From Capetown to Ladysmith: an Unfinished Record of the South African War

Part 1

Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Taavi Kalju, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

FROM CAPETOWN TO LADYSMITH

AN UNFINISHED RECORD OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR

G.W. STEEVENS

AUTHOR OF 'WITH KITCHENER TO KHARTUM,' 'IN INDIA,' ETC., ETC.

EDITED BY VERNON BLACKBURN

THIRD IMPRESSION

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH AND LONDON

MDCCCC

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

WITH KITCHENER TO KHARTUM. With 8 Maps and Plans. Twenty-first Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s.

"This book is a masterpiece. Mr Steevens writes an English which is always alive and alert.... The description of the battle of Omdurman reaches, we do not hesitate to say, the high-water mark of literature."--Spectator.

IN INDIA. With a Map. Third Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s.

"To read this book is a liberal education in one of the most interesting and least known portions of our Empire."--St James's Gazette.

THE LAND OF THE DOLLAR. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s.

"One of the smartest books of travel which has appeared for a long time past.... Brings the general appearance of Transatlantic urban and rural life so clearly before the mind's eye of the reader, that a perusal of his work almost answers the purpose of a personal inspection. New York has probably never been more lightly and cleverly sketched."--Daily Telegraph.

WITH THE CONQUERING TURK. With 4 Maps. Cheaper Edition. Demy 8vo, 6s.

"This is a remarkably bright and vivid book. There is a delicious portrait of the jovial aide-de-camp, plenty of humorous touches of wayside scenes, servants' tricks, dragoman's English, and vagaries of cuisine."--St James's Gazette.

EGYPT IN 1898. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo, 6s.

"Set forth in a style that provides plenty of entertainment.... Bright and readable."--Times.

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH AND LONDON.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

I. FIRST GLIMPSES OF THE STRUGGLE.

First impressions--Denver with a dash of Delhi--Government House-- The Legislative Assembly--A wrangling debate--A demonstration of the unemployed--The menace of coming war 1

II. THE ARMY CORPS--HAS NOT LEFT ENGLAND!

A little patch of white tents--A dream of distance--The desert of the Karroo--War at last--A campaign without headquarters--Waiting for the Army Corps 10

III. A PASTOR'S POINT OF VIEW.

Part 2

An ideal of Arcady--Rebel Burghersdorp--Its monuments--Dopper theology--An interview with one of its professors 19

IV. WILL IT BE CIVIL WAR?

On the border of the Free State--An appeal to the Colonial Boers-- The beginning of warlike rumours--A commercial and social boycott-- The Boer secret service--The Basutos and their mother, the Queen-- Boer brutality to Kaffirs 28

V. LOYAL ALIWAL: A TRAGI-COMEDY.

The Cape Police--A garrison of six men--Merry-go-rounds and naphtha flares--A clamant want of fifty men--Where are the troops?--"It'll be just the same as it was in '81" 35

VI. THE BATTLE OF ELANDSLAAGTE.

French's reconnaissance--An artillery duel--Beginning of the attack-- Ridge after ridge--A crowded half-hour 43

VII. THE BIVOUAC.

A victorious and helpless mob--A break-neck hillside--Bringing down the wounded--A hard-worked doctor--Boer prisoners--Indian bearers-- An Irish Highlander in trouble 56

VIII. THE HOME-COMING FROM DUNDEE.

Superfluous assistance--A smiling valley--The Border Mounted Rifles-- A rain-storm--A thirty-two miles' march--How the troops came into Ladysmith 66

IX. THE STORY OF NICHOLSON'S NEK.

An attenuated mess--A regiment 220 strong--A miserable story--The white flag--Boer kindness--Ashamed for England 74

X. THE GUNS AT RIETFONTEIN.

A column on the move--The nimble guns--Garrison gunners at work-- The veldt on fire--Effective shrapnel--The value of the engagement 81

XI. THE BOMBARDMENT.

Long Tom--A family of harmless monsters--Our inferiority in guns-- The sensations of a bombardment--A little custom blunts sensibility 92

XII. THE DEVIL'S TIN-TACKS.

The excitement of a rifle fusilade--A six-hours' fight--The picking off of officers--A display of infernal fireworks--"God bless the Prince of Wales" 106

XIII. A DIARY OF DULNESS.

The mythopoeic faculty--A miserable day--The voice of the pompom-- Learning the Boer game--The end of Fiddling Jimmy--Melinite at close quarters--A lake of mud 114

XIV. NEARING THE END.

Dulness interminable--Ladysmith in 2099 A.D.--Sieges obsolete hardships--Dead to the world--The appalling features of a bombardment 124

XV. IN A CONNING-TOWER.

The self-respecting bluejacket--A German atheist--The sailors' telephone--What the naval guns meant to Ladysmith--The salt of the earth 134

THE LAST CHAPTER. By VERNON BLACKBURN 144

MAPS.

PAGE

Part 3

MAP OF THE COUNTRY ROUND LADYSMITH 95

MAP ILLUSTRATING THE SEAT OF WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA At end

FROM CAPETOWN TO LADYSMITH

FIRST GLIMPSES OF THE STRUGGLE.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS--DENVER WITH A DASH OF DELHI--GOVERNMENT HOUSE--THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY--A WRANGLING DEBATE--A DEMONSTRATION OF THE UNEMPLOYED--THE MENACE OF COMING WAR.

CAPETOWN, Oct. 10.

This morning I awoke, and behold the Norman was lying alongside a wharf at Capetown. I had expected it, and yet it was a shock. In this breathless age ten days out of sight of land is enough to make you a merman: I looked with pleased curiosity at the grass and the horses.

After the surprise of being ashore again, the first thing to notice was the air. It was as clear--but there is nothing else in existence clear enough with which to compare it. You felt that all your life hitherto you had been breathing mud and looking out on the world through fog. This, at last, was air, was ether.

Right in front rose three purple-brown mountains--the two supporters peaked, and Table Mountain flat in the centre. More like a coffin than a table, sheer steep and dead flat, he was exactly as he is in pictures; and as I gazed, I saw his tablecloth of white cloud gather and hang on his brow.

It was enough: the white line of houses nestling hardly visible between his foot and the sea must indeed be Capetown.

Presently I came into it, and began to wonder what it looked like. It seemed half Western American with a faint smell of India--Denver with a dash of Delhi. The broad streets fronted with new-looking, ornate buildings of irregular heights and fronts were Western America; the battle of warming sun with the stabbing morning cold was Northern India. The handsome, blood-like electric cars, with their impatient gongs and racing trolleys, were pure America (the motor-men were actually imported from that hustling clime to run them). For Capetown itself--you saw it in a moment--does not hustle. The machinery is the West's, the spirit is the East's or the South's. In other cities with trolley-cars they rush; here they saunter. In other new countries they have no time to be polite; here they are suave and kindly and even anxious to gossip. I am speaking, understand, on a twelve hours' acquaintance--mainly with that large section of Capetown's inhabitants that handled my baggage between dock and rail way-station. The niggers are very good-humoured, like the darkies of America. The Dutch tongue sounds like German spoken by people who will not take the trouble to finish pronouncing it.

All in all, Capetown gives you the idea of being neither very rich nor very poor, neither over-industrious nor over-lazy, decently successful, reasonably happy, whole-heartedly easy-going.

The public buildings--what I saw of them--confirm the idea of a placid half-prosperity. The place is not a baby, but it has hardly taken the trouble to grow up. It has a post-office of truly German stability and magnitude. It has a well-organised railway station, and it has the merit of being in Adderley Street, the main thoroughfare of the city: imagine it even possible to bring Euston into the Strand, and you will get an idea of the absence of push and crush in Capetown.

When you go on to look at Government House the place keeps its character: Government House is half a country house and half a country inn. One sentry tramps outside the door, and you pay your respects to the Governor in shepherd's plaid.

Over everything brooded peace, except over one flamboyant many-winged building of red brick and white stone with a garden about it, an avenue--a Capetown avenue, shady trees and cool but not large: attractive and not imposing--at one side of it, with a statue of the Queen before and broad-flagged stairs behind. It was the Parliament House. The Legislative Assembly--their House of Commons--was characteristically small, yet characteristically roomy and characteristically comfortable. The members sit on flat green-leather cushions, two or three on a bench, and each man's name is above his seat: no jostling for Capetown. The slip of Press gallery is above the Speaker's head; the sloping uncrowded public gallery is at the other end, private boxes on one side, big windows on the other. Altogether it looks like a copy of the Westminster original, improved by leaving nine-tenths of the members and press and public out.

Yet here--alas, for placid Capetown!--they were wrangling. They were wrangling about the commandeering of gold and the sjamboking--shamboking, you pronounce it--of Johannesburg refugees. There was Sir Gordon Sprigg, thrice Premier, grey-bearded, dignified, and responsible in bearing and speech, conversationally reasonable in tone. There was Mr Schreiner, the Premier, almost boyish with plump, smooth cheeks and a dark moustache. He looks capable, and looks as if he knows it: he, too, is conversational, almost jerky, in speech, but with a flavour of bitterness added to his reason.

Everything sounded quiet and calm enough for Capetown--yet plainly feeling was strained tight to snapping. A member rose to put a question, and prefaced it with a brief invective against all Boers and their friends. He would go on for about ten minutes, when suddenly angry cries of "Order!" in English and Dutch would rise. The questioner commented with acidity on the manners of his opponents. They appealed to the chair: the Speaker blandly pronounced that the hon. gentleman had been out of order from the first word he uttered. The hon. gentleman thereon indignantly refused to put his question at all; but, being prevailed to do so, gave an opening to a Minister, who devoted ten minutes to a brief invective against all Uitlanders and their friends. Then up got one of the other side--and so on for an hour. Most delicious of all was a white-haired German, once colonel in the Hanoverian Legion which was settled in the Eastern Province, and which to this day remains the loyallest of her Majesty's subjects. When the Speaker ruled against his side he counselled defiance in a resounding whisper; when an opponent was speaking he snorted thunderous derision; when an opponent retorted he smiled blandly and admonished him: "Ton't lose yer demper."

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