[Sidenote: A problem not quite solved.]

When night at last arrived, we had neither tents nor shelters of any sort provided for us, though the cold was searching, and everything around us was wet with heavy dew. Men and officers alike spread their waterproof sheets on the bare ground, and then made the best they could of one or two blankets in which to wrap themselves. Through the kindness, however, of my quartermaster friend, since dead, I was privileged to push my head and shoulders under a transport waggon which effectually sheltered me from wind and wet; and there, in the midst of mules and men, mostly darkies, I slept the sleep of the weary.

Brief rest, however, of a more delicious kind I had already found in the course of that toilsome afternoon tramp described above. During a short halt by the way I lay upon my back watching a huge cloud of locusts flying far overhead, and thinking tenderly of those just then assembling at our Aldershot Sunday afternoon service of song, not forgetting the gentle lady who usually presides at the piano there. Then I took out my pocket Testament, and read Romans xii.: "If thine enemy hunger, feed him." But about that precise moment the adjoining kopje, with a shaking emphasis, said to me, "pom-pom," and again "pom-pom." But how to feed one's enemy while thus he speaks with defiant throat of brass, is a problem that still awaits a satisfactory solution!

[Sidenote: A touching sight.]

In the course of the day I was greatly touched by the sight of an artillery horse that had fallen from uttermost fatigue, so that it had to be left to its fate on the pitiless veldt. It was now separated from its team, and all its harness had been removed; but when it found itself being deserted by its old companions in distress and strife, it cast after them a most piteous look, struggled, and struggled again to get on to its feet, and finally stood like a drunken man striving to steady himself, but absolutely unable to go a single step further. Ah, the bitterness alike for men and horses of such involuntary and irrecoverable falling out from the battle-line of life! Not actual dying, but this type of death is what some most dread!

[Sidenote: Rifle firing and firing farms.]

When on Monday we resumed our march, it was still to the sound of the same iron-mouthed music; but now at last we could not only hear, but see some of the shell fire, and watch a few of the men that were taking part in the fight. Far away we noticed what looked like a line of beetles, each a good space from his fellow beetles, creeping towards the top of a ridge. These were some of our mounted men. Lower down the slope, but moving in the same direction, was a similar line of what looked like bees. These were some of our infantry, on whom the altogether invisible Boers were evidently directing their fire. As you must first catch your hare before you can cook it, so you must first sight a Boer before you can shift him; and the former task is frequently the more difficult of the two. In more senses than one short-sighted soldiers have had their day; and in all ranks those who cannot look far ahead must give place to those who can. Henceforth the most powerful field-glasses that can possibly be made, and the most perfect telescopes, must be supplied to all our officers; or on a still more disastrous scale than in this war the bees will drop their bullets among the beetles, and Britons will be killed by Britons.

Later in the day, to my sincere grief, a beautiful Boer house was set on fire by our men, after careful inquiry into the facts by the provost-marshal, because the farmer occupying it had run up the white flag over his house, and then from under that flag our scouts had been shot at. Such acts of treachery became lamentably common, and had at all cost to be restricted by the only arguments a Voortrekker seemed able to understand; but the Boers in Natal had long before this proved adepts at kindling similar bonfires, though without any such provocation, and cannot therefore pose as martyrs over the burning of their own farms, however deplorable that burning be.

[Sidenote: Boer treachery and the white flag.]

At Belmont a young officer of the Guards named Blundell was killed by a shot from a wounded Boer to whom he was offering a drink of water; and about the same time another Boer hoisted a white flag, which our men naturally mistook for a signal of surrender, but on rising to receive it, received instead a murderous volley of rifle fire, as the result of which the correspondent of The Morning Post had his right arm hopelessly shattered.

At Talana Hill, our first battle in Natal, the beaten Boers raised a white flag on a bamboo pole, but when our gunners thereupon ceased firing, "the brother" instead of surrendering bolted! At Colenso, a company of burghers with rifles flung over their backs, and waving a white flag, approached within a short distance of the foremost British trenches, but when our troops raised their heads to welcome these surrendering foes, they were instantly stormed at by shot and shell. At length General Buller found it necessary in face of such frequent treachery, officially to warn his whole army to be on their guard against the white flag, a flag which to his personal knowledge was already through such misuse stained with the blood of two gallant British officers, besides many men.

It is said that when Sir Burne Jones' little daughter was once in such a specially angry mood as to scratch and bite and spit, her father somewhat roughly shook the child and said, "I do not see what has got into you, Millicent; the devil must teach you these things." Whereupon, the little one indignantly flashed back this reply:—"Well the devil may have taught me to scratch and bite, but the spitting is my own idea!" With equal justice the Boers may claim that though the ordinary horrors and agonies of war are of the devil, this persistent abuse of the white flag is their own idea. Of that practice they possess among civilized nations an absolute monopoly, and the red cross flag has often fared no better at their hands.

But then it would be absurd and most unfair to blame the two Republics as a whole for this. No people on earth would approve such practices, and doubtless they were as great a pain to many an honourable Boer as they were to us. But upland farmers who have spent their lives in fighting savage beasts, and still more savage men, are slow to distinguish between lawful tricking and unlawful treachery, and are apt to account all things fair that help to win the game.

[Sidenote: The pet lamb still lives and learns!]

During this long trek through worlds unknown, our pet lamb, perchance taking encouragement from the example of the two chaplains, followed us all the way on foot, and became quite soldierly in its tastes and tendencies. It scorned even to look at its brother sheep on the veldt modestly feeding on coarse veldt grass; but on sardines and bacon-fat it seemed to thrive astonishingly; and both my bread and sugar it coolly commandeered. So rapid and complete is camp-life education, even when a pet lamb is the pupil!

[Sidenote: Right about face.]

On the morning of our fifth day in "worlds unknown" we breakfasted soon after four, by starlight; and before sunrise were again trekking hard. About ten miles brought our almost interminable string of waggons to two ugly river drifts, across which, with much toil and shouting they were at last safely dragged. Then we suddenly halted and to our amazement were ordered to return whence we came. So across those two ugly drifts the waggons were again dragged; four o'clock in the afternoon found us on the precise spot where four o'clock in the morning had watched us breakfasting; and by the afternoon of the following Sunday we were back in Bloemfontein from which on the previous Sunday we had made so bold a dash for fame and fortune. In the course of those eight excessively toilsome days the Guards had captured three wounded Boers; but what else they had accomplished no one could ever guess. Somebody said, however, that something wonderful had been done by somebody somewhere in connection with that week of wonders; which was of course consoling; but it was only long after we learned that De Wet after laying siege to Wepener for seventeen days had made a sudden rush to reach his sure retreat in the north-east corner of the Free State; that we with other columns had been sent out to intercept him; and had as by a hair's breadth just managed to miss him. Such are the fortunes and misfortunes of war. As an attacking force, De Wet in the course of the war made some bold and brilliant moves, though always on a comparatively small scale; but in the art of running away and escaping capture, no matter by whom pursued, he has given himself more practice than probably any other general that ever lived. "Oh my God make him like a wheel!" We were a lumbering waggon chasing a light-winged wheel; and the wheel was winner!

[Sidenote: From worlds unknown.]

While on this long trek I lighted on a newly-arrived contingent of Canadian mounted infantry which had come to our aid from worlds unknown. They proved to be a splendid body of men, and worthy compatriots of the earlier arrived Canadians who had rendered such heroic service at Paardeberg. Their Methodist chaplain, the Rev. Mr Lane, of Nova Scotia, seemed incontestably built on the same lines; a conspicuously strong man was he, and delightfully level-headed. I therefore all the more deeply deplored the early and heavy failure of his health, as the result of the severe hardships that hang round every campaigner's path, and his consequent return, invalided home.

[Sidenote: The Bushmen..]

About this same time another equally remarkable body, the Australian Bushmen, who, like the Canadians, had come from worlds unknown, were in the far north making their way through worlds unknown to the relief of Mafeking. Their advance, says Conan Doyle, was one of the finest performances of the war. Assembled at their port of embarkation by long railway journeys, conveyed across thousands of miles of ocean to Cape Town, brought round another two thousand to Beira, transferred by a narrow gauge railway to Bamboo Creek, thence by a broader gauge to Marandellas, sent on in coaches for hundreds of miles to Bulawayo, again transferred by trains for another four or five hundred miles to Ootsi, and then facing a further march of a hundred miles, they reached the hamlet of Masibi Stadt within an hour of the arrival of Plumer's relieving columns; and before that week was over the whole Empire was thrilled, almost to the point of delirium, by learning that at last the long-drawn siege of Mafeking was raised; and a defence of almost unexampled heroism was thus brought to a triumphant end.

[Sidenote: The Australian Chaplains.]

From start to finish the Bushmen were accompanied by an earnest Methodist chaplain, whom I met only in Pretoria, the Rev. James Green, who, most fortunately, throughout the whole campaign, was not laid aside for a single day by wounds or sickness; and who, after returning home with this time-expired first contingent of Australian troops, came back in March 1902 with what, we hope, the speedy ending of the war will make their last contingent.

Between Mr Green's two terms of service I was, however, ably assisted by yet another Australian Wesleyan chaplain, the Rev. R. G. Foreman, though he, like so many others, was early invalided home.



CHAPTER IV

QUICK MARCH TO THE TRANSVAAL

It was with feelings of unfeigned delight that the Guards learned May Day was to witness the beginning of another great move towards Pretoria. We had entered Bloemfontein without expending upon it a single shot; we had been strangely welcomed with smiles and cheers and waving flags and lavish hospitality; but none the less that charming little capital had made us pay dearly for its conquest, and for our six weeks of so-called rest on the sodden veldt around it. Its traders had levied heavy toll on the soldiers' slender pay; and no fabled monster of ancient times ever claimed so sore a tribute of human lives. It was not on the veldt but under it that hundreds of our lads found rest; and hundreds more were soon to share their fate. The victors had become victims, and the vanquished were avenged. Seldom have troops taken possession of any city with such unmixed satisfaction, or departed from it with such unfeigned eagerness.

[Sidenote: A Comedy.]

My quartermaster friend and myself, unable to start with the Brigade, set out a few hours later, and tarried for the night at a Hollander platelayer's hut. The man spoke little English, and we less Dutch; but he welcomed us to the hospitality of his two-roomed home with a warmth that was overwhelming. His wife, when the war began, was sent away for safety's sake; and married men thus flung back upon their bachelorhood make poor cooks and caterers unless they happen to be soldiers on the trek; but this man, in his excitement at having such guests to entertain, expectorated violently all over the floor on which presently we expected to sleep; fire was soon kindled and coffee made; the quartermaster produced some tinned meat; I produced some tinned fruit; the ganger produced some tinned biscuits—in this campaign we have been saved by tin—and so by this joint-stock arrangement there was provided a feast that hungry royalty need not have disdained. Next our entertainer undertook to amuse his guests, and did it in a fashion never to be forgotten. He produced a box fitted up as a theatre stage—all made out of his own head, he said—and mostly wooden; there were two puppets on the stage, which were made to dance most vigorously by means of cords attached secretly to the ganger's foot, whilst his hands were no less vigorously employed on the concertina which provided the accompanying dance music. This delighted old man was the oddest figure of the three, as the perspiration poured down his grimy face. To light on such a comedy when on the war path would have been enough to make Momus laugh; and when the laugh was spent we swept the floor, for reasons already hinted at, sought refuge in our blankets; and long before breakfast time next morning landed in Karee Camp.

[Sidenote: A Tragedy.]

To reach Karee we passed through "The Glen" lying beside the Upper Modder, where a deplorable tragedy had occurred not long before. A remarkably fine-looking sergeant of the Guards went to bathe in what he supposed were the deep waters of the Modder, and dived gleefully into deeps that alas were not deep. Striking the bottom with his head, instantly his neck was dislocated, and when I saw him a few hours after, though he was perfectly conscious and anxiously hopeful, he was paralysed from his shoulders downwards. A married man, his heart, too, was broken over such an undreamed of disaster, and in three weeks he died. The mauser is not the only reaping-machine the great harvester employs in war time. There have been over five hundred "accidental" deaths in the course of this campaign. At the Lower Modder we once arranged to hold a Sunday morning service for the swarms of native drivers in our camp, but in that case also were compelled to prove it is the unexpected that happens. One of the "boys" went to bathe that morning in the suddenly swollen river; he sank; and though search parties were at once sent out, the body was never recovered. So instead of a service we had this sad sensation.

About that same time, and in that same camp, one of my most intimate companions, the quartermaster of the Scots Guards, was one moment laughing and chatting with me in his tent; but the next moment, without the slightest warning, he dropped back on his couch, and that same evening was laid by his sorrowing battalion in a garden-grave. The other quartermaster, who shared with me the ganger's hospitality and laughter, when the campaign was near its close, was found lying on the floor of his tent. He had fallen when no friendly hand was near to help, and had been dead for hours when discovered. My first campaign, and last, has stored my mind with tragic memories; it has filled my heart with tendernesses unfelt before; and perchance has taught me to interpret more truly that "life of lives" foreshadowed in Isaiah's saying: "Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows."

[Sidenote: A wide front and a resistless force.]

When, on the 3rd of May, we started from Karee Camp the Guards' Brigade consisted, as from the outset, of the 1st and 2nd Coldstream battalions, the 3rd Grenadier Guards, and the 1st Scots Guards, all under the command of General Inigo Jones, from whom I received unfailing courtesy. With them was linked General Stephenson's Brigade, consisting of the Welsh, the Warwicks, the Essex, and the Yorks, these two Brigades forming the Eleventh Division under General Pole Carew. On our left was General Hutton with a strange medley of mounted infantry to which almost every part of the empire had contributed some of its noblest sons. On our right was General Tucker's Division, the Seventh; and beyond that again other Divisions, covering a front of about forty miles, which gradually narrowed down to twenty as we neared Kroonstad. Reserves were left at Bloemfontein under General Kelly Kenny; and Lord Methuen was on our remote left flank not far from Mafeking; while on our remote right was Rundle's Division, the Eighth. There thus set out for the conquest of the Transvaal a central force nearly 50,000 strong—the finest army by far that England had ever yet put into the field, and led by the ablest general she has produced since Wellington. Yet it perhaps would be more correct to speak of it as the first army Greater Britain had ever fashioned; and in my presence Lord Roberts openly gloried in being the first general the empire had entrusted with the command of a really Imperial host. In this epoch-making conflict neither the commander nor the commanded had any cause to be ashamed one of the other.

Yet from this point onward there was astonishingly little fighting. Before the campaign was over some of the guardsmen wore out several pairs of boots, but scarcely fired another bullet. The Boers were so out-manoeuvred that their mausers and machine-guns availed them little. They fought scarcely any but rear-guard actions, and their retreat was so rapid as to be almost a rout. Within about a month of leaving Bloemfontein the Guards' Brigade was in Pretoria; which, considering all they had to carry, and the constant repairing of the railway line required from day to day, would be considered good marching even if there had been no pom-poms planted to oppose progress.

[Sidenote: Brandfort.]

When we left Karee it was confidently predicted that the Boers would make a stiff stand amid the kopjes which guard the prettily placed and prettily planted little town of Brandfort. So the next day and the day after we walked warily, while cannon to right of us and cannon to left of us volleyed and thundered. Little harm was however done; and as the second afternoon hastened to its sunset hour, we were gleefully informed that "the brother" had once more "staggered humanity" by a precipitate retreat from positions of apparently impregnable strength. So Brandfort passed into our hands for all that it was worth, which did not seem to be much; but what little there was, no man looted. All was bought and paid for as in Piccadilly; but at more than Piccadilly prices. Whatever else however could be purchased, no liquor was on sale; no intemperance was seen; no molestation of woman or child took place. So was it with rare exceptions from the very first; so was it with very rare exceptions to the very last.

[Sidenote: "Stop the War" slanders.]

In this respect my assistant-chaplain, the Rev. W. Burgess, assures me that his experience tallies with mine, and he told me this tale as illustrative of it. At Hoekfontein he called at a farmhouse close to our camp, and in it he found an old woman of seventy and her husband, of whom she spoke as nearly ninety. "Do you believe in God?" she asked the chaplain, and added, "so do I, but I believe in hell as well; and would fling De Wet into it if I could." Then she proceeded to explain that her first husband was killed in the last war; that of her three sons commandeered in this war one was already slain, and that when the other two returned from the fighting line De Wet at once sent to fetch them back.

"But look at the broken panel of that door," said the old lady. "Your men did that when I would not answer to their knocks, and they stole my fowls." "Very well," replied Burgess, "where yonder red flag is flying you will find General Ian Hamilton; go and tell him your story." As the result, a staff officer sent to inspect the premises asked the Dutch dame whether food or money should be given her by way of compensation, and whether L15 would fully cover all her loss? She seemed overwhelmingly pleased at such an offer in payment for a broken panel and a few fowls. "Very good," added the staff officer. "To-morrow I will send you L20, but," quoth he to Burgess, "we'll make the scouts that broke the panel pay the twenty!"

In spite of all the real and the imaginary horrors recorded in "War against War," this has been the most humanely conducted struggle the world has ever seen; but would to God it were well over.

[Sidenote: A prisoner who tried to be a poet.]

In the yard of the little town jail I saw nine prisoners of war, only two of whom were genuine Boers. Some were Scotch, some were English, some were Hollanders; and one a fiery Irishman, who expressed so fervent a wish to be free, to revel in further fightings against us, that it was deemed desirable to adorn his wrists with a pair of handcuffs. In one of the cells, it was clear some of our British soldiers had at an earlier date been incarcerated, and were fairly well satisfied with the treatment meted out to them. Written on the wall I found this interesting legend: No. 28696, I. M'Donald, 4th Reg. M. Inf., Warwick's Camp; taken prisoner 7-3-1900; arrived here 11-3-1900. Also this, by a would-be poet called Wynn, a scout belonging to Roberts' Horse:—

"To all who may read: I have been well treated By all who have had me in charge Since I've been a prisoner here."

The poetry is not much; but the peace of mind which could pencil such lines in prison is a great deal!

[Sidenote: Militant Dutch reformed predikants.]

The two best buildings in Brandfort appeared to be the church and manse belonging to the Dutch Reformed Community. The church seats 600, though the town contains only 300 whites. But then the worshippers come from near and far. Hence I found here, as at Bloemfontein that the farmers have their "church houses"—whole rows of them in the latter town—where with their families they reside from Saturday to Monday, especially on festival occasions, that they may be present at all the services of the Sabbath and the sanctuary. A typical Dutchman is nothing if he is not devout; though unfortunately his devoutness does not prevent his being exceeding "slim," which seems to some the crown of all excellencies.

The young and intelligent pastor of this important country congregation on whom I called, was evidently an ardent patriot, like almost all his cloth. He had unfortunately firmly persuaded himself that the British fist had been thrust menacingly near the Orange Free State nose; and that therefore the owner of that aforesaid nose was perfectly justified in being the first to strike a deadly blow. He told me he had been for a month at Magersfontein, and that he was out on the Brandfort hills the day before I called watching our troops fighting their way towards the town. I understood him to say he had been shooting buck. What kind of buck is quite another question. Whether as a pastor his patriotism had confined itself to the use of Bunyan's favourite weapon, "all-prayer," on our approach; or whether as a burgher he had deemed it a part of his duty to employ smokeless powder to emphasise his patriotism, I was too polite to ask. But he pointed out to me on his verandah two old and useless sporting guns, which the day before he had handed to some of our officers, by whom they had been snapped in two and left lying on the floor. There they were pointed out to me by their late owner as part of the ravages of war. They were the only weapons he had in the house, he said, when he surrendered them.

It was a very common trick on the part of surrendered burghers who took the oath of neutrality and gave up their arms, to hand in weapons that were thus worthless and to hide for future use what were of any value. We did not even attempt to take possession of any such a burgher's horse. We found him a soldier, and when he surrendered we left him a soldier, well horsed, well armed, and often deadlier as a pretended friend than as a professed foe. Because of that exquisite folly, which we misnamed "clemency," we have had to traverse the whole ground twice over, and found a guerilla war treading close on the heels of the great war.

This young predikant with more of prudence, and perchance more of honour, recollected next morning that though, as he had truly said, he had no more weapons in the house, he had a beautiful mauser carbine hidden in his garden. There it got on his nerves and perhaps on his conscience; so calling in a passing officer of the Grenadier Guards he requested him to take possession of it, together with a hundred rounds of ammunition belonging to it. When with a sad smile he pointed out to me "the ravages of war" on his verandah floor my politeness again came to the rescue, and I said nothing about that lovely little mauser of his, which an hour before I had been curiously examining at our mess breakfast table. Too much frankness on that point would perhaps have spoiled our pleasant chat.

[Sidenote: Our Australian Chaplain's pastoral experiences.]

In the course of that chat he candidly confessed himself to be thoroughly anti-British; and for his candour this young predikant is to be honoured; but some few of his ministerial brethren proved near akin to the ever-famous Vicar of Bray, whom an ancient song represents as saying:

"That this is law I will maintain Unto my dying day, Sir; That whatsoever king may reign, I'll be Vicar of Bray, Sir."

So were there Dutch predikants who were decidedly anti-British while the British were over the hills and far away; but who fell in love with the Union Jack the moment it arrived; even if they did not set it fluttering from their own chimney-top. One such our chaplain with the Australian Bushmen met at Zeerust. When the Bushmen arrived this predikant was one of the first to welcome them, and helped to hoist the British flag. Then "the Roineks," that is the "red neck" English, retired for a while, and De La Rey arrived; whereupon the resident Boers went wild with joy, and whistled and shouted one of their favourite songs, "Vat jougoed entrek," which means "Pack your traps and trek." That was a broad hint to all pro-Britishers. So this interesting predikant hauled down the Union Jack, which his sons instantly tore to tatters, ran up the Boer flag, and drove De La Rey hither and thither in his own private carriage. Though to our Australian chaplain he expressed, still later on, his deep regret that "the Hollanders had forced the President into making war on England," when Lord Methuen, in the strange whirligig of war, next drove out De La Rey from this same Zeerust, our versatile predikant's turn soon came to "Pack his traps and trek." Even in South Africa "Ye cannot serve two masters."

[Sidenote: The Welsh Chaplain.]

After one day's rest at Brandfort the Guards resumed their march, and aided by some fighting, in which the Australians took a conspicuous part, we reached the Vet River, and encamped near its southern banks for the night. Here the newly-appointed Wesleyan Welsh chaplain, Rev. Frank Edwards, overtook me; and until it could be decided where he was to go or what he was to do, he was invited to become my brother-guest at the Grenadiers' mess.

The next day being Sunday Mr Edwards had a speedy opportunity of learning how little the best intentioned chaplain can accomplish when at the front in actual war time. It was the sixth Sunday in succession I was doomed to spend, not in doing the work of a preacher but of a pedestrian. All other chaplains were often in the same sad but inevitable plight; and though Mr Edwards had come from far of set purpose to preach Christ in the Welsh tongue to Welshmen, had all the camp been Welsh he would that day have found himself absolutely helpless. We were all on the march; and the only type of Christian work then attemptable takes the form of a brief greeting in the name of Christ to the men who tramp beside us, though they are often too tired even to talk, and we are compelled to trudge on in stolid silence.

The drift we had to cross that Sunday at the Vet was by far the worst we had yet reached in South Africa, and till all the waggons were safely over, the whole column was compelled to linger hard by. I therefore took advantage of that long pause to hurry on to Smaldeel Junction, where the headquarter staff was staying for the day. Here I was privileged to introduce Mr Edwards to the Field-Marshal, and was so fortunate as to secure his immediate appointment as Wesleyan chaplain to the whole of General Tucker's Division, with special attachment to the South Wales Borderers. This important and appropriate task successfully accomplished, I retired to rest under the broken fans of a shattered windmill.

Mr Edwards' association with the Guards' Brigade was thus of very short duration; but some interesting glimpses of his after work are given, from his own pen, in "From Aldershot to Pretoria." I must, therefore, only add that he was early struck by a small fragment of a shell, and was at the same time fever-stricken, so that for ten weeks he remained on the sick list. Still more unluckily he had only just resumed work, when there developed a further attack of dysentery, fever and jaundice, which ended in his being invalided home. Thus, like many another chaplain, he found his South African career became one of suffering rather than of service.



CHAPTER V

TO THE VALSCH RIVER AND THE VAAL

After resting for two days at Smaldeel, the Guards set out for Kroonstad on the Valsch or False River, so called because in some parts it so frequently changes its channel that after a heavy freshet one can seldom be quite sure where to find it. This march of sixty-five miles was covered in three days and a half; Smaldeel seeing the last of us on Wednesday and Kroonstad seeing the first of us about noon on Saturday. In the course of this notable march we saw, or rather heard, two artillery duels; the Boers half-heartedly opposing our passage, first at the Vet River just before we reached Smaldeel, and then at the Sand River, long since made famous by the Convention bearing that name.

[Sidenote: The Sand River Convention.]

Though Great Britain is supposed to suffer from insatiable land hunger it is a notable truth that she has voluntarily surrendered more oversea territory than some important kingdoms ever possessed; but not one of these many surrenders proved half so disastrous to all concerned as that on which the Sand River Convention set its seal in 1852. At that time our colonial possessions were accounted by many overtaxed statesmen to be all plague and no profit, involving the motherland in incessant native wars out of which she won for herself neither credit nor cash. That had proved specially true in South Africa. When, therefore, the Crimean war hove in sight with its manifold risks and its drain on our national resources, it was resolved to lessen our liabilities in that then unattractive quarter of the globe. The Transvaal was at that time a barren land, given over to wild beasts, and to Boers who seemed equally uncontrollable. An Ishmael life was theirs, their hand against every man's and every man's hand against them. Every little township was a law unto itself and almost every homestead; so the British Government threw up the thankless task of governing the ungovernable, as soon as a life and death struggle with Russia appeared inevitable. The Sand River Convention gave to the Transvaal absolute independence save only in what related to the treatment of the natives. There was to be no slavery in the Transvaal; but no Convention ever yet framed could apparently bind a Boer when his financial interests bade him break it. So set he his face to evade the conditions both of the Pretoria and the London Conventions of later date; and the one requirement of this first Convention he set at nought. During several following years he still hunted for slaves whom he took captive in native wars; sjamboked them into serving him without pay; bought them, sold them, but never called them slaves. They were "apprentices," which was a fine word for a foul thing. So was the Convention kept in the letter of it and broken in the spirit of it. For five-and-twenty years of widening and deepening anarchy that Convention remained in force, the Transvaal fighting with the Orange Free State, and Boer bidding defiance to Boer with bullets for his arguments. When little Lydenberg claimed the right to set up as an independent republic, Kruger himself reasoned with it at the muzzle of his rifle, as we have since been compelled to reason with him. So at last Shepstone appeared upon the scene to evolve order out of chaos; and though he knew it not, he was the true herald of the Guards' Brigade, and sundry others, that after many days crossed the Sand River to make an end for ever of all that the Sand River Convention involved.

The year following that in which the Convention was signed, another step was taken in the same direction and independence was forced on the Orange Free State. The people protested, and pleaded for permission to still live under the protection of the British flag; but their prayers were as unavailing as "the groans of the Britons," which, as recorded in the early pages of our own island story, followed the retiring swords of Rome. Now, after nearly forty years of uttermost neighbourliness, the Orange Free State, with machine gun and mauser hurls back the gift once so reluctantly accepted, and forces us to recall what now they still more reluctantly surrender. How bewildering are the ways of Fate!



[Sidenote: Railway wrecking and repairing.]

The crossing of the drifts at the two rivers was almost as difficult a task as the overtaking of our ever retreating foes. The railway bridges over both these streams had been blown up by dynamite: some of the stone piers were shattered, and some of the iron girders hurled all atwist into the watery depths beneath; here and there culverts had similarly been destroyed, and at many a point the very rails had been torn by explosives till they looked like a pair of upturned arms imploring help from heaven. We noticed, however, when we got into the Transvaal that the Transvaalers took pity on their own portion of the line, and studiously refrained from shattering it. Some of them were probably shareholders. The less serious damages the Railway Pioneers and the Royal Engineers repaired with a speed that amazed us; and our supply trains never seemed to linger long in the rear of us, except when a massive river bridge was broken. Then a deviation line and a low level trestle bridge had to be constructed. At that fatigue work I have seen whole companies of once smart-looking Guardsmen toiling with spade and pick like Kaffirs, whilst some of their aristocratic officers, bearing lordly titles, played the part of gangers over these soldier-navvies. It was a new version and a more useful one of Ruskin and his collegiate road-makers.

[Sidenote: The tale, and tails, of a singed overcoat.]

Bridge or no bridge, many a mile of transport waggons, of ammunition carts, of provision carts, with sundry naval guns, each drawn by a team of thirty-two oxen, had somehow to be got down the dangerous slope on one side of the drift, then across the stream, and up the still more difficult slope on the other side. It was a herculean task at which men and mules and horses toiled on far into the night. Meanwhile, when the troops reached their camping ground some miles beyond the river, they found they would have to wait for hours before they could get a scrap of beef or biscuit, and that it would probably be still longer before their overcoats or blankets arrived. For the hungry and shivering men this seemed an almost interminable interval, and for their officers it was scarcely less trying. A devoted Methodist non-commissioned officer perceiving my sorry plight most seasonably procured for me the loan of a capital military greatcoat. I also fortunately found a warm anthill, which the Boers earlier in the day had hollowed out and turned into an excellent stove or cooking-place. I stirred up the hot ashes inside with my walking-stick, but could find no trace of actual fire, so lay down beside the mound for the sake of its gentle warmth and instantly fell fast asleep. In my sleep I must have leaned hard against the anthill, for presently a burning sensation at my back awoke me, to discover that already a big hole had been charred in the coat I wore; and "alas! master, it was borrowed." Boer rifle fire never harmed a hair of my head, but this Boer fire did mischief nobody bargained for. Clearly our pursuit was much too hot for my personal comfort!



A little earlier in the evening another glowing anthill had been found by one of our officers, and the thought of possible soup at once suggested itself. A three-legged crock was borrowed from a native and a fire of green mimosa shrub was laboriously coaxed into vigour by a young aspirant to a seat in the House of Lords. Into the crockful of water one of us cast a few meat lozenges reserved for just such a day of dire need; another found in his haversack a further slender store, which instantly shared the same fate. Somebody else cast into the pot the contents of a tiny tin of condensed beef tea; and with sundry other contributions of the same kind there was presently produced a delightful cup of soup for all concerned. To mend matters still further and to improve the no longer shining hours, an officer caught sight of a stray pig upon the veldt and shot it, just as though it had been a sniping "brother." A short time after a portion of that porker took its place among the lozenges and condensed beef tea in that simmering crock. So in an hour or two there followed another cup of glorious broth, with a dainty morsel of boiled pork for those who desired it:—

"Oh ye gods, what a glorious feast!"

Soon after, our Cape cart with its load of iron mugs and tinned provisions reached that same crock side; while waggon loads of blankets, beef and biscuits, made possible a satisfactory night's rest, even on the frosty veldt, for all our well-wearied men.

Kroonstad, the but recently proclaimed second capital of the Orange Free State, is a very inferior edition of Bloemfontein. There is not a single stately building, public or private, in the whole place—the Dutch Reformed Church, afterwards taken for hospital purposes, being the best, as it is meet and right God's House should always be.

[Sidenote: Lord Roberts as Hospital Visitor.]

It was while I was visiting the sick and suffering laid, of course without beds, on the bare floor of this extemporised House of Healing that our ever busy commander-in-chief called on a similar errand of pitying kindliness. Fortunately for all concerned the master-mind of the whole campaign is of a devout as well as kindly type. Lord Roberts not only encouraged to the uttermost all army temperance work, being himself the founder of the A.T.A., but like Lord Methuen took a lively interest in the spiritual welfare of the troops. Yet never was a general more loved by his men, or more implicitly trusted. They reposed so much the calmer confidence in his generalship because of their instinctive belief in his goodness, and as an illustration of that belief the following testimony sent by a certain bombardier appeared in a recent report of Miss Hanson's Aldershot Soldiers' Home:—

"Lord Roberts! Well, he's just a father. Often goes round hospital in Bloemfontein, and it's 'Well, my lad, how are you to-day? Anything I can do for you? Anything you want?' and never forgets to see the man has what he asks for. Goes to the hospital train—'Are you comfortable? Are you sure you're comfortable?' Then it's 'Buck up! Buck up!' to those who need it. But when he sees a man dying, it's 'Can I pray with you, my lad?' I've seen him many a time praying, with not a dry eye near,—tears in his eyes and ours. It don't matter if there is a clergyman or anyone else present, if he sees a man very ill he will pray with him. He is a lord!"

Whether in this story there is any slight touch of soldierly imaginativeness, I cannot tell, but happy is the general about whom his men write in such a fashion; and happy is the army controlled by such a head!

[Sidenote: President Steyn's Sjambok.]

On the Friday evening, a few hours before our arrival, President Steyn stood in the drift of the Kroonstad stream, sjambok in hand, seeking to drive back the fleeing Boers to their new-made and now deserted trenches; but the President's sjambok proved as unavailing as Mrs Partington's heroic broom. The Boer retreat had grown into a rout; and the President's own retirement that night was characterised by more of despatch than dignity. He is reported to have said, "Better a Free State ruined than no Free State at all." For its loss of freedom, and for its further ruin, no living man is so responsible as he. But for his sympathy and support the Boers would have made less haste in the penning of their Ultimatum, and war might still have slept. Steyn's ambition awoke it!

Whilst its President-protector fled, Kroonstad that night found itself face to face with pandemonium let loose. The great railway bridge over the Valsch was blown up with a terrific crash. The new goods station belonging to the railway, recently built at a cost of L5000, and filled with valuable stores, including food stuffs, was drenched with paraffin by the Boer Irish Brigade, and given to the flames; while five hundred sacks of Indian corn piled outside shared the same fate. No wonder that, as at Bloemfontein, the arrival of the Guards' Brigade was welcomed with ringing cheers, and the frantic waving by many a hand of tiny Union Jacks. Our coming was to them the end of anarchy.

It is however worthy of note that the Boers who thus gave foodstuffs to the flames, and strove continually to tear up the rails along which food supplies arrived, yet left their wives and children for us to feed. About that they had no compunctions and no fear, in spite of the fabled horrors ascribed to British troops. They knew full well that even if those troops were half starved, these non-combatants would not be suffered to lack any good thing. Even President Kruger, though careful to carry all his wealth away, commended his wife to our tender keeping. Some of us would rather he had taken the wife and left the wealth; but concerning the scrupulous courtesy shown to her, no voice of complaining has ever been heard. When we ourselves were famished we fed freely the families of the very men who set fire to our food supplies; and their children especially were as thoughtfully cared for as though they were our own. War is always an accursed thing, but even in this dread sphere the Christ-influence is not unfelt.

[Sidenote: A Sunday at last that was also a Sabbath.]

To my intense delight after so many Sabbathless Sundays, I found myself privileged to conduct a well-attended parade service for the Nonconformists in the Guards' Brigade at 9 A.M., and for the men of General Stephenson's Brigade at a later hour. In the afternoon I paid a visit to the native Wesleyan church which has connected with it about twelve hundred members in and around Kroonstad. The building, which is day school, Sunday school and chapel all in one, is already of a goodly size, but it was about to be enlarged when the war began. I found a capital congregation awaiting my appearing, the women sitting on one side, the men on the other. There were three interpreters who translated what I said into Kaffir, Basuto and Dutch; an arrangement which gives a preacher ample time to think before he speaks; though once or twice I fear I forgot when number two had finished that number three had still to follow. I noticed when the collection was taken, there seemed almost as many coins as worshippers, and all the coins were silver, excepting only two. Yet this was a congregation of Kaffirs!

At night, assisted by the Canadian chaplain, I took the service in the Wesleyan English church, where the singing and the collection were both golden. So also was the text; and delightsomely appropriate withal. "The Most High ruleth the kingdom of men and giveth it to whomsoever He will." Of the sermon based upon it however it is not for me to speak. So ended my first Sunday in Kroonstad, where I was the favoured guest of Mr and Mrs Thorn, late of Bristol, and still Britishers "to the backbone the thick way through."

[Sidenote: Military Police on the march.]

This memorable march from the Valsch to the Vaal was, in consequence of the transport difficulties already described, one of the hungriest in all our record. To all the other miseries of the men there was added an incessant pining for food which it was impossible for them to procure in anything like satisfying quantities, and I have repeatedly watched them gather up from the face of the veldt unwholesomenesses that no man could eat; I have seen them many a time thus try with wry face to devour wild melon bitter as gall, and then fling it away in utter disgust, if not despair.

Yet at the head of the Brigade there marched a strong body of Military Police whose one business it was to see that these famished men looted nothing. When a deserted house was reached no pretence at protecting it was made. Such a house of course never contained food, and our men sought in it only what would serve for firewood, in some cases almost demolishing the place in their eagerness to secure a few small sticks, or massive beams. Nothing in that way came amiss.

But if man, woman or child were in the house a cordon of police was instantly put round the building. The longing eyes and tingling fingers passed on, and absolutely nothing was touched except on payment. Tom Hood in one of his merry poems tells of a place:—

"Straight down the crooked lane And right round the square,"

where the most toothsome little porkers cried "Come eat me if you please." That, to the famine-haunted imagination of the troops, was precisely what many a well-fed porker on the veldt seemed to say, but as a rule say in vain. After thousands of troops had gone by, I have with my own eyes seen that lucky porker still there, with ducks of unruffled plumage still floating on the farmhouse pond, and fat poultry quite unconscious how perilous an hour they had just passed. Yet the owner of the aforesaid pig and poultry was out on commando, his mauser charged with a messenger of death, which any moment might wing its way to any one of us. No wonder if the famished soldiers could not quite see the equity of the arrangement which left him at liberty to hunt for their lives but would not allow them to lay a finger on one of his barndoor fowls. It would be absurd to suppose that, in the face of such pressure, the vigilance of the police was never eluded; and our mounted scouts were always well away from police control. As the result their saddles became sometimes like an inverted hen-roost; heads down instead of up; but they were seldom asked in what market they had made their purchases or what price they had paid for their poultry.

It would require a clever cook to provide a man with three savoury and substantial meals out of a mugful of flour, about a pound of tough trek ox, and a pinch of tea. Yet occasionally that was all it proved possible to serve out to the men, and their ingenuity in dealing with that miserable mugful of flour often made me marvel. They reminded me not unfrequently of the sons of the prophets, who, in a day of dearth went out into the fields to gather herbs and found a wild vine, and gathered thereof wild gourds and shred them into the pot and they could not eat thereof. Violent attacks of dysentery and kindred complaints only too plainly proved that occasionally in this case also, as in that ancient instance, there was apparently ample justification for the cry, "Oh thou man of God, there is death in the pot." Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the lynx-eyed vigilance of the police, the smell from the pot was sometimes astonishingly like unto the smell of chicken-broth; which clearly shows what good cooking can accomplish even on the barren veldt.

[Sidenote: A General's glowing eulogy of the Guards.]

This amazing ability of the Guards to face long marches with short rations was triumphantly maintained, not for a few months merely but to the very end of the campaign. In the February of 1901 it fell to the lot of the Scots Guards, for instance, to accompany General French's cavalry to the Swaziland border. They took with them no tents and the least possible amount of impedimenta of any kind. But for three weeks they had to face almost incessant rain, and as they had no shelter except a blanket full of holes, they were scarcely ever dry for half a dozen hours at a time. The streams were so swollen that they became impassable torrents, and the transport waggons were thus left far behind, with all food supplies. For eight or ten days at a stretch men and officers alike had no salt, no sugar, no tea, no coffee, no jam, no flour, bread or biscuits; no vegetables of any kind; but only one cupful of mealies or mealie meal per day, and as much fresh killed meat as their rebellious stomachs could digest without the aid of salt or mustard. Yet the only deaths were two by drowning; and at the close of the operations the general addressed them as follows:—

General French's farewell speech to the 1st Brigade, Scots Guards at Vryheid, on April 1st, 1901:—

Major Cuthbert, officers, N.C.Os. and men of the Scots Guards. The operations in the Eastern Transvaal are brought to a close, and I have had the opportunity of addressing the Royal Horse and Field Artillery and Cavalry; but, although you were with me in the Western Transvaal, this is the first time I have had the pleasure of addressing you on parade. The operations from Springs to Ermelo, and from Ermelo to Piet Retief, were conducted under the most trying circumstances and severe hardships. Lying on the ground, which was under water, with no shelter, with very short rations and for sometime none at all, you had to exist on the meagre supplies of the district, which were very poor. At one time it caused me the deepest anxiety, as in consequence of the weather all communications were temporarily suspended; but the cheery manner and disposition of this splendid battalion did a great deal to disperse this anxiety. What struck me most forcibly was your extraordinary power of marching. I have frequently noticed that when the cavalry and mounted infantry were engaged (happily very slightly) in these operations, I have been surprised on looking round to see this splendid battalion close behind and extended ready to take part in the fighting, and have wondered how they got there. Another important item I wish to remark upon is the magnificent manner in which this battalion performed outpost duty and night work. On several occasions news has come to me through my Intelligence Department of a meditated attack on the camp of this column, but owing to the skilful way in which the outposts were thrown out and the vigilance of the sentries the attack was never developed.

Another thing I noticed was the highly disciplined state of the battalion. It is not always in fighting that a soldier proves his qualities. Though at the commencement of the campaign you had hard fighting and heavy losses, the past few weeks stand unsurpassed, I believe, for hardships in the history of the campaign! I thank every officer and N.C.O. for the great assistance given to me during these operations. Should your services be required elsewhere, or further hardships have to be endured, I know you will do as you have done before. I wish you all good-bye.

[Sidenote: Good news by the way.]

Among those who, like myself, on October 21st left England in the same boat as General Baden-Powell's brother, the most frequent theme of conversation was the then unknown fate of Mafeking. Its relief was the news most eagerly enquired for at St Vincent's, and we were all hugely disappointed when on reaching the Cape we learned that the interesting event had not yet come off. Some toilsome and adventurous months brought us to May 21st, our last day at Kroonstad; and it proved a superbly satisfactory send-off on our next perilous march to learn that day that the long-delayed but intensely welcome event had at last actually taken place just four days before. It filled the whole camp with pardonable pride and pleasure, though the sober-sided soldiers on the veldt scarcely lost their mental balance over the business as the multitudes at home, and as all the great cities of the empire seem to have done. We know it was a tiny town defended by a tiny garrison of for the most part untrained men; and therefore in itself of scant importance; but we also know that for many a critical week it had held back not a few strong commandoes in their headlong rush towards the Cape; it had for weary months illustrated on the one hand the staying power of British blood, and on the other the timidity and impotence of the Boers as an attacking force. Not a single town or stronghold to which they laid siege had they succeeded in capturing; the very last of the series was safe at last, and after all that had been said about British blunderings, this event surely called for something more than commonplace congratulations. Hereward the Wake was wont to say, "We are all gallant Englishmen; it is not courage we want: it is brains"; but at Mafeking for once brains triumphed over bullets. A new Wake had arisen in our ranks, and so Mafeking has found a permanent place among the many names of renown in the long annals of our island story.

It was an admirably fitting prelude to another historic event of that same week. On the last anniversary we shall ever keep of our venerable Queen's birthday, on May 24th, the Orange River Colony was formally annexed to the British Empire, and Victoria was proclaimed its gracious sovereign. That empire has grown into the vastest responsibility ever laid on the shoulders of any one people, and constitutes a stupendously urgent call to the pursuit and practice of righteousness on the part of the whole Anglo-Saxon race. It is a superb stewardship entrusted to us of God; and "it is required in stewards that they be found faithful."

[Sidenote: Over the Vaal at last.]

All that week the Guards continued in hot pursuit of the Boers without so much as once catching sight of them. Repeatedly, however, we scrambled through huge patches of Indian or Kaffir corn, enough, so to say, to feed an army, but all left to rot and perish uncut. It was one of the few evidences which just then greeted us that war was really abroad in the land, and that they were no mere autumn manoeuvres in which we then were taking part. Some of the rightful owners of that corn were probably among our prisoners of war at St Helena, spending their mourning days in vainly wondering how long its hateful unfamiliar waves would keep them captive. Others had, perchance, themselves been garnered by the great Harvester, who ever gathers his fattest sheaves hard by the paths of war.

Occasionally we came, in the course of our march, on a recently-deserted Boer camp, with empty tins strewn all about the place and the embers of camp fires still glowing, but never so much as a penny worth of loot lying on the ground. Either they had little to leave, or else they so utilised the railway in assisting to get their belongings away that in that respect they had the laugh of us continually. This final service rendered, the Boers made haste to prevent the rail being used by us; and so far as time or timidity would permit, they blew up every bridge, every culvert, as soon as their last train had crossed it. Fortunately of the long and beautiful bridge across the Vaal we found only one broad span broken.

About nine o'clock on Sunday morning the troops reached Val Joen's Drift, the terminal station on the Orange Free State Railway. This drift it was that President Kruger had once resolved to close against all traffic in order the more effectually to strangle British trade in the Transvaal. Another mile or two through prodigiously deep sand, brought us to the Vaal River coal mines, with their great heaps of burning cinders or other refuse, which brought vividly to many a north countryman's remembrances kindred scenes in the neighbourhood of busy Bradford and prosperous Sunderland.

Then came the great event to which the laborious travel of the last seven months had steadily led up, the crossing of the Vaal, and the planting of our victorious feet on Transvaal soil. Here we were assured the Boers would make their most determined stand; and the natural strength of the position, together with the urgent necessities of the case, made such an expectation more than merely reasonable. Yet to our delighted wonderment not a single trench, so far as we could see, had been dug, nor a solitary piece of artillery placed in position. From the top of a cinder heap a few farewell mauser bullets were fired at our scouts, and then as usual our foemen fled. Once in a Dutch deserted wayside house I picked up an "English Reader," which strangely opened on Montgomery's familiar lines:—

"There is a land of every land the pride; Belov'd by Heaven o'er all the world beside. Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found?

Art thou a Man, a Patriot? Look around! Oh thou shalt find, howe'er thy footsteps roam, That land thy country, and that spot thy home!"

Boer patriotism we had supposed to be not merely pronounced, but fiercely passionate; and "a Dutchman," said Penn, "is never so dangerous as when he is desperate"; yet when the Guards' Brigade stepped out of the newly-conquered Free State into the about to be conquered Transvaal, scarcely a solitary Dutchman appeared upon the scene to dispute our passage, or to strike one desperate blow for hearth and altar and independence. In successive batches we were peacefully hauled across the river on a pontoon ferry bridge; and as I leaped ashore it was with a glad hurrah upon my lips; a grateful hallelujah in my heart!



CHAPTER VI

A CHAPTER ABOUT CHAPLAINS

Whilst our narrative pauses for a while beside the Vaal which served as a boundary between the two Republics, it may be well to devote one chapter to a further description of the work of the chaplains with whom in those two Republics I was brought into more or less close official relationship. Concerning the chaplains of other Churches whose work I witnessed, it does not behove me to speak in detail; I can but sum up my estimate of their worth by saying concerning each, what was said concerning a certain Old Testament servant of Jehovah:—"He was a faithful man and feared God above many."

Of Wesleyan acting-chaplains, devoting their whole time to work among the troops, and for the most part accompanying them from place to place, there were eight; and to the labours of three of them—the Welsh, the Australian and the Canadian—reference has already been made. A fourth, the Rev. Owen Spencer Watkins, represented the Wesleyan Church in the Omdurman Campaign and was officially present at the memorial service for General Gordon; but in this campaign he was unfortunately shut up in Ladysmith, so that we never met. His story however has been separately told in "Chaplains at the Front." There remain three whom I repeatedly saw, and who reported to me from time to time the progress of their work—viz. the Revs. M. F. Crewdson, T. H. Wainman, and W. C. Burgess, each of whom in few words it will now be my privilege to introduce.

[Sidenote: A Chaplain who found the Base became the Front.]

Mr Crewdson, who had for some years been my colleague in England, at the commencement of the war was compelled to leave Johannesburg, and became a refugee minister at the Cape, where on my arrival he was one of the first to welcome me. Possessed of brilliant preaching abilities and uncontrollably active, a life of semi-indolence soon became to him unendurable; and presently his offer was accepted of service with the troops, but instead of being sent as he desired into the thickest of the fray, he found himself detailed for hospital and other homely duties, at De-Aar Nauwpoort and Norval's Pont. Here for over twelve months he rendered admirable, though to him monotonous, service; when, lo, suddenly the Boers doubled back upon their pursuers, and attempted not unsuccessfully though unfruitfully, a second invasion of Cape Colony. The base became the front, and this vast region of hospitals and supply depots became the scene of very active operations indeed, in which the Guards' Brigade, now recalled from Koomati Poort, took a prominent part. Mr Crewdson found himself at last not where wounds are healed merely, but where wounds are made, and for the moment, being intensely pro-British, found in that fact a kind of grim content.

[Sidenote: Pathetic scenes in Hospital.]

Few chaplains in the course of this campaign have had so extensive an experience in hospital work as Mr Crewdson, and in the course of his correspondence he relates many pathetic incidents that came under his own personal observation. At De-Aar he found a lance-corporal with a fractured jaw and some twenty other slight or serious wounds, all caused by fragments of a single shell. "I was one of seven," he said, "entrenched in a little sangar on a hill. Hundreds of Boers and Blacks came up against us. One of the seven disappeared, four others were killed; so to my one surviving comrade I said, 'Look here, corporal, we'll stick this out till one of us is wounded then the other must look after him.'" Presently that unlucky shell made a victim of this plucky fellow; but a hero it could not make him. He was that already.

A company of the West Yorkshire Mounted Infantry only twenty strong had sustained, in storming a kopje, no less than ten casualties. The lieutenant, shot through the base of the skull, lay in that hospital in utterly helpless, if not hopeless, collapse; and near to him was his sergeant who, while bandaging the wounds of a comrade, was shot through the bridge of the nose, and his eye so damaged it had to be removed; whilst yet another of this group, shot through the shoulder, with characteristic cheerfulness said, "Oh, it's nothing, sir. I'll be at it again in a week." Some of them would say that, brave fellows, if their heads were blown off—or would try to!

Writing from Colesberg at a somewhat later date Mr Crewdson informed me that going the round of hospitals,—where he met representatives from Ceylon, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom,—had filled much of his time during the previous fortnight. "I cannot tell the sweet brave things I have heard from tongues that had almost lost their power to speak. One was a Canadian lad, who had passed through his course as a student for the ministry, and being refused as a chaplain had volunteered as a trooper, and when the chaplain tenderly asked, 'How are you, old man?' he received in a kind of gasp this reply: 'Trusting Jesus!' Another, now nearly convalescent, said, 'I have been a Christian for twenty years, but the weeks spent in hospital have taught me more of God, and of the wonders of His grace, than years of health.' His eyes glistened and then dimmed as with faltering voice he added, 'I want to say, that it was good for me that I was afflicted.'"

[Sidenote: A battlefield scene no less pathetic.]

In the course of these incessant hospital rounds Mr Crewdson found an Australian whose leg had been shattered by an explosive bullet and who told him this strange tale. When thus wounded he fell between two rocks and found himself unable to move, but while lying there a young well-dressed Boer discovered him, and with a perfect English accent said, "Are you much hurt, old fellow?" The Australian, suspecting treachery, turned white and trembled in spite of the stranger's kindly tone.

"Oh, don't be afraid of me, you are hurt enough already. Shall I get you some water?" was the instant Boer rejoinder to the Australian's signs of suspicion. The water was soon produced; and next there came forth from the pocket of that young Boer a couple of peaches, which were offered to the sufferer, and thankfully accepted.

"You must be faint with this fierce sun beating on you," said this strange foeman; and thereupon he sat upon a rock for over an hour in such a position that his shadow sheltered the wounded man, and surely, as in Peter's story, that shadow must have had grace and healing in it. Ultimately an ambulance arrived, and this chivalrous Transvaaler crowned the helpfulness of that eventful hour by tenderly lifting the crippled Australian on to a stretcher, with an expression of hope that he would soon be well again.

At the close of this unnatural conflict it is our best consolation to be divinely assured that the brotherliness which thus presented peaches to a wounded foe will ultimately triumph over the bitterness which winged the explosive bullet that well-nigh killed him.

[Sidenote: Look on this picture—and on that.]

While it is undeniable that cases of chivalrous courtesy such as this occurred repeatedly in the course of the campaign, it is equally undeniable that the Boers sometimes deliberately set aside all the usages of civilized war. Mr Crewdson, for instance, says that after the Slingersfontein fight he met at least a dozen men who declared that the Boers drove up the hill in front of them hundreds of armed Kaffirs, and then themselves crept up on hands and knees under cover of this living moving wall. Such strategy is exceedingly slim; but they who make use of semi-savages must themselves for the time being be accounted near akin to them. One word from the Queen would have sufficed to let loose on the Boers the slaughterous fury of almost all native South Africa, but had that word been spoken there could have been found no forgiveness for it in this life or in the life to come. Yet Slingersfontein was not the only sad instance of this sort, for Sir Redvers Buller in his official report concerning Vaalkrantz solemnly declares that then also there were armed Kaffirs with the Boer forces, and that there also the Red flag was abominably abused, for he himself and his Staff saw portions of artillery conveyed by the Boers to a given position in an ambulance flying the Geneva flag. The loss of honour is ever out of all proportion to the help such treachery affords.

[Sidenote: A third class Chaplain who proved a first-rate Chaplain.]

It was at Waterval Boven I first met my assistant-chaplain, the Rev. T. H. Wainman, and found him all that eulogising reports had proclaimed him to be. Seventeen years ago he accompanied the Bechuanaland Expedition under Sir Charles Warren, and then acquitted himself so worthily that the Wesleyan Army and Navy Committee at once turned to him in this new hour of need, resting assured that in him they had a workman that maketh not ashamed. At the time he received the cable calling him to this task he was a refugee minister from Johannesburg, residing for a while near Durban. There he left his family and at once hurried to report himself in Chieveley Camp, where a singular incident befell him.

[Sidenote: Running in the wrong man.]

A few hours before his arrival an official notice was issued that a Boer spy in khaki was known to be lurking in the camp, and all concerned were requested to keep a sharp look-out with a view to speedy arrest. Mr Wainman's appearance singularly tallied with the published portraiture of the aforesaid spy, and all the more because after his long journey he by no means appeared parson-like. He was just then as rough looking as any prowling Boer might be supposed to be. When, therefore, he was challenged by the sentinel as he approached the camp, and to the sentinel's surprise gave the right password, he was nevertheless told that he must consider himself a prisoner, and was accordingly marched off to the guard-room for safe keeping and further enquiry. It was a strange commencement for his new chaplaincy. More than one of our chaplains has been taken prisoner by the Boers, but he alone could claim the distinction of being made a prisoner of war, even for an hour, by his own people, till a yet more painful experience of the same type befell Mr Burgess; nor did ill-fortune fail to follow him for some time to come. He was attached to a battalion where chaplains were by no means beloved for their own sake; and though one of the most winsome of men, he was made to feel in many ways that his presence was unwelcome.

[Sidenote: A Wainman who was a real waggoner.]

Presently, however, there came an opportunity which he so skilfully used as to become the hero of the hour, and in the end one of the most popular men in the whole Brigade. When on the trek one of the transport waggons stuck fast hopelessly in an ugly drift, and no amount of whip-leather or lung-power sufficed to move it. One waggon thus made a fixture blocks the whole cavalcade, and is, therefore, a most serious obstruction. But Mr Wainman had not become an old colonist without learning a few things characteristic of colonial life, including the handling of an ox team. He therefore volunteered to end the deadlock, and in sheer desperation the Padre's offer was, however dubiously, accepted. So off came his tunic; this small thing was straightened, that small thing cleared out of the way, then next he cleared his throat, and instead of hurling at those staggering oxen English oaths or Kaffir curses, spoke to them in tones soothing and familiar as their own mother tongue. Some one at last had appeared upon the scene that understood them, or that they could understand. Then followed a long pull, a strong pull, a pull altogether, and lo as by magic the impossible came to pass. The waggon was out of the drift! "Brave padre," everybody cried. His name means "waggoner," and a right good waggoner he that day proved to be. This skilful compliance with one of the requirements of the Mosaic laws helped him immensely in the preaching of the Gospel. He became all the more powerful as a minister because so popular as a man. In many ways his mature local knowledge enabled him to become so exceptionally useful that he received promotion from a fourth to a third class acting chaplaincy, and the very officers who at first deemed his presence an infliction combined to present him with a handsome cigarette case in token of uttermost goodwill. You can't tell what even a chaplain is capable of till you give him a chance.

[Sidenote: Three bedfellows in a barn.]

When Mr Wainman first reached his appointed quarters, the wounded were being brought in by hundreds from the Colenso fight; later on he climbed to the summit of Spion Kop, "The Spying Mountain," to search for the wounded, and to bury the dead that fell victims to the fatal mischance that having captured, then surrendered that ever famous hill; and at night he slept in a barn with a Catholic priest lying on one side of him and an Anglican chaplain on the other—a delightful forecasting that of the time when the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The Christian Catholicity to which this campaign has given rise is one of its redeeming features.

While the Rev. Owen Spencer Watkins, the Wesleyan chaplain from Crete remained shut up in Ladysmith, Mr Wainman remained with the relieving force, ultimately accompanied General Buller into the Transvaal, where I frequently met him, and finally, on the approaching conclusion of the war, resumed charge, like Mr Crewdson, of his civilian church in Johannesburg. No man learns to be a soldier by merely watching the troops march past at a royal review; neither did Mr Wainman acquire his rare gifts for such rough yet heroic service while sitting in an easy chair. He endured hardness, as every man must who would serve his generation well according to the will of God.

[Sidenote: A fourth-class Chaplain that was also a first-rate Chaplain.]

The Rev. W. C. Burgess was a refugee minister from Lindley, in the Orange River Colony, and like Mr Wainman, was early chosen for service among the troops, joining General Gatacre's force just after the lamentable disaster at Stormberg. He was attached to the "Derbys," and found among them a goodly number of godly men, as in all the battalions and batteries that constituted that unfortunate column. Some of these were Christian witnesses of long standing, including no less than five Wesleyan lay preachers, and some were newly-won converts. Hence, at the close of Mr Burgess's very first voluntary service, one khaki man said to him, "I gave my heart to the Lord last Sunday on the line of march before we met the enemy"; while many more, though not perhaps walking in the clear shining of the light of God's countenance, yet spoke freely of their religious upbringing and relationships. It was possibly one such who, at the close of a little week-night service, where nearly all the men were drenched with recent rain, suggested the singing of "Love divine, all loves excelling." The character of that man's upbringing it is not difficult to divine. Another said, "I have a wife and four children who are praying for me"; while yet another added, "For me an aged mother prays." It would be strange indeed if such confessors were not themselves praying men. They were to be found by hundreds, probably by thousands, among the troops sent to South Africa. Never was an army so prayed for since the world began; and seldom, if ever, has an army contained so many who themselves were praying men.

[Sidenote: A Parson Prisoner in the hands of the Boers.]

Nearly four months after the Stormberg tragedy, but only four days after that at Sanna's Post, Mr Burgess found himself, with three companies of the Irish Rifles and two of the Northumberland Fusiliers, cooped up on a kopje about three miles long not far from Reddersburg. With no water within reach, with no guns, and an almost exhausted store of rifle ammunition, this small detachment found itself indeed in evil plight when De Wet's commando of 3200 men put a girdle of rifle barrels around it, and then began a merciless cannonade with five guns. That cannonade indeed was merciless far beyond what the rules of modern war permit, for it seemed to be directed, if not mainly, certainly most effectually, on the ambulances and hospital tents, over which the Red Cross flag floated in vain. In the vivid description of the fight which Mr Burgess sent to me, he says that several of the ambulance mules were killed or badly wounded, and it was a marvel only one of the ambulance men was hit, for in one of their tents were four bullet holes, and a similar number in the Red Cross flag itself. Some of the occupants of the hospital were Boer prisoners, some were defenceless natives, so all set to work to throw up trenches for the protection of these non-combatants, and among the diggers and delvers was the Wesleyan chaplain with coat thrown off, and plying pick like one to the manner born. To that task he stuck till midnight, and oh, that I had been there to see! A chaplain thus turning himself into a navvy is probably no breach of the Geneva Convention, but all the same it is by no means an everyday occurrence; and those Boer prisoners would think none the worse of that Wesleyan predikant's prayers after watching the work, on their behalf, of that predikant's pick.

The defence of Reddersburg was one of the least heroic in the whole record of the campaign, and the troops early next morning surrendered, not to resistless skill or rifle fire on the part of the Boers, but to the cravings of overmastering thirst. A relieving force was close at hand when they ran up the horrid white flag, and had they been aware of that fact we may be sure no surrender would have taken place. It requires scant genius to be wise after the event, and still scantier courage to denounce as lacking in courage this surrender of 500 to a force six times as large. That was on April 4th, and among those taken captive by De Wet was the Wesleyan chaplain. His horse, his kit, and all his belongings at the same time changed hands, and though he was solemnly assured all would be restored to him, that promise still awaits redemption.

[Sidenote: Caring for the Wounded.]

Mr Burgess, though stripped of all he possessed, except what he wore, received De Wet's permission to search for the wounded as well as to bury the dead; and in one of his letters to me he tells of one mortally wounded whom he thus found, and who, in reply to the query, "Do you know Jesus?" replied, "I'm trusting Jesus as my Saviour"; then recognising Mr Burgess as his chaplain, he added, "Pray for me!" so, amid onlooking stretcher-bearers and mounted Boers, the dying lad was commended to the eternal keeping of his Saviour. It is this element which has introduced itself into modern warfare which will presently make war impossible, except between wild beasts or wilder savages. Prayer on the battlefield, and the use on the same spot of explosive bullets, is too incongruous to have in it the element of perpetuity.

The number of soldiers that thus die praying, or being prayed for, may be comparatively small; but even the unsaintly soldier, when wounded, often displays a stoicism that has in it an undertone of Christian endurance. A lad of the Connaughts at Colenso, whom a bullet had horribly crippled in both legs, shouted with defiant cheerfulness to his comrades—"Bring me a tin whistle and I will play you any tune you like"; and a naval athlete at Ladysmith, when a shell carried away one of his legs and his other foot, simply sighed, "There's an end of my cricket." Pious readers would doubtless in all such cases much prefer some pious reference to Christ and His Cross in place of the tin whistle and cricket; but even here is evidence of the grit that has helped to make England great, and it by no means follows that saving grace also is not there. The most vigorous piety is not always the most vocal.

After nearly four and twenty hours of terrific pelting by shot and shell, Mr Burgess tells me our total loss was only ten killed and thirty-five wounded. Not one in ten was hit; and so again was illustrated the comparative harmlessness of either Mauser or machine-gun fire against men fairly well sheltered. This war thus witnessed a strange anomaly. It used the deadliest of all weapons, and produced with them a percentage of deaths unexampled in its smallness.

[Sidenote: How the Chaplain's own tent was bullet-riddled.]

Late on in the campaign Mr Burgess was moved, not to his own delight, from near Belfast to Germiston, but was speedily reconciled to the change by the receipt of the following letter from an officer of the Royal Berks:—

"Truly you are a lucky man to have left Wonderfontein on Monday; and it may be that it saved your life, for the same night we were attacked. It was a very misty night; but we all went to bed as usual, and at midnight I was awakened by heavy rifle fire. Almost immediately the bugle sounded the alarm, and everybody ran for their posts like hares. From where I was it sounded as if the Boers had really got into camp; but after two hours of very heavy firing they retired. Yesterday morning, when I went over the ground, the first thing I saw was six or eight bullet holes through your tent; and one end of our mess had twenty-three bullet marks in it. Nooitgedacht, Pan and Dalmanutha were all attacked the same night at exactly the same hour, causing us a few casualties at each place."

It may perchance be for our good we are sometimes sent away from places where we fain would tarry.

[Sidenote: A sample set of Sunday Services.]

The following typical extract is taken from Mr Burgess's Diary:—

"Sunday, January 20th.—Rode out to Fort Dublin for church parade at 9 A.M. Held parade in town church at 11. Then rode out to surrendered burghers' laager and held service in Dutch, fully a hundred being present. Conducted service for children in town church at 3.30 P.M., and at 4.30 rode out to Hands Up Dorp; two hundred present and ten baptisms. Managed to ride back to town just in time for the evening service in the church at 6.30, which was well attended."

"Oh, day of rest and gladness!"

As the war was nearing its close, I sent Mr Burgess to labour along the blockhouse lines of communication, which have Bloemfontein for their centre. Here the authorities granted to him the use of a church railway van, in which he travelled almost ceaselessly between Brandfort and Norval's Pont, or beyond; and thus he too for a while became chaplain to part of the Guards' Brigade.



CHAPTER VII

THE HELPFUL WORK OF THE OFFICIATING CLERGY

In addition to the eight Acting Chaplains referred to in previous chapters, some forty-five or fifty Wesleyan ministers were appointed "Officiating Clergymen." These, while still discharging, so far as circumstances might permit, their ordinary civilian duties, were formally authorised to minister to the troops residing for a while in the neighbourhood of their church. Many of the local Anglican clergy were similarly employed, and supplemented the labours of the commissioned and acting Anglican chaplains sent out from England. Their local influence and local knowledge enabled them to render invaluable service, and great was their zeal in so doing. While the regular chaplains who came with the troops as a rule went with the troops, these fixtures in the great King's service were able not only to make arrangements for religious worship, but for almost every imaginable kind of ministry for the welfare of the men. They were often the Army Chaplain's right hand and in some cases his left hand too. It would be a grievous wrong, therefore to make no reference to what they attempted for God and the Empire, though it is impossible here to do more than hurriedly refer to a few typical cases that in due course were officially reported to me.

[Sidenote: At Cape Town and Wynberg.]

The very day the Guards landed at Cape Town I was introduced to the Rev. B. E. Elderkin, who in conjunction with the Congregationalists at Seapoint made generous provision for the social enjoyment and spiritual profiting of the troops. I was also that same day taken to the Wynberg Hospital by the Rev. R. Jenkin, who, on alternate Sundays with the Presbyterian chaplain, conducted religious services there for the convalescents, and ministered in many ways to the sick and wounded, of whom there were sometimes as many as 2000 in actual residence. Among them Mr Jenkin could not fail to discover many cases of peculiar interest; and concerning one, a private of the Essex, he has supplied the following particulars:—

[Sidenote: Saved from drowning to sink in hospital.]

This lad was badly wounded in the thigh on Sunday, March 11th, somewhere not far from Paardeberg, but he seems to have got so far into the Boer lines that our own shells fell around him and our own stretcher-bearers never reached him; so he lay all night, his wound undressed, and without one drink of water. Next day a mounted Boer caught sight of him, got off his horse, gave him a drink, and then passed on. On Wednesday, in sheer desperation, he wriggled to the river to get a drink, but in his feebleness fell in; was caught by the branch of a tree, and for more hours than seem credible thus hung, half in the water, half out, before he rallied sufficient strength to crawl out and up the bank. For five days he thus remained without food, and his festering wound unbandaged. On the Friday, when Lord Roberts offered to exchange six wounded prisoners, the Boers espied at last this useful hostage, took him to their laager, put a rough bandage round his thigh, and sent him into the British camp. He was still alive, full of hope, when Wynberg Hospital was reached, and responsive to all Mr Jenkin said concerning the mercy of God in Christ; but the long delay in dealing with his case rendered an operation necessary. There was no strength left with which to rally—a sudden collapse, and he was gone to meet his God. Fifteen days after he fell he was laid to rest, with full military honours, in the Wesleyan Cemetery at Wynberg. It is well that all fatal cases are not of that fearful type!

Whilst the Guards were making their way to the Transvaal, the Rev. W. Meara, a refugee Wesleyan minister from Barberton, was doing altogether excellent work among the troops at East London; and has since gone back to Barberton as officiating clergyman to the troops there, where later on in 1902 I had the opportunity of personally noting what his zeal hath accomplished for our men.

[Sidenote: A pleasant surprise.]

Concerning his army work while away from Barberton, Mr Meara sent me the following satisfactory report:—

"During the early part of my chaplaincy there were large numbers of men in camp, and we held open-air services with blessed results. The services were largely attended and much appreciated. We then established a temporary Soldiers' Home; and after a fortnight the Scripture Reader of the Northumberland Fusiliers handed me over the responsibility, as he was proceeding with his regiment to the front. The Home was on the camp ground, and so was within easy reach of the men, who availed themselves fully of its advantages. We provided mineral waters at cost prices, and eatables, tobacco, etc., and for some weeks when there was a great rush of men in camp upwards of L120 a week was taken. We supplied ink, pens, notepaper, etc., free, and we had all kinds of papers in the Reading Room. We agreed that any profits should be sent to the Soldiers' Widows and Orphans Fund, and so before I left East London we sent the sum of L43 to Sir A. Milner for the fund above referred to. Besides the Soldiers' Home, we started a Soldiers' 'Social Evening' on Wednesdays in Wesley Hall, which was largely patronised by the men. I have found the officers without a single exception ready to further my work in every way. I had also a good deal of hospital work, which to me was full of pathetic interest. I have had the joy of harvest in some instances, for some of the men have been led to Christ. When I purposed leaving, the circuit officials generously took the Town Hall for two nights at a cost of L14 for my Farewell Service on Sunday night, and the Farewell Social on Tuesday. The hall was packed with about 1500 people on the Sunday. We had a grand number of soldiers. Then on the Tuesday in the same hall there were about 1000 people who sat down to tea, including from 400 to 500 soldiers. When tea was over I was to my surprise presented with a purse of sovereigns from the circuit, and to my still greater astonishment Col. Long of the Somerset Light Infantry came on the platform, and spoke most appreciatively of my work amongst the men, and their great regret at my departure. When he had finished he called upon Sergt.-Master-Tailor Syer to make a presentation to me on behalf of the men. It was a beautiful walking-stick with a massive silver ferrule suitably inscribed, and a very fine case of razors. Then every soldier in the hall rose to his feet and gave the departing chaplain three cheers. It was really one of the proudest moments in my life."

[Sidenote: The Soldiers' Reception Committee.]

Of the Durban Soldiers' Reception Committee the chairman was the Rev. G. Lowe, also a Transvaal refugee Wesleyan minister; and in a letter from him now lying on my table he states that he was sometimes on the landing jetty for fifteen hours at a stretch. He adds that he was the first to begin this work of welcoming the troops on landing at Durban, and obtained the permits to take in a few friends within the barriers for the distribution of fruit, tobacco and bread to the soldiers, on the purchase of which nearly L300 was expended. Twenty-five thousand troops were thus met; over L2000 sent home to the friends of the soldiers; more than 8000 letters announcing the safe arrivals of the men were dispatched, many hundreds of them being written for the men by various members of the committee. This work was most highly appreciated by General Buller; and Colonel Riddell of the 3rd K.R. Rifles left in Mr Lowe's hands L208, 18s. belonging to the men of his regiment to be sent to the soldiers' relatives. Then, only a few days before his death at Spion Kop, he wrote expressing his personal thanks for the excellent work thus done on behalf of his own and other battalions.

[Sidenote: The other way about.]

About the same time that the Guards reached the Vaal their comrades on the right, under General Ian Hamilton, arrived at Heilbron, and here the Rev. R. Matterson at once opened his house and his heart to welcome them. In face of the dire difficulty of dealing satisfactorily with the sick and wounded in so inaccessible a village, Mr and Mrs Matterson received into their own home two enteric patients belonging to the Ceylon Mounted Infantry, one of them being a son of the Wesleyan minister at Colombo; but here, as in so many another place, while the civilians did what they could for the soldiers, the soldiers in their turn did what they could for the civilians. At Krugersdorp, so our Welsh chaplain told me, he arranged for a crowded military concert, which cleared L35 for the destitute poor of the town, mostly Dutch. So here at Heilbron the troops, fresh from the fray, and on their way to further furious conflicts, actually provided an open-air concert for the benefit of a local church charity in the very neighbourhood, and among the very people they were in the very act of conquering. It is a topsy-turvy world that war begets: but most of all this war, in which while the kopjes welcomed us with lavish supplies of explosive bullets, the towns and villages welcomed us with proffered fruit and the flaunting of British flags; the troops, on the other hand, seizing every chance of entertaining friends and foes alike with instrumental music, comic, sentimental, and patriotic songs. Even on the warpath, tragedy and comedy seem as inseparable as the Siamese twins; in proof whereof here follows the programme of one such soldierly effort to aid a local church charity in the Orange Free State:—

POPULAR PROMENADE CONCERT TO BE HELD ON SATURDAY, 22nd DECEMBER 1900, at 4.45 P.M.

By the kind permission of Lieut.-Col. the Hon. A. E. DALZELL and the Officers of the 1st Oxfordshire Light Infantry.

PROGRAMME.

1. GRAND MARCH—"Princess Victoria" O'Keefe BAND. 2. SONG Serg. COX, 1st O.L.I. 3. COON SONG Trooper GREENWOOD, I.Y. 4. OVERTURE—"Norma" Bellini BAND. 5. SENTIMENTAL SONG Corp. ASHLY, 1st O.L.I. 6. RECITATION Corp. SAMPSON, R.G.A. 7. CORNET SOLO—"My Pretty Jane" Bishop Band-Serg. BROOME. 8. SONG Mr J. ILSLEY. 9. DESCRIPTIVE SONG Corporal COOKE, 1st O.L.I. 10. SELECTION—"The Belle of New York" Kerker BAND. 11. SONG Gunner HIGGINBOTHAM, R.G.A. 12. SONG Gunner M'GINTZ, R.G.A. 13. VALSE—"Mia Cara" Bucalossi BAND. 14. PATRIOTIC SONG Serg. GEAR, 1st O.L.I. 15. COMIC SONG Corporal CROWLY, 1st O.L.I. 16. GALOP—"En Route" Clarke BAND.

"GOD SAVE THE QUEEN."

Admission to Ground—ONE SHILLING. Refreshments at reasonable prices.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Our near Kinship to the Boers.]

Of another important fact which grew upon us later on, we gained our first glimpse during these early days. The Boers we found were in many respects startlingly near akin to us. They sprang originally from the same liberty-loving stock as ourselves. Hosts of them spoke correct and fluent English, while not a few of them were actually of English parentage. Moreover, the Hollanders and the English have so freely intermarried in South Africa that at one time it was fondly hoped the cradle rather than the rifle would finally settle our racial controversies. They are haunted by the same insatiable earth hunger as ourselves, and hence unceasingly persisted in violating the Conventions which forbade all further extension of Transvaal territory. As a people they are more narrowly Protestant than even we have ever been. The Doppers, of whom the President was chief, are Ultra-Puritans; and they would suffer none but members of a Protestant Church to have any vote or voice in their municipal or national affairs. Jews and Roman Catholics as such were absolutely disfranchised by them; and their singing, which later on we often heard, by its droning heaviness would have delighted the hearts of those Highland crofters who, at Aldershot, said they could not away with the jingling songs of Sankey. "Gie us the Psalms of David," they cried. The Dutch Reformed Church and the Presbyterian Church of Scotland are nearer akin than cousins; and when after Magersfontein our Presbyterian chaplain crossed over into the Boer lines to seek out and bury the dead, he was heartily hailed as a Reformed minister, was treated with as much courtesy as though he had been one of their own predikants, and as the result was so favourably impressed that an imaginative mind might easily fancy him saying to Cronje, "Almost thou persuadest me to become a Boer!"