With the Guards' Brigade From Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back

CHAPTER VI

A CHAPTER ABOUT CHAPLAINS 88

A Chaplain who found the Base became the Front--Pathetic Scenes in Hospital--A Battlefield Scene no less Pathetic--Look on this Picture, and on that--A third-class Chaplain who proved a first-rate Chaplain--Running in the Wrong Man--A Wainman who proved a real Waggoner--Three bedfellows in a barn--A fourth-class Chaplain that was also a first-rate Chaplain--A Parson Prisoner in the hands of the Boers--Caring for the Wounded--How the Chaplain's own Tent was bullet-riddled--A Sample Set of Sunday Services.

CHAPTER VII

THE HELPFUL WORK OF THE OFFICIATING CLERGY 103

At Cape Town and Wynberg--Saved from Drowning to sink in Hospital--A Pleasant Surprise--The Soldiers' Reception Committee--The other way about--Our near kinship to the Boers --More good Work on our right Flank.

CHAPTER VIII

GETTING TO THE GOLDEN CITY 113

An elaborate night toilet--Capturing Clapham Junction--Dear diet and dangerous--No Wages but the Sjambok--The Gold Mines --The Soldiers' Share--The Golden City--Astonishing the Natives.

CHAPTER IX

PRETORIA--THE CITY OF ROSES 127

Whit-Monday and Wet Tuesday--"Light after Dark"--Why the Surrender?--Taking Possession--"Resurgam"--A Striking Incident--No Canteens and no Crime.

CHAPTER X

PRETORIAN INCIDENTS AND IMPRESSIONS 142

The State's Model School--Rev. Adrian Hoffmeyer--The Waterfall Prisoners--A Soldier's Hymn--A big Supper Party-- The Soldiers' Home--Mr and Mrs Osborn Howe--A Letter from Lord Kitchener--Also from Lord Roberts--A Song in praise of De Wet--Cordua and his Conspiracy--Hospital Work in Pretoria --The Wear and Tear of War--The Nursing Sisters--A Surprise Packet--Soldierly Gratitude--The Ladysmith Lyre.

CHAPTER XI

FROM PRETORIA TO BELFAST 169

The Boer way of saying "Bosh"--News from a far Country --Further fighting--Touch not, taste not, handle not--More Treachery and still more--The root of the matter--A Tight Fit --Obstructives on the Rail--Middleburg and the Doppers-- August Bank Holiday--Blowing up Trains--A peculiar Mothers' Meeting--Aggressive Ladies--A Dutch Deacon's Testimony--A German Officer's Testimony.

CHAPTER XII

THROUGH HELVETIA 190

The Fighting near Belfast--Feeding under Fire--A German Doctor's Confession--Friends in need are Friends indeed--The Invisible Sniper's Triumph--"He sets the mournful Prisoners free"--More Boer Slimness--A Boer Hospital--Foreign Mercenaries--A wounded Australian--Hotel Life on the Trek-- A Sheep-pen of a Prison--Pretty Scenery and Superb.

CHAPTER XIII

WAR'S WANTON WASTE 210

A Surrendered Boer General--Two Unworthy Predikants--Two Notable Advocates of Clemency--Mines without Men, and Men without Meat--Much Fat in the Fire--More Fat and Mightier Flames--A Welcome Lift by the Way--"Rags and Tatters, get ye gone!"--Destruction and still more Destruction--At Koomati Poort--Two Notable Fugitives--The Propaganda of the Africander Bond--Ex-President Steyn--Paul Botha's opinion of this Ex-President.

CHAPTER XIV

FROM PORTUGUESE AFRICA TO PRETORIA 231

Staggering Humanity--Food for Flames--A Crocodile in the Koomati--A Hippopotamus in the Koomati--A Via Dolorosa-- Over the Line--Westward Ho!--Ruined Farms and Ruined Firms-- Farewell to the Guards' Brigade!

CHAPTER XV

A WAR OF CEASELESS SURPRISES 245

Exhaustlessness of Boer resources--The Peculiarity of Boer Tactics--The Surprisers Surprised--Train Wrecking--The Refugee Camps--The Grit of the Guards--The Irregulars--The Testimony of the Cemetery--Death and Life in Pretoria.

CHAPTER XVI

PRETORIA AND THE ROYAL FAMILY 261

Suzerainty turned to Sovereignty--Prince Christian Victor--A Royal Funeral--A Touching Story--The Death of the Queen-- The King's Coronation.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER

THE ULTIMATUM AND WHAT LED TO IT

When the late Emperor of the French was informed, on the eve of the Franco-German War, that not so much as a gaiter button would be found wanting if hostilities were at once commenced, soon all France found itself, with him, fatally deceived. But when the Transvaal Burghers boasted that they were "ready to give the British such a licking as they had never had before," it proved no idle vaunting. Whether the average Boer understood the real purpose for which he was called to arms seems doubtful; but his leaders made no secret of their intention to drive the hated "Roineks" into the sea, and to claim, as the notorious "Bond" frankly put it, "all South Africa for the Africanders." The Rev. Adrian Hoffmeyer of the Dutch Reformed Church freely admits that the watchword of the Western Boers was "Tafelburg toc," that is, "To Table Mountain"; and that their commandant said to him, "We will not rest till our flag floats there."

Similarly on the eastern side it was their confident boast that presently they would be "eating fish and drinking coffee at sea-side Durban." There would thus be one flag floating over all South Africa; and that flag not the Union Jack but its supplanter.

Now the Dutch have undoubtedly as absolute a right to dream dreams of wide dominion as we ourselves have; and this particular dream had no less undeniably been the chief delight of some among them for more than a decade twice told.

Even PRESIDENT BRAND, of the Orange Free State, referring to Lord Carnarvon's pet idea of a federated South Africa, said: "His great scheme is a united South Africa under the British Flag. He dreams of it and so do I; but under the flag of South Africa." Much in the same strain PRESIDENT BURGERS, of the Transvaal Republic, when addressing a meeting of his countrymen in Holland, said: "In that far-off country the inhabitants dream of a future in which the people of Holland will recover their former greatness." He was convinced that within half a century there would be in South Africa a population of eight millions; all speaking the Dutch language; a second Holland, as energetic and liberty-loving as the first; but greater in extent, and greater in power.

Nevertheless, in this far-seeing President's day, the Transvaal, after fourteen years of doubtful independence, reached in 1877 its lowest depths of financial and political impotency. Its valiant burghers were vanquished in one serious conflict with the natives; and, emboldened thereby, the Zulus were audaciously threatening to eat them up, when Shepstone appeared upon the scene. "I thank my father Shepstone for his restraining message," said Cetewayo. "The Dutch have tired me out; and I intended to fight with them once, only once, and to drive them over the Vaal." The jails were thrown open because food was no longer obtainable for the prisoners. The State officials, including the President, knew not where to secure their stipends, and were hopelessly at variance among themselves. The Transvaal one-pound notes were selling for a single shilling, and the State treasury contained only twelve shillings and sixpence wherewith to pay the interest on a comparatively heavy State debt, besides almost innumerable other claims.

No wonder, therefore, that Burgers, in disgust, declared he would sooner be a policeman under a strong government. "Matters are as bad as they ever can be," said he; "they cannot be worse!" Hence its annexation, in 1877, by Sir Theophilus Shepstone, without the assistance of a solitary soldier, but with the eager assent of thousands of the burghers, bade fair to prove the salvation of the Transvaal, and probably would have done, had the easily-to-be-obtained consent of the Volksraad been at once sought, and Lord Carnarvon's promise of speedy South African Federation, together with a generous measure of local self-government, been promptly redeemed. But European complications, with serious troubles on the Indian frontier, caused interminable delay in the maturing of this scheme; and as the disappointed Boers grew restive, a "Hold your Jaw" Act was passed, making it a penal offence for any Transvaaler even to discuss such questions. In our simplicity we sit upon the safety valve and then wonder why the boiler bursts. To the "Hold your Jaw" policy the Boer reply was an appeal to arms; and at Majuba in the spring of 1881 their rifles said what their jaws were forbidden to say. Majuba was indeed a mere skirmish, an affair of outposts; but Magersfontein and Spion Kop are the legitimate sons of Majuba.

Napoleon, with possibly a veiled reference to himself, once said to the French people, "You have the men, but where is The Man?" The Boers in the day of their uprising against British rule found "The Man" in PAUL STEPHANUS KRUGER. To all South Africa a veritable "man of Destiny" has he proved to be; and for eighteen successive years, as their honoured President he has ruled his people with an absoluteness no European potentate could possibly approach. By birth a British subject, and for a brief while after the annexation a paid official of the British Government, he yet seems all his life to have been a consistent hater of all things British. When only ten years old, a tattered, bare-legged, unlettered lad, he joined "The great Trek" which in 1837 sought on the dangerous and dreary veldt beyond the Vaal a refuge from British rule. He it was who, surviving the terrors of those tragic times and trained in that stern school, became like Brand and Burgers a dreamer of dreams. He lived to baffle by his superior shrewdness, or slimness, all the arts of English diplomacy. In his later years this President manifestly deemed himself chosen of Heaven to make an end of British rule from the Zambesi to the sea. "The Transvaal shall never be shut up in a kraal," said he. A Sovereign International State he declared it was, or should be, with free access to the ocean; and how astonishingly near he came to the accomplishment of these bold aims we now know to our exceeding cost. Nevertheless, to this persistent dreamer of dreams the two South African Republics owe their extinction; while the British Empire owes to him more than to any other living man its fast approaching Federation.

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