a very small circle Smit got neither. It is probable that it would be difficult to find a case in which any man did so much to bring about a great political change, yet was so little known and remembered within a brief period of the attainment of his plans. It is not too much to say that this gimlet-eyed, oval-faced Afrikander, whose place of origin and full name are still subjects of doubt and uncertainty, did more to compass the overthrow of British domination in the Transvaal and the establishment for twenty years of the South African Republic, than any other man whose name is recognised among the builders. Smit was a born plotter and schemer. He carried in his shrewd face all the si...