1983 hardcover with dust jacket and 160 pages in good secondhand condition.

His career in South Africa was to be equally colourful. He initially worked for a newspaper in the Cape and then (1870) moved to the Bultfontein diamond field, where he worked as a digger. In September 1871 he was one of the founders of the Free Roman Catholic Hospital of St Mary's, serving as the hospital's surgeon. After a fracas in which he shot and wounded a man, he was arrested and sentenced to eighteen months hard labour, which he served in the Barkly jail. He moved to Kimberley in Griqualand West on his release, working in the diamond field, and was soon chairman of the diggers' committee. By 1875 the diggers were protesting against the activities of large companies and also the liberal policy of the lieutenant governor, Sir Richard Southey, towards the native population. Aylward was by now editor of a local paper, the Diamond Field, and played a leading role in these agitations. In April 1875 the rebellion of the black flag broke out, and after its suppression he was tried as one of the ringleaders but was acquitted. Southey was recalled and ultimately the diggers won: the native population could no longer own claims in the diamond field but only work as unskilled labour.

In 1876 he fought in the Sekukini war as second-in-command, and then commander, of the Lydenburg Volunteer Corps. After the annexation of the Transvaal (1877) he founded a hospital at Lydenburg and then travelled to England to supervise the publication of his book, The Transvaal of today (London, 1878), which received good reviews as a well researched account of the Transvaal and its people. On his return to South Africa he offered his services to the government, then engaged in the Zulu war, and when these were refused took up an appointment as editor of the Natal Witness. On the outbreak of the first Boer war (1880) he offered his services to the Transvaal government and, attached as surgeon to the force of Gen. Joubert, came to be known as Joubert's Fenian and took part in the battle of Majuba Hill (February 1881). Aylward reportedly advised the Boers to shoot the British officers and the battle resulted in a humiliating defeat for the British. One of the British casualties was Dublin-born Gen. George Colley, who had known Aylward before the war. Aylward later took part in the siege of Lydenburg and at the end of the war left South Africa, travelling on the same ship as Lord Chelmsford.