[Sidenote: Further fighting.]

Early in July, the commander-in-chief had accumulated sufficient supplies, and secured sufficient remounts, to make a further advance possible. On the 7th, the Boers were pushed back by Hutton to Bronkers Spruit, where as the sequel of the Diamond Hill fight on June 12th, the Australians had surprised and riddled a Boer laager. While however Botha was thus sullenly retreating eastward, he secretly despatched a strong detachment round our left wing to the north-west of Pretoria under the leadership of Delarey, who on the 11th flung himself like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky on a weak post at Nitral's Nek, and there captured two guns with 200 prisoners. On July 16th, Botha himself once more attacked our forces, but was again driven off by Generals Pole Carew and Hutton; and the surrender on the 29th of General Prinsloo, with over 4000 Boers and three guns in the Orange River Colony, secured our remoter lines of communication from a very formidable menace, so clearing the course for another onward move.

[Sidenote: Touch not, taste not, handle not.]

On Tuesday, July 24th, the Guards' Brigade said good-bye to Donkerhook, where their camp had become a fixture since the fight on Diamond Hill, and where their conduct once more won my warmest admiration. In the very midst of that camp, in which so many thousands of men tarried so long, were sundry farmhouses, and Kaffir homes, the occupants of which were never molested from first to last, nor any of their belongings touched, except as the result of a perfectly voluntary sale and purchase. Indeed, the identic day we left, turkeys, geese, ducks, and other "small deer," were still wandering round their native haunts, none daring to make them afraid. The owners had declined to sell; and our ever hungry men had honourably refrained from laying unpermitted hands on these greatly enjoyable dainties. Such honesty in a hostile land, in relation to the property of a hostile peasantry, made me marvel; and still more when maintained in places where unmistakable treachery had been practised as in this identic neighbourhood.

At Wolmaran's pleasant country house, close beside our camp, the white flag flew, and there our general took up his abode. Some members of this well-known family were still out on commando, but those that remained at home eagerly surrendered all arms, were profuse in professions of friendliness, and were duly pledged to formal neutrality. But a recent Transvaal law had reduced the wages of all Kaffirs from about twenty shillings to a uniform five shillings a week, and Wolmaran's unpaid or ill-paid negroes revenged themselves by revealing their master's secrets. Partly as the result of hints thus obtained, we found hidden in his garden over thirty rifles, the barrel of a Maxim gun, and about L10,000 in gold—presumably Government money; also a splendid supply of provisions was discovered—presumably Government stores; and in the family cemetery there was dug up a quantity of dynamite. The gentleman who thus gave up his arms, and in this fashion kept his oath, at once became our prisoner, but his house and its contents remained untouched. And when we left, some of his barndoor fowls were still there to see us off!

This is a notable but typical illustration of the way in which, with unwise leniency, surrendered burghers were allowed access to our camps, and recompensed our reliance on their honour by revealing our secrets to our foes, and, when they dared, unearthing their buried arms to level them once more at our too confiding troops.

[Sidenote: More treachery and still more.]

A march of fifteen or eighteen miles brought us to Bronkhorst Spruit, the scene of a dastardly massacre in December 1880, of the men of the Connaught Rangers, who, ere yet there was any declaration of war, were marching with their wives and children from Lydenburg to Pretoria. I stood bareheaded beside one of the mounds that hide their bones, close to the roadside where they fell, and bethought me of the strange Providence through which, nearly twenty years after the event, there was now marching past those very graves a vast avenging army on its way to those same mountain fastnesses whence our murdered comrades of the long ago set out on their fatal journey. Sowing and reaping are often far apart; but there is no sundering them!

At our mess dinner that same evening the conversation turned to the kindred, but still more shameful deed recently devised, though happily in vain, at Johannesburg. There Cordua had indeed been out-Corduad by a conspiracy to assassinate in cold blood all the military officers attending some sports about to be held under military patronage at the racecourse. About eighty of the conspirators were captured in the very act of completing their plans. Nearly three hundred more were said to be implicated, and being chiefly of foreign extraction were quietly sent out of the country. It was the biggest thing in plots, and the wildest, that recent years have seen outside Russia.

[Sidenote: The root of the matter.]

One often wonders how it comes to pass that people so demonstratively religious prove in so many cases conspicuously devoid of truth and honour and common honesty; but various explanations, each setting forth some partial contributory cause, may easily be conceived.

As among Britons, so among Boers, there are, as a matter of course, varying degrees of loyalty to the moral law, and of sincerity in religious profession. It is therefore manifestly unfair to condemn a whole people because of individual immoralities. The outrageous deeds just described may well have been in large part the work of "lewd fellows of the baser sort," a sort of which the Transvaal has unfortunately no monopoly, and of which the better type of Boer scorns to become the apologist. Moreover, Johannesburg drew to itself with a rush a huge number not only of honourable adventurers, but also of wastrels, representing every class and clime under heaven. Many of these were commandeered or volunteered for service on the Boer side when war broke out, and by their lawlessnesses proved almost as great a terror to their friends as to their foes. Young Cordua was of foreign birth, and there were few genuine Boers among the Johannesburg conspirators; but it was the Transvaal they blindly sought to serve; and so on the shoulders of the whole Transvaal community is laid, none too justly, the entire blame for such mistakes.

Then too, however mistakenly, I cannot but think the peculiar type of piety cherished by the Boers is largely responsible for the moral obliquity of which, justly or unjustly, I heard complaints continually from those who professed to know them well. These sons of the Huguenots and of the Dutch refugees who fled from the persecuting zeal of Alva have all sprung from an exceptionally religious stock, and with dogged conservatism still cling to the rigid traditions and narrow beliefs of a bygone age. The country-bred Boer resembles not remotely our own Puritans and Covenanters. He and his are God's Elect, and the Elect of the Lord have ever seemed prone to take liberties with the law of the Lord. They deem themselves a chosen race to whom a new Canaan has been divinely given, and in defence of whom Jehovah Himself is bound to fight. At the commencement of the campaign it was common talk that "they had commandeered the Almighty." Their piety and practice are largely modelled on Old Testament lines. They used God's name and quoted Scripture ad nauseam even in State correspondence. Their President was also their High Priest; yet in business transactions they were reputed to be as slim as Jacob in his dealings with Laban; and a lack of loyalty to the exact truth, some of their own clergy say, had become almost a national characteristic. "The bond-slave of my mere word I will never be" has often been quoted as a Boer proverb; and those that had lived long in the land assured me that proverb and practice too commonly keep company.

It is a perilous thing for men or nations to deem themselves in any exclusive sense Heaven's favourites. Such conceptions do not minister to heavenly-mindedness, or beget lives of ethic beauty. The ancient Hebrews, blinded by this very belief, became "worse than the heathen," and herein lies a solemn warning alike for the beaten Boer and the boastful Briton! There is no true religion where there is no all round righteousness; and wheresoever that is wanting the wrath of God cannot but abide.

[Sidenote: A tight fit.]

Our next day's march ended just as a heavy thunderstorm with still heavier rain broke upon us; so the Grenadier officers pitched their mess as close as they could get to the sheltering wall of a decidedly stenchful Kaffir cottage. There we stood in the drenching wet and ate our evening meal, which was lunch and dinner in one. In that one-roomed cottage, with a smoking fire on the floor and a heap of mealie corn-cobs in the corner, there slept that night two Kaffir men, one Kaffir woman, four Kaffir piccaninnies, four West Australian officers, one officer of the Guards on the corn-cobs, a quantity of live poultry, and a dead goat; its sleep, of course, being that from which there is no awaking. That they were not all stifled before morning is astonishing, but the fact remains that the goat alone failed to greet the dawn.

Nearly every man in the camp was that night soaked to the skin, and for once the Guards made no attempt to sing at or to sing down the storm. As they apologetically explained at breakfast time, they were really "too down on their luck" to try. But with my usual good fortune I managed to pass the night absolutely dry, and that too without borrowing a corner of that horrid Kaffir cottage. The next night found us at Brugspruit, close to a colliery, where we stayed a considerable while, and managed to house ourselves in comparative comfort, that gradually became near akin to luxury. Here the junior officers courteously assisted me to shovel up an earthen shelter, with a sheet of corrugated iron for a roof, and thus protected I envied no millionaire his marble halls, though my blankets were sometimes wet with evening dew, and the ground white with morning frost.

[Sidenote: Obstructives on the Rail.]

During the long halt of the Grenadiers at Brugspruit, the Scots Guards remained at Balmoral, moving thence to Middelburg, and one of the Coldstream battalions was detailed to guard the Oliphant River, station, and bridge, which I crossed when on my way to Middelburg to conduct a Sunday parade service there; but at the river station the train tarried too brief a while and the battalion was too completely hidden on the far side of a rough kopje to permit my gaining even a passing glance of their camp. In South Africa full often the so-called sheep and their appointed shepherd found themselves thus unwittingly forbidden to see each others' face.

A little later on we found the line in possession, not of the Boers, but of a big drove of horses which seemed bent on proving that they could outdo even the Boers themselves in the rapidity of their retreat before an advancing foe. Mile after mile they galloped, but mile after mile they kept to the track, just in front of our engine, which whistled piercingly and let off steam as though in frantic anger. Presently we slowed down almost to a walking pace, for we had no wish to spill the blood or crush the bones of even obstructive horses. But as we slowed our pace they provokingly slackened theirs, and when once more we put on steam they did the same. So in sheer desperation our guard dismounted and ran himself completely out of breath, while he pelted the nearest of the drove with stones, and sought to scare it with flourishes of his official cap. But that horse behaved like a dull-headed ass, and cared no more for the waving of official caps than for the wild screaming of our steam whistle. We were losing time horribly fast because our pace was thus made so horribly slow. Finally a pilot engine came down from Middelburg to ascertain what had become of our long belated train, and this unlooked for movement from the rear fortunately proved too much for the nerves of even such determined obstructionists. It scared them as effectually as a flanking movement scared the Boers. They broke in terror from the line and, Boerlike, vanished.

[Sidenote: Middelburg and the Doppers.]

Middelburg we found to be a thriving village, which will probably grow into an important town when the mineral wealth of the district is in due time developed. At present the principal building is as usual the Dutch Reformed Church, the pastor of which had forsaken the female portion of his flock to follow the fortunes of the fighting section. There are also two good-sized Dopper churches, which habitually remain void and empty all the year round, except on one Sunday in each quarter, when the farmer folk come from near and far to hold a fair, and to celebrate the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper—"The night meal," as they appropriately call it. These are the four great events of the Dopper year, and of this tiny city's business life.

The Dopper is the ultra Boer of South Africa, the Puritan of Puritans, the Covenanter of Covenanters, whose religious creed and conduct are compacted of manifold rigidities, and who would deem it as unpardonable a sin to shave off his beard, as it would have been for an early Methodist preacher to wear one. Formerly Doppers and Methodists both piously combed their hair over their foreheads, and clipped it in a straight line just above the eyebrows. But alas! in this as in many other directions, Methodists and Doppers have alike become "subject to vanity." In these degenerate days "the fringe" has flitted from the masculine to the feminine brow; and now that it is "crinkled" no longer claims to be a badge of superior sanctity. In one of these Dopper churches the Rev. W. Frost long conducted Wesleyan services, the crowding troops having made our own church far too small.

The other, on the occasion of my first visit, was occupied by Canon Knox Little, who there conducted the Anglican parade service, and preached with great fervour from the very pulpit whence, some months before, President Kruger had delivered a discourse presumably of a decidedly different type. But the Wesleyan church immediately adjoining the camping ground of the 2nd Coldstream battalion, which I had the privilege that day of reopening, was at a later period used for a brief while by the Roman Catholic chaplains. War is a strange revolutionist if not always a reformer.

[Sidenote: August Bank Holiday.]

The next day, which was August Bank Holiday, I returned in safety to Brugspruit, but only to discover that in those parts even railway travelling had become a thing of deadly peril. I there saw two trains just arrived from Pretoria, the trucks filled with remount horses and cavalry men on their way to join General French's force. The first engine bore three bullet holes in its encasing water tank, holes which the driver had hastily plugged with wood, so preventing the loss of all his water and the fatal stoppage of the train. Several of the trucks were riddled with bullet-holes, and in one I saw a dead horse, shot, lying under the feet of its comrades; while in another truck, splashed with great clots of blood, similarly lay yet another horse almost dead. Several more were wounded but still remained upon their feet, and still had before them a journey of many miles ere their wounds could receive attention, or the living be severed from the dead. For horses this has been a specially fagging and fatal war, and for them there are no well-earned medals!

The second engine bore kindred bullet holes in its water tank. A shot had smashed the glass in the window of the break-van in which some officers were travelling; and in one of the trucks I was shown a hole in the thick timber made by a bullet, which, after passing through two inches of wood, had pierced a lancer's breast and killed him, besides shattering the wrist of yet another lancer. Those trains had just been fired at by a mounted Boer patrol which had caught our men literally napping. Most of them were lying fast asleep in the bottom of the trucks, with their unloaded carbines beside or under them, so that not a solitary reply shot was fired as the trains sped past the point of peril.

After repeated disasters of this kind had occurred, orders were issued forbidding men to travel in such careless and unguarded fashion; while all journeying that was not indispensible was peremptorily stopped! My own contemplated visit to Pretoria next day was consequently postponed till there came some more urgent call or some more convenient season.

On this part of the line the troops had often to be their own stokers and drivers, with the result that sniping Boers were not the only peril a passenger had to fear. From Dalmanutha in those delightsome days a train was due to start as usual with one engine behind and one in front. The driver of the leading engine blew his whistle and opened his regulator. The driver of the back engine did the same, but somehow the train refused to move. It was supposed the breaks were on, but it was presently discovered that the rear engine had reversed its gear, and there had thus commenced a tug of war—the one engine pulling its hardest against the other and neither winning a prize. In those days railway life became rich in comedies and tragedies, especially the latter, whereof let one further illustration of much later date, as described by Mr Burgess, suffice:—

[Sidenote: Blowing up trains.]

At Heidelberg on Thursday, March 7th, at ten o'clock in the morning there was a loud report as of a gun firing from one of the forts; but it was soon known that it was an explosion of dynamite on the line about a mile and a half from the railway station. The Boers had evidently placed dynamite under the metals, and it is supposed that while they were doing this, a number of them came down and engaged the outposts, and that was the firing that was heard in the town. A flat trolley with a European ganger and seven coolies and natives went over the first mine without exploding it; but on reaching the second, about a mile beyond, an explosion took place. The ganger after being blown fifty feet, escaped most miraculously with only a few bruises. Sad to relate three Indians were blown to pieces so as hardly to be recognised, and two others were seriously hurt. Immediately after this first explosion, a construction train left the Heidelberg railway station, and exploded the mine which the trolley had failed to explode; but fortunately very little damage was done as they had taken the precaution to place a truck in front of the engine. The second explosion occurred about a mile from the station and was plainly visible to those standing on the platform.

[Sidenote: A peculiar Mothers' Meeting.]

On setting out a second time from Brugspruit for Middleburg to conduct the Sunday services there, I was astonished to find the train consisted of about a dozen trucks, some open, some closed, but all filled to overflowing with Dutch women and Dutch children of every sort and size. Flags were fluttering from almost every truck, no khaki man carrying arms was suffered to travel by that train, and when the Roman Catholic chaplain and myself entered the break-van we seemed to be taking charge of a gigantic Mothers' Meeting out for a holiday, babies and all, or else to be escorting a big Sunday School to "Happy Hampstead" for its annual treat. It was the second large consignment of the sort which General Botha had consented to receive, and of which we were anxious to be rid. They were some of the wives and offspring of his fighting men, and were in most cases foodless, friendless, dependent for their daily bread on British bounty. It was therefore more fitting their own folk should feed them, as they were abundantly able and willing to do. Moreover, among them were women who had acted as spies, while others had hidden arms in their homes, so that to us they had become a serious peril, as well as a serious expense. We were consequently glad to be quit of them, and sincerely regretted that the capture of Barberton later on made us again their custodians.

[Sidenote: Aggressive Ladies.]

Our first parade service next morning was held in the Wesleyan church, and was followed by open-air worship in the outlying encampment of the Scots Guards. The evening voluntary service was delightfully hearty and delightfully well attended. But most of the afternoon was spent at the railway station waiting for and watching the arrival of yet another train load of women and children on their way to realms beyond! Seven-and-twenty truck loads presently reached Middelburg in most defiant mood, for they waved their home-made Transvaal flags in our faces; they had bedecked themselves with Transvaal ribbons and Transvaal rosettes almost from head to foot. They shaded their faces with parasols in which the four Transvaal colours were combined; and they sang with every possible variety of discordancy Transvaal hymns, especially the Transvaal national anthem. But unless these gentle ladies can cook and stitch vastly better than they seemed able to sing, their husbands and brothers are much to be pitied.

Their patriotism was so pronounced and aggressive that they literally spat at the soldiers, and assured them that no money of theirs would ever suffice to purchase the paltriest flag they carried. The seeds of ill-will and hate for all things British had been planted in the mind and heart of almost every Boer child long before the war began, but those seeds ripened rapidly, and the reaping bids fair to be prolonged.

[Sidenote: A Dutch Deacon's Testimony.]

Before this weary conflict came to a close, nearly every Boer family was gathered in from the perils and privations of the war-wasted veldt; and so, while nearly 30,000 burghers were detained as prisoners of war at various points across the sea, their wives and children, to the number of over 100,000, were tenderly cared for in English laagers all along the line of rails or close to conveniently situated towns. Slanderous statements have been made as to the treatment meted out to these unfortunates, for which my visits revealed no warrant; but of more value is the testimony of one of their own church officials, who carefully inspected the women's refuge camp at Port Elizabeth, and reported the result to the local Intelligence Department. This deacon of the Dutch Reformed Church, Mr T. J. Ferreira, says:—

I came down here on hearing of the reports at Steytlerville of the bad treatment the women exiles are receiving from the military. I was determined to find out the truth, and publish same in the Dutch and English papers. I stayed in the camp all day, and dined with the exiles. The food was excellent—I had roast lamb, soup, potatoes, bread, coffee, and biscuits. All was well cooked and perfectly satisfactory; the soup and meat were especially well cooked. The women and children are happy, have no complaints, and are quite content to stay where they are until they can return to their homes. I shall return to Steytlerville and let everybody know how humane the treatment is. The statement that the women were ragged and barefooted and had to bathe within sight of the military is a shameful falsehood.

[Sidenote: A German Officer's Testimony.]

On August the 24th General Pole Carew with the Guards' Brigade occupied Belfast, and a few days later Roberts and Buller combined to drive Botha from the last position along the Delagoa Line that he made any serious attempt to defend; and among those taken prisoners by us at Dalmanutha was a German officer, who in due time was sent to Ceylon, and there acquired enough knowledge of English to express in it his views concerning the Boers he served, and the British he opposed. He says among other things that he was wounded five times and received no pay for all his pains. He declares concerning the Boers that "they often ran away from commando and kept quiet, and said to the English that they would not fight any more; but when the district was pacified they took up arms again and looted. They don't know anything about word of honour or oath. They put white flags upon their houses, and fired in the neighbourhood of them. The English were far too lenient at the beginning, and therefore they are now at the opposite extreme.

"You should have seen the flourishing Natal, how it was laid waste by the Boers. This looting instinct in them is far stronger than the fighting one. There were also lots of Boers who were praying the whole day instead of fighting; and their officers were perhaps the best prayers and preachers, but certainly the worst fighters; whereas I must confess that the English, although they were headed by very bad generals, very often behaved like good soldiers and finally defeated the greatest difficulties.

"The English infantry is splendidly brave and rather skilful; they are good shots too. Tommy Atkins is a wonderful, merry, good-hearted chap, always full of fun and good spirits, and he behaves very kind towards the prisoners.

"When I was captured, an English colonel who was rather haughty, asked me which English general I thought the best; whereupon I instantly answered 'Tommy Atkins!'"

That clever German critic merely put an old long ago discovered truth in new form! "If I blundered," said Wellington, "I could always rely on my soldiers to pull me through." General Pole Carew when, near the close of the war, he was presented with a sword of honour by my native city, Truro, repeated the remark of a distinguished continental soldier attached to his division, who said after seeing British soldiers marching bootless and fighting foodless, he placed the British army "foremost among European armies." So say they all! The German prisoner in Ceylon spoke words of truth and soberness when he said our private soldier is in some respects our best general.

General Tommy Atkins I salute you! You are a credit to your country!



CHAPTER XII

THROUGH HELVETIA

[Sidenote: The fighting near Belfast.]

On August 24th the tiny little town of Belfast was reached by General Pole Carew's division, including the Guards' Brigade; but though our advent was unopposed, there was heavy fighting on our right, where General Buller, newly arrived from Natal, had the day before approached the immensely strong Boer position at Bergendal. There the Johannesburg police, the most valorous of all the burgher forces, made their last heroic stand three days later, and were so completely wiped out, that Kruger is reported to have been moved to tears when the tidings reached him. It was the last stand the Boer still had nerve enough to make, and after Belfast their continuous retreat quickened into almost a rout. It was on Sunday, the 26th, the Guards moved out to take part in the general assault, and waited for hours behind the shelter of Monument Hill while General French developed his flanking movement on the left. Boer bullets fell freely among us while thus tarrying, and compelled our field hospital to retire further down the slope to a position of comparative safety. Late that afternoon the Guards marched over the brow to face what bade fair to be another serious Sunday battle, yet without any slightest sign of flinching. "How dear is life to all men," said dying Nelson. It may be so; but these men and their officers from first to last, when duty called, seemed never to count their lives dear unto them. A few casualties, caused by chance bullets, occurred among them before the day closed, but scarcely so much as a solitary Boer was seen by the clearest sighted of them. Once again outflanked, "the brother" once again had fled, and in the deepening darkness we groped our way to our next camping ground.

In our Napoleonic wars the favourite command alike on land and sea was, "Engage the enemy more closely." Each fleet or army kept well in sight of its antagonist, and the fighting was often at such close quarters that musket muzzle touched musket muzzle; but at Belfast Lord Roberts' front was thirty miles in width, and our generals could only guess where their foemen hid by watching for the fire-flash of their long range guns. In offensive warfare the visible contends with the invisible, and it is good generalship that conquers it. At Albuera Soult asserted there was no beating British troops in spite of their generals. But Lord Roberts' generalship seems never to have been at fault, however remote the foe, and thanks thereto Belfast proved to be about the last big fight of the whole campaign.

[Sidenote: Feeding under fire.]

Early next morning we were vigorously shelled by the still defiant Boers, but from the, for them, fairly safe distance of nearly five miles. Just as the Grenadier officers had finished their breakfast and retired a few yards further afield to get just beyond the reach of those impressive salutations, a shell plumped down precisely where we had been sitting. It made its mark, though fortunately only on the bare bosom of mother earth; but later on in the same day, while we were finishing lunch, another shrapnel burst, almost over our heads, so badly injured a doctor's horse tethered close by that it had to be killed, and compelled another somewhat rapid retirement on our part to the far side of a neighbouring bog. In war time all our feasts are movable!

[Sidenote: A German Doctor's Confession.]

Before leaving Belfast I called on a German doctor who had been in charge of a Boer military hospital planted in that hamlet, and who told me that for twelve months he had been in the compulsory employ of the Transvaal Government. Commandeered at Johannesburg, he had accompanied the burghers from place to place till he had grown utterly sick of the whole business; and all the more because he had received no payment for his services except in promissory notes—which were worthless. He also stated that over three hundred foreigners had been landed at Delagoa Bay as ambulance men, wearing the red cross armlet; as such they had proceeded to Pretoria for enrolment, and there he had seen every man of them strip off the red cross, shouldering instead the bandolier and rifle. Thus were fighting men and mercenaries smuggled through Portuguese territory to the Boer fighting lines; and in this as in many other ways was that red cross abused. He wastes his time who tries to teach the Boers some new trick. In this war they have amply proved that in that matter they have nought to learn, except the unwisdom of it all, and the sureness of the retribution it involves. Even in battle and battle times clean hands are best.

[Sidenote: Friends in need are friends indeed.]

On leaving the neighbourhood of Belfast we soon found ourselves marching through Helvetia, the Switzerland of South Africa, a region of insurmountable precipices and deep defiles, where scarcely any foliage was found, and in that winter season no verdure. There rose in all directions towering hills, which sometimes bore upon their brow a touch of real majesty; and when crowned, as we saw them, with fleecy mist, resembled not remotely the snow-clad Alps. Indeed, during that whole week the toils and travels of the Guards brought to the mind of many the familiar story of Hannibal and his vast army crossing the Alps; only the Carthaginian general had no heavy guns and long lines of ammunition waggons to add to his already enormous difficulties; his men had little to carry on their broad backs compared with what a modern Guardsman has to shoulder; nor did Hannibal take with him a small army corps of newspaper correspondents to chronicle all the petty disasters and delays met with by the way. Few commanders-in-chief are lovers of correspondents, whether of the professional or of the private type. Tell-tale tongues and pens may perchance do more mischief than machine guns and mausers!

At the latter end of the week our men had to climb over what seemed to be the backbone of that terrific region, with results almost disastrous to our long train of transport waggons. Botha, whose retreat towards Lydenberg our flanking movement had apparently prevented, we failed to find; so after fighting a mild rear-guard action, we scarce knew with whom, we encamped that night for the first and last time side by side with Buller's column.

The major part, however, of the Grenadier battalion remained till next morning far away in the rear to guard our huge convoy while climbing up and climbing down the perilous ridge just referred to, with the result that some of us forming the advanced party found ourselves without food or shelter. Yet the soldierly courtesy which has so often hastened to my help during this campaign did not fail in this new hour of need. A sergeant-major of the bearer company most graciously lent me his own overcoat, the night being bitterly cold; the officers of the Scots Guards not only invited me to dine with them, but one of them supplied me with a rug, whilst another pressed on me the loan of his mackintosh "to keep off the dew," and thus enwrapped I lay once more on the bare ground, well sheltered behind a sheet of corrugated iron, which I fortunately found stuck on end as though put there by some unknown Boer benefactor for my special benefit. In fashion thus lordly were all my wants continually supplied. The wild wind that night blew away a second sheet of iron that another young officer, with almost filial thoughtfulness, placed over me after I had gone to rest, but the original sheet maintained its perpendicular position, and by its welcome protection supplied me with a fresh illustration of the familiar saying, "He stayeth His rough wind in the day of His east wind."

[Sidenote: An Invisible Sniper's Triumph.]

Thus toiling we reached at last a plateau about 5000 feet above sea level, from which we looked down into the famous Waterfall Gorge, a sheer descent of 1000 feet. Down into it there drops from Waterval Boven the cogwheel section of the Delagoa Bay Railway, and in it there nestles a Swiss-like village, with hotel and hospital and railway workshops. As at Abraham's Kraal we captured the President's silk hat but let the President's head escape, so here we captured the President's professional cook, but the day before we arrived the President's private railway car,—his ever-shifting capital,—had eluded our pursuit, together with the President himself and the golden capital, in the shape of abounding coin he carried with him. The tidings proved to us a feast of Tantallus, so near and yet so far! How our men sighed for a sight of that car, and for the fingering of that coin! "At last I have him," said the exulting French General Soult of Wellington, at the battle of St Pierre, but his exultation proved distressingly premature. So did ours! Car and capital vanished just in the nick of time through that Waterfall Gorge, and to this day have never been disgorged.

From even descending into that gorge the whole brigade of Guards was held back for four-and-twenty hours by a solitary invisible sniper, hidden, no one could find out where, in some secure crevice of the opposite cliff. One of our mounted officers riding down to take possession of the village was seriously wounded; and some of the scouts already there were compelled through the same course to keep under close shelter. So the naval guns, the field guns, and the pom-poms were each in turn called to the rescue, and gaily rained shot and shell for hours on every hump and hollow of that opposite cliff, but all in vain; for after each thunderous discharge on our side, there came a responsive "ping" from the valiant mauser-man on the other side. Then the whole battalion of Scots Guards was invited to fire volley after volley in the same delightfully vague fashion, till it seemed as though no pin point or pimple on the far side of the gorge could possibly have failed to receive its own particular bullet; but

"What gave rise to no little surprise, Nobody seemed one farthing the worse!"

Just as the sun set the last sound we heard was the parting "ping" of Brother Invisible. So no man might descend into the depths that night, hotel or no hotel! Even at midnight we were startled out of our sleep by the quite unexpected boom of our big guns, which had, of course during daylight, been trained on a farmhouse lying far back from the precipice opposite to us, and were thus fired in the dead of night under the impression that the sniper, and perhaps his friends, were peacefully slumbering there. If so, the chances are he sniped no more. Next day at noon we began to clamber down to the level of the railway line, and found ourselves in undisturbed possession, after so prolonged and costly a bombardment called forth by a single, stubborn mauser.

[Sidenote: "He sets the mournful prisoners free."]

Meanwhile the eighteen hundred English prisoners who had so long been kept in durance vile at Nooitgedacht, the next station on the rail to Portuguese Africa, received their unconditional release, with the exception of a few officers, still retained as hostages; and all the afternoon, indeed far on into the night, these men came straggling, now in small groups and now in large, into our expectant and excited camp. They told us of the crowds of disconsolate Boers, some by road, some by rail, who had passed their prison enclosure in precipitate retreat, bearing waggon loads of killed or wounded with them. Among them were men of almost all nationalities, including a few surviving members of the late Johannesburg police, who declared that during that one week they had lost no less than one hundred and fifteen of their own special comrades.

The prisoners also informed us that the Boer officer who dismissed them expressed the belief that in a few days more Boer and Briton would again be friends—an expectation we were slow to share, however eager we might be to see this miracle of miracles actually wrought. In the very midst of the battle of the Baltic, Nelson sent a letter to the Danish Prince Regent, with whom he was then fighting, and addressed it thus: "To the Danes, the Brothers of Englishmen." Within little more than half a century from that date the daughter of the Danish throne became heir to the Queenship of England's throne; and our Laureate rightly voiced the whole nation's feeling when to that fair bride he said:

"We are each all Dane in our welcome of thee."

When Nelson penned that strange address amid the flash and fire of actual battle, it was with the true insight of a seer. The furious foes of his day are the fast friends of ours, and by the end of another half-century a similar transformation may be wrought in the present relationship between Boer and Briton, who are quite as near akin as Dane and Englishman. But to lightly talk of such foes becoming friends "in a few days" is to misread the meaning and measure of a controversy that is more than a century old. Between victors and vanquished, both of so dogged a type, it requires more than a mere treaty of peace to beget goodwill.

[Sidenote: More Boer Slimness.]

Some of these now released prisoners were among the very first to be captured, and so had spent many weary weeks in the Waterval Prison near Pretoria, and were among those who had been decoyed away to these remote and seemingly unassailable mountain fastnesses. They had thus been in bonds altogether ten interminable months. Multiplied hardships had during that period necessarily been theirs, and others for which there was no real need or excuse; but they frankly confessed that as a whole their treatment by the Boers, though leaving much to be desired, had seldom been hard or vindictive.

There were others of these prisoners, however, who were sick or wounded, and therefore were quite unable to climb from the open door of their prison to our lofty camp; so to fetch these I saw seven ambulance waggons made ready to set out with the usual complement of medical orderlies and doctors. These I seriously thought of accompanying on their errand of mercy, but was mercifully hindered. Those red cross waggons we saw no more for ever. The Boers were said to be short of waggons, and asserted that in some way some of our men had done them recent wrong which they wished to avenge. But whatever the supposed provocation or pretext, it was in violation of all the recognised usages of war that those waggons were captured and kept. It was no less an outrage to make prisoners of doctors and orderlies arriving on such an errand. No protests on their part or pleadings for speedy return to duty prevailed. They were compelled to accompany or precede the Boers in their flight to Delagoa Bay, from thence were shipped to Durban, and after long delay rejoined the Brigade on its return to Pretoria. For such high-handed proceedings the Transvaal Government clearly cannot be held responsible, for at that time it had ceased to exist, and more than ever the head of each commando had become a law unto himself. It would be false to say that a fine sense of honour did not anywhere exist in the now defunct Republic, but it is perfectly fair to assert that on the warpath our troops were compelled to tread it was not often found. Yet in every department of life he that contendeth for the mastery is never permanently crowned unless he contend lawfully.

[Sidenote: A Boer Hospital.]

The prettily situated and well appointed hospital at Waterval Onder was originally erected for the use of men employed on the railway, but for months prior to the arrival of the British troops had been in possession of the Boer Government, and was full of sick and wounded burghers, with whom I had many an interesting chat and by whom I was assured that though we might think it strange they still had hope of ultimate success. Among the rest was a German baron, well trained of course, as all Germans are, for war, who on the outbreak of hostilities had consented at Johannesburg to be commandeered, burgher or no burgher, to fight the battles of the Boers, in the justice of whose cause he avowed himself a firm believer. He therefore became an artillery officer in the service of the Transvaal, and while so employed had been badly hit by the British artillery, with the result that his right arm was blown off, his left arm horribly shattered, and two shrapnel bullets planted in his breast. Yet seldom has extreme suffering been borne in more heroic fashion than by him, and he actually told me, in tones of admiration, that the British artillery practice was really "beautiful." On such a point he should surely be a competent judge seeing that he was himself a professor of the art, and had long stood not behind but in front of our guns, which is precisely where all critics ought to be planted. Their criticisms would then be something worth.

[Sidenote: Foreign Mercenaries.]

The baron's case was typical of thousands more. Men from all the nations of Europe, and therefore all trained to arms, had been encouraged to settle in various civil employments under the Transvaal Government long before the war began—on the railway, at the dynamite works, in the mines; and so were all ready for the rifle the moment the rifle was ready for them. At once they formed themselves into vigorous commandoes, according to their various nationalities,—Scandinavian, Hollander, French, and German. Even after the war began these foreign commandoes were largely recruited from Europe; French and German steamers landed parties of volunteers for the burgher forces nearly every week at Lorenco Marques. The French steamer Gironde brought an unusually large contingent, a motley crowd, including, so it is said, a large proportion of suspicious looking characters. But the most notorious and mischievous of all these queer contingents was "The Irish American Brigade." As far back as the day of Marlborough and Blenheim there was an Irish Brigade assisting the French to fight against the English, and with such fiery courage that King George cursed the abominable laws which had robbed him of such excellent fighting material. But at the same time there was about them so much of reckless folly that their departure from the Emerald Isle was laughingly hailed as "The flight of the wild geese." New broods of these same wild geese found their way to the Transvaal, and there made for themselves a name, not as resistless fighters, but as irrestrainable looters. These men linked to the bywoners, or squatters, the penniless Dutch of South Africa, did little to help the cause they espoused, but many a time have caused every honest God-fearing burgher to blush by reason of their irrepressible lawlessness.

[Sidenote: A wounded Australian.]

Among the British patients in this hospital was a magnificent young Australian, who it was feared had been mortally wounded in a small scrimmage round a farmhouse not far away, but who apparently began decidedly to mend from the time the general came to his bedside to say he should be recommended for the distinguished service medal. "That has done me more good than medicine," said he to me a few minutes after. Nevertheless, when ten days later we returned from Koomati Poort, he lay asleep in the little Waterval Cemetery, alas, like Milton's Lycidas, "dead ere his prime."

These Australians being all mounted men, and of an exceptionally fearless type, have suffered in a very marked degree, in just such outpost affairs, by the arts and horrors of sniping. Sportsmen hide from the game they hunt, and bide their time to snipe it. It is in that school the Boer has been trained in his long warfare with savage men and savage beasts. A bayonet at the end of his rifle is to him of no use. He seldom comes to close quarters with hunted men or beasts till the life is well out of them; and so in this war he has shown himself a not too scrupulous sportsman, rather than a soldier, to the undoing of many a scout; and in this fashion, as well as by white flag treachery, the adventurous Australians have distressingly often been victimised. At Manana, four miles east of Lichtenberg, one of their officers, Lieutenant White, was thus treacherously shot while going to answer the white flag displayed by the Boers. He was the pet of the Bushmen's Corps, and concerning him his own men said, "We all loved him, and will avenge him." So round his open grave his comrades solemnly joined hands and pledged themselves never again to recognise the waving of a Boer white flag. My assistant chaplain, with the Bushmen, himself an Australian, emphatically declared that as in the beginning so was it to the end; his men were killed not in fair fight but by murderous sniping. He was with them when Pietersburg was surrendered without a fight, but when they marched through to take possession they were resolutely shot at with explosive bullets from a barricaded house in the centre of the town, till the angry Bushmen broke open the door, and then the sniper sniped no more. On reaching the northern outskirts they again found themselves sniped, they knew not from whence. Several horses were wounded, a trooper was killed on the spot; so was Lieutenant Walters; and Captain Sayles was so badly hit he died two days afterwards. Yet no fighting was going on. The town was undefended, and the Boers in full retreat. This sniper was at last discovered hiding almost close at hand in a big patch of tall African grass. He turned out to be a Hollander schoolmaster, who, finding himself surrounded, sprang upon his knees, threw up his arms and laughingly cried, "All right, khakis, I surrender!" But that was his last laugh; and he lies asleep to-day in the same cemetery as his three victims.

That cemetery soon after I saw; and in the adjoining camp messed with a group of irregular officers, some of whom ultimately yielded to this spirit of lawless avenging, but were, in consequence, sternly court-marshalled, and suffered the extreme penalty of the law. It is, however, the only case of the kind that has come to my knowledge during thirty months of provocative strife.

[Sidenote: Hotel Life on the Trek.]

Close to the railway station at Waterval Onder was a comfortable little hotel, kept by a French proprietor, whose French cook had deserted him, and who would not therefore undertake to cater for the Grenadier officers, though he courteously placed his dining-room at their disposal, with all that appertained thereto; and sold to them almost his entire stock of drinkables, probably at fancy prices. The men of the Norfolk Regiment are to this day called "Holy Boys" because their forbears in the Peninsular War, so it is said, gave their Bibles for a glass of wine; but the Norfolks are not the only lovers of high-class liquor the army contains, though army Bibles will not now suffice to buy it. British officers on the trek, however, not only know how to appreciate exquisitely any appropriate home comforts, when for a brief while procurable, but also how to surrender them unmurmuringly at a moment's notice when duty so requires. We had been in possession of our well-appointed hotel table only two days when a sudden order sent us all trekking once again.

It is worth noting that this French hotelkeeper and the German baron in the adjoining hospital had both fought, though of course on opposite sides, in the great Franco-Prussian war of thirty years ago, and now they found themselves overwhelmed by another great war wave in one of the remotest and seemingly most inaccessible fastnesses of South Central Africa. In this new war between Boer and Briton the German lost a limb, if not his life, and the Frenchman a large part of his fortune. So intimately are men of all nationalities now bound in the same bundle of life!

[Sidenote: A Sheep-pen of a Prison.]

On Monday afternoon we marched to Nooitgedacht, where the prisoners already referred to had been confined like sheep in a pen for many a weary week. That pen was made by a double-barbed wire fence; the inner fence consisting of ten strands of wire, about eight inches apart, and the outer fence of five strands, with sundry added entanglements; and a series of powerful electric lights was specially provided to watch and protect the whole vast area thus enclosed. It gave me a violent spasm of heart sickness as I thought of English officers and men by hundreds being thus ignominiously hemmed in and worse sheltered than convicts. They had latterly been allowed to erect for themselves grotesquely rough hovels or hutches, many of which they set on fire when suddenly permitted to escape, so that as I found it the whole place looked indescribably dirty and desolate.

Even the shelters provided for the officers, and the hospital hastily erected for the sick, were scarcely fit to stable horses in, and were by official decree doomed to be given to the flames as the surest way of getting rid of the vermin and other vilenesses, of which they contained so rich a store. Here I found huge medicine bottles, never made for the purpose, on which the names of sundry of our sick officers remained written, to wit: "Lieut. Mowbray, one tablespoonful four times a day. 3. VIII. 1900." In one of these bunks I found a packet of religious leaflets, one of which contained Hart's familiar hymn:—

Come ye weary, heavy laden, Lost and ruined by the fall; If you tarry till you are better, You will never come at all. Not the righteous, Sinners, Jesus came to call.

Although, therefore, religious services were never held in that prison pen, the men were not left absolutely without religious counsel and consolation. I was unfeignedly glad thus to find in that horrible place medicine for the soul as well as physic for the body, and some of those leaflets I brought away; but the physic I thought it safest not to sample.

Over this unique combination of prison house and hospital there floated a very roughly-made and utterly tattered red cross flag, which now serves as a memento of one of the most humiliating sights it ever fell to my lot to witness, and I could not help picturing to myself the overpowering heartache those prisoners must have felt as hour after hour they were hurried farther and yet farther still through deep defiles and vast mountain fastnesses into a region where it must have seemed as though hope or help could never reach them. But "men, not mountains, determine the fate of nations"; and to-day, through the mercy of our God, that pestilential pen is no longer any Englishman's prison.

[Sidenote: Pretty scenery, and superb.]

Our next halting place was at Godwand River, still on the Delagoa line, and here we found a wee bit of river scenery almost rivalling the beauty of the stream that has given to Lynmouth its world-wide fame. At this little frequented place two rivers meet, which even in the driest part of the dry season are still real rivers, and would both make superb trout streams, if once properly stocked, as many a river at home has been.

But just a little farther on we found scenery immeasurably more grand than anything we had ever seen before. The Dutch name of this astounding place is Kaapsche Hoop, which seems reminiscent of "The Cape of Good Hope," though it lies prodigiously far from any sea. It apparently owes its sanguine name to the fact that hereabouts the earliest discoveries of gold in the Transvaal were made. But it is also popularly called "The Devil's Kantoor," just as in the Valley of Rocks at Lynton we have "The Devil's Cheesering," and other possessions of the same sable owner. This African marvel is, however, much more than a mere valley of rocks, and it bids absolute defiance to my ripest descriptive powers. It is a vast area covered with rocks so grotesquely shaped and utterly fantastic as would have satisfied the artistic taste, and would have yielded fresh inspiration to the soul of a Gustave Dore. The rocks are evidently all igneous and volcanic, but often stand apart in separate columns, and sometimes bear a striking resemblance to enormous beasts or images that might once have served for Oriental idols.

Indeed, looked at by the bewitching but deceptive light of the moon, the whole place lends itself supremely well to every man's individual fancy, and even my unimaginative mind could easily have brought itself to see here a once majestic antediluvian city with its palaces and temples, but now wrecked and ruined by manifold upheavals of nature, and worn into rarest mockeries of its ancient splendours by the wild storms of many a millennium.

What I did certainly see, however, among those rocks were sundry roughly constructed shelters for snipers, who were therefrom to have picked off our men and horses as they crossed the adjacent drift. Terrible havoc might have been wrought in the ranks of the Guards' Brigade, without apparently the loss of a single Transvaaler's life, but there is no citadel under the sun the Boers just then had heart enough to hold.

Immediately adjoining this unique city of rocks is a stupendous cliff from which, our best travelled officers say, the finest panoramic view in the whole world is obtained. The cliff drops almost straight down twelve or fifteen hundred feet, and at its base huge baboons could be seen sporting, quite heedless of an onlooking army. Straight across what looked like an almost level plain, which, nevertheless, was seamed by many a deep defile and scarred by the unfruitful toil of many a gold-seeker, lay another great range of hills, with range rising beyond range, but with the town of Barberton, which I visited twenty months later, lying like a tiny white patch at the foot of the nearest range, some twenty miles away. To the right this plateau looked as though the tempestuous waves of the Atlantic had broken in at that end with overwhelming force, and then had been suddenly arrested and petrified while wave still battled with wave. It is such a view of far-reaching grandeur as I may never hope to see again, even were I to roam the wide world round; and could Kaapsche Hoop, with its absolutely fascinating attractiveness, be transplanted to, say Greenwich Park, any enterprising vendor of tea and shrimps who managed to secure a vested interest in the same, might reasonably hope to make such a fortune out of it as even a Rothschild need not despise.



CHAPTER XIII

WAR'S WANTON WASTE

Day after day we steadily worked our way down to Koomati Poort, even when climbing such terrific hills that we sometimes seemed like men toiling to the top of a seven-storied house in order to reach the cellar. Hence Monday morning found us still seemingly close to "The Devil's Kantoor," which we had reached on the previous Saturday, though meanwhile we had tramped up and down and in and out, till we could travel no farther, all day on Sunday.

[Sidenote: A Surrendered Boer General.]

During that Sunday tramp there crossed into our lines General Schoeman, driving in a Cape cart drawn by four mules, on his way to Pretoria via the Godwand River railway station. Months before he had joined in formally handing over Pretoria to the British, and had been allowed to return to his farm on taking the oath of neutrality. That oath he had refused to break, so he was made a prisoner by his brother Boers. It was in Barberton gaol General French found him and once more set him free. Such a man deemed himself safer in the hands of his foes than of his friends, so was hasting not to his farm but to far-off Pretoria. This favourite commandant was by the Boers called "King David," and not only in the authoritativeness of his tone, but also in the sharp diversities of his martial experiences, bore some not remote resemblance to his ancient namesake.

Far as either of us then was from foreseeing it, the general's path and mine, though just now so divergent, were destined to meet once more. Within a year in Pretoria on the following Whit-Sunday I was sitting in the house of a friend, and was startled, as all present were, by the firing, as we all supposed, of one of our huge 4.7 guns. Later in the day we learned it was the bursting of a 4.7 shell, nearly two miles away from where we heard the dread explosion. That particular British shell happened to be the first that had long ago been fired in the fight near Colesberg, and as it had fallen close to the general's tent without bursting, he brought it away to keep as a curio, and on that particular Sunday, so it is said, was showing it to a Boer friend, and explaining that the new explosive now used by the English is perfectly harmless when properly handled.

His demonstration, however, proved tragically inconclusive. Precisely what happened there is now no one left alive to tell. As in a moment the part of the house in which the experimenters sat was wrecked, and as I next day noted, some neighbouring houses were sorely damaged. The general was blown almost to pieces; one of his daughters who was sitting at the piano was fatally hurt. On the day of the general's funeral the general's friend died from the effect of the injuries received, and three other members of that family circle barely escaped with their lives.

On my first Whit-Tuesday in South Africa I marched with the triumphant Guards into Pretoria. On this second Whit-Tuesday I stood reverently beside the new-made grave of this famous Pretorian general, who had proved himself to be one of the best of the Boers, one of the few concerning whom it is commonly believed that his word was as good as his bond; and thus all strangely a shot ineffectually fired from one of our guns in Cape Colony, claimed eighteen months afterwards this whole group of victims in far-off Pretoria. Thus in the home of peace were so tragically let loose the horrors and havoc of war!

This general's case aptly illustrates one of the most debatable of all points in the conduct of this doubly lamentable struggle. Whilst those who were far away from the scene of operations denounced what they deemed the wanton barbarities of the British, those on the spot denounced almost as warmly what they deemed the foolish and cruel clemency by which the war was so needlessly prolonged. These local complainers asserted that if every surrendered burgher had been compelled to bring in not a rusty sporting rifle, but a good mauser, a good supply of cartridges and a good horse, the Boers would much sooner have reached the end of their resources. That saying is true. Our chiefs assumed they were dealing with only honourable men, and so in this matter let themselves be sorely befooled. Some who surrendered to them one week, were busy shooting at them the next, with rifles that had been buried instead of being given up; and among those who thus proved false to their plighted troth were, alas, ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church.

[Sidenote: Two Unworthy Predikants.]

When near the close of the war I paid a visit to Klerksdorp I was informed by absolutely reliable witnesses that one of the predikants of that neighbourhood had not been required to take an oath because of his sacred calling, and his simple word of honour was accepted. Yet at the time of my visit he was out on commando, harassing with his rifle the very village in which his own wife was still residing under our protection. Next day at Potchetstroom eye-witnesses told me that one of Cronje's chaplains, whom long ago we had set at liberty, soon after seized bandolier and rifle in defiance of all honour, and so a second time became a prisoner. "Straying shepherds, straying sheep!" When pastors thus proved unprincipled, their people might well hold perverted views as to what honour means and oaths involve.

It is further maintained by these protesters against excessive clemency that all surrendered burghers should have been placed in laagers, or sent to the coast on parole, where they could not have been compelled or tempted to take up arms again; but it was this express promise that they should return to their farms there personally to protect families and flocks and furniture, that induced them to come in. They would never have surrendered to be sent far afield, but would have remained in the fighting line to the finish. All was not gained that was hoped for by this generous policy, but it was not such an utter failure as some suppose; and it at least served to pacify public opinion. The experiment of dealing gently with surrendered foemen was fairly tried, and if in part it failed the fault was not ours!

At the latter end, when guerilla warfare became the order of the day, and the only end aimed at was not fighting, but the mere securing or destruction of food supplies, it became necessary to sweep the veldt as with a broom, and to bring within the British lines everybody still left and everybody's belongings; but even then it was a gigantic task, involving much wrecking of what could not be removed; and in the earlier stages of the war such a sweep, if not actually enormously beyond the strength available for it, would certainly have involved many a fatal delay in the progress of the troops.

[Sidenote: Two notable Advocates of Clemency.]

This championship of clemency is no new thing in the war annals of our island home, and Lord Roberts, in his insistence on it, did but tread in the steps of the very mightiest of his predecessors. Wellington during the Peninsular wars actually dismissed from his service and sent back in disgrace to Spain 25,000 sorely-needed Spanish soldiers, simply because he could not restrain their wayside barbarities. He recognised that a policy which outrages humanity, in the long run means disaster; and frankly confessed concerning his troops, that if they plundered they would ruin all. In a precisely similar vein is Nelson's last prayer, which constitutes the last entry but one in his diary:—"May the great God, whom I worship, grant to my country ... a glorious victory. May no misconduct in anyone tarnish it, and may humanity after victory be the predominant feature in the British fleet."

It was in the spirit of Nelson's prayer and Wellington's precept that Lord Roberts strove to conduct his South African operations. With what success let all the world bear witness!

[Sidenote: Mines without Men, and Men without Meat.]

From "The three Sisters," which we reached on our Sabbathless Sunday, we tramped all day on Monday till we reached a tributary of the Crocodile River close to the Noordkaap railway station, about seven miles out from Barberton, which we were not then privileged to visit. Near this place we found the famous Sheba gold mine, its costly machinery for the present lying idle, and its cottages deserted at the stern bidding of intruding war—that most potent disturber of the industries of peace. Here from the loftiest mountain peaks were cables, with cages attached, sloping down to the gold-crushing house; and across the river, in which, crocodiles or no crocodiles, we enjoyed a delicious bathe, there was a similar steel rope suspended as the only possible though perilous way of getting across when the river is in flood. In this as in all other respects, however, a gracious Providence seemed to watch over us for good, seeing that not once during all the eleven months we had been in the country had we found a single river so full as to be unfordable. Moreover, though now tramping through a notorious fever country, the long overdue rain and fever alike lingered in their pursuit of us and overtook us not, so that up to that time not a solitary case of enteric occurred in all our camp. The incessant use of one's heels seems to be the best preservative of health, for it is only among sedentary troops that sickness of any sort really runs riot.

The rations, however, have often been of the short measure type in consequence of the prodigious difficulty of transport over roads that are merely unfrequented tracks, and the utter wearisomeness of such day after day tramps on almost empty stomachs has been so pronounced that the men often laughingly avowed they would prefer fourth class by train to even first class on foot. When they occasionally marched and climbed in almost gloomy silence I sometimes advised them to try the effect on their pedestrian powers of a lively song, and playfully suggested this new version of an old-time melody—

Cheer, boys, cheer, No more of idle sorrow; Cheer, boys, cheer, There'll be another march to-morrow.

But though they readily recognised the appropriateness of the sentiment, they frankly confessed it was impossible to sing on three-quarters of a pound of uncooked flour in place of a full day's rations, which indeed it was. Next day these much-tried men had to wade three times through the river, mostly with their boots and putties on, so that though short of bread and biscuit they were well supplied with "dampers," unfortunately of a sort that soaked but never satisfied.

[Sidenote: Much fat in the fire.]

After passing "Joe's Luck," where for us "there was no luck about the house, there was no luck at all," the Guards reached Avoca, another station on the Barberton branch; and here we found not only a fine railway bridge destroyed with dynamite, but also the railway sheds, recently crammed full with government stores, mostly provisions, now ruthlessly given to the flames and absolutely destroyed. Thousands of tins of condensed milk had flown like bombs in all directions, and like bombs had burst, when the intense heat had turned the confined milk to steam. Butter by the ton had ignominiously ended its days by merely adding so much more fat to the fire. All good things here, laboriously treasured for the benefit of the Transvaal troops, were consumed in quite another fashion from that intended. Even accumulated locomotives to the number of about fifty had been in some cases elaborately mutilated, or caught, and twisted out of all utility, by the devouring flames. So wanton is the waste war begets. The torch has played a comparatively small part in this contest; but it is food supplies that have suffered most from its ravages, and the Boers, with a slimness that baffled us, having thus burned their food, bequeathed to us their famished wives and children. Thousands of these innocents drew full British rations, when thousands of British soldiers were drawing half rations. That is not the Old Testament and Boer-beloved way of waging war, but it foreshadows the slow dawning of an era when, constrained by an overmastering sense of brotherhood,

Men will hang the trumpet in the hall, And study war no more!

[Sidenote: More fat and mightier flames.]

Beyond Avoca we rested for the night at Fever Creek, and were alarmed by the approach of a heavy thunderstorm just as we were commencing our dinner in the dense darkness. So I crept for refuge between the courses of our homely meal under a friendly waggon, and thence came forth from time to time as wind and weather permitted, to renew acquaintance with my deserted platter. Finally, when the storm had somewhat abated, we sought the scanty protection and repose to be found under our damp blankets. That for us with such favouring conditions Fever Creek did not justify its name seems wonderful.

On the Wednesday of that week the Guards' Brigade made a desperate push to reach Kaap Muiden, where the Barberton branch joins the main line to Delagoa Bay, though the ever-haunting transport difficulty made the effort only imperfectly successful. Three out of the four battalions were compelled to bivouac seven miles behind, while the one battalion that did that night reach the junction had at the finish a sort of racing march to get there. While resting for a few minutes outside "The Lion's Creek" station the colonel told his men that they were to travel the rest of the way by rail; whereupon they gave a ringing cheer and started at a prodigious pace to walk down the line in momentary expectation of meeting the presumably approaching train. Each man seemed to go like a locomotive with full head of steam on, and it took me all my time and strength to keep up with them. Nevertheless that train never met us. It never even started, and at that puffing perspiring pace the battalion proceeded all the way on foot. We had indeed come by rail, but that we found was quite another thing from travelling by train; and the sequel forcefully reminded one of the simpleton who was beguiled into riding in a sedan-chair from which both seat and bottom had been carefully removed. When the ride was over he is reported to have summed up the situation by saying he might as well have walked but for "the say so" of the thing. And but for the say so of the thing that merrily beguiled battalion might as well have gone by road as by rail.

It was, however, a most wonderful sight that greeted them as they stumbled through the darkness into the junction. At one end of the station there was a huge engine-house, surrounded as well as filled, not only with locomotives but also with gigantic stacks of food stuffs, now all involved in one vast blaze that had not burned itself out when the Brigade returned ten days later. There were long trains of trucks filled with flour, sugar and coffee, over some of which paraffin had been freely poured and set alight. So here a truck and there a truck, with one or two untouched trucks between, was burning furiously. In some cases the mischief had been stopped in mid-career by friendly Kaffir hands, which had pulled off from this truck and that a newly-kindled sack, and flung it down between the rails where it lay making a little bonfire that was all its own. Then too broken sacks of unburnt flour lay all about the place looking in the semi-darkness like the Psalmist's "snow in Salmon"; but flour so flavoured and soaked with paraffin that when that night it was served out to be cooked as best it could be by the famished men some of them laughingly asserted it exploded in the process. Oh, was not that a dainty dish to set before such kings! At the far end of the station were ten trucks of coal blazing more vigorously than in any grate, besides yet other trucks filled with government stationery and no one knows what beside. It was an awe-inspiring sight and pitiful in the extreme.

[Sidenote: A welcome lift by the way.]

Though too late to save all the treasure stored at this junction, we nevertheless secured an invaluable supply of rolling stock and of certain kinds of provender, so that for a few days we lacked little that was essential except biscuits for the men and forage for the mules. But to prevent if possible further down the line another such holocaust as took place here, our men started at break of day on a forced march towards Koomati Poort.

The line we learned was in fair working order for the next fifteen miles, and for that distance the heavy baggage with men in charge of the same was sent by train. I did not confess to being baggage nor was I in charge thereof, but none the less when my ever courteous and thoughtful colonel urged me to accompany the baggage for those few miles I looked upon his advice in the light of a command, and so accepted my almost only lift of any sort in the long march from the Orange River to Koomati Poort. The full day's march for the men was twenty-five miles through a region that at that season of the year had already become a kind of burning fiery furnace; and the abridging of it for me by at least a half was all the more readily agreed to because my solitary pair of boots was unfortunately in a double sense on its last legs. A merciful man is merciful to his boots, especially when they happen to be his only pair.

[Sidenote: "Rags and tatters get ye gone."]

Nor in the matter of leather alone were these Guardsmen lamentably lacking. One of the three famous Napier brothers when fighting at close quarters in the battle of Busaco fiercely refused to dismount that he might become a less conspicuous mark for bullets, or even to cover his red uniform with a cloak. "This," said he, "is the uniform of my regiment, and in it I will show, or fall this day." Barely a moment after a bullet smashed his jaw. At the very outset of the Boer war, to the sore annoyance of Boer sharpshooters, the British War Office in this one respect showed great wisdom. All the pomp and pride and circumstance of war were from the outset laid aside, especially in the matter of clothing; but though in that direction almost all regimental distinctions, and distinctions of rank, were deliberately discarded, so that scarcely a speck of martial red was anywhere to be seen, the clothing actually supplied proved astonishingly short-lived. The roughness of the way soon turned it into rags and tatters, and disreputable holes appeared precisely where holes ought not to be. On this very march I was much amused by seeing a smart young Guardsman wearing a sack where his trousers should have been. On each face of the sack was a huge O. Above the O, in bold lettering, appeared the word OATS, and underneath the O was printed 80 lbs. The proudest man in all the brigade that day seemed he! Well-nigh as travel-stained were we, and torn, as Hereward the Wake when he returned to Bruges.

[Sidenote: Destruction and still more destruction.]

On Sunday, September 23rd, at Hector Spruit we most unexpectedly lingered till after noonday, partly to avoid the intense heat on our next march of nineteen miles through an absolutely waterless wilderness, and partly because of the enormous difficulties involved in finding tracks or making them through patches of thorny jungle. We were thus able to arrange for a surprise parade service, and when that was over some of our men who had gone for a bathe found awaiting them a still more pleasant surprise. In the broad waters of the Crocodile they alighted on a large quantity of abandoned and broken Boer guns and rifles. Such abandonment now became an almost daily occurrence, and continued to be for more than another six months, till all men marvelled whence came the seemingly inexhaustible supply. At Lydenberg, which Buller captured on September 6th, and again at Spitzkop which he entered on September 15th, stores of almost every kind were found well-nigh enough to feed and furnish a little army; though in their retreat to the latter stronghold the burghers had flung some of their big guns and no less than thirteen ammunition waggons over the cliffs to prevent them falling into the hands of the British. Never was a nation so armed to the teeth. As nature had made every hill a fortress, so the Transvaal Government had made pretty nearly every hamlet an arsenal; and about this same time French on the 14th, at Barberton, had found in addition to more warlike stores forty locomotives which our foes were fortunately too frightened to linger long enough to destroy. Those locos were worth to us more than a king's ransom!

That afternoon we marched till dark, then lighted our fires, and bemoaned the emptiness of our water bottles, while awaiting the arrival of our blanket waggons. But in half an hour came another sharp surprise, for without a moment's warning we were ordered to resume our march for five miles more. So through the darkness we stumbled as best we could along the damaged railway line. About midnight in the midst of a prickly jungle, a bit of bread and cheese, a drink of water if we had any left, and a blanket, paved the way for brief repose; but at four o'clock next morning we were all astir once more, to find ourselves within sight of a tiny railway station called Tin Vosch, where two more locomotives and a long line of trucks awaited capture.

[Sidenote: At Koomati Poort.]

On Monday, September 24th, at about eight o'clock in the morning, to General Pole Carew and Brigadier-General Jones fell the honour of leading their Guardsmen into Koomati Poort, the extreme eastern limit of the Transvaal—and that without seeing a solitary Boer or having to fire a single bullet. The French historian of the Peninsular War declares that "the English were the best marksmen in Europe—indeed the only troops who were perfectly practised in the use of small arms." But then their withering volleys were sometimes fired at a distance of only a few yards from the wavering masses of their foes, and under such conditions good marksmanship is easy to attain. A blind man might bet he would not miss. On the other hand, he must be a good shot indeed who can hit a foe he never sees. In these last weeks there were few casualties among the Boers, because they kept well out of casualty range. They were so frightened they even forgot to snipe. The valiant old President so long ago as September 11th had fled with his splendidly well-filled money bags across the Portuguese frontier; abandoning his burghers who were still in the field to whatever might chance to be their fate. That fate he watched, and waited for, from the secure retreat of the Portuguese Governor's veranda close by the Eastern Sea, where he sat and mused as aforetime on his stoep at Pretoria; his well-thumbed Bible still by his side, his well-used pipe still between his lips. Surely Napoleon the Third at Chislehurst, broken in health, broken in heart, was a scarcely more pathetic spectacle! Six or seven days later the old man saw special trains beginning to arrive, all crowded with mercenary fighting men from many lands, all bent only on following his own uncourageous example, seeking personal safety by the sea. First came 700; then on the 24th, the very day the Guards entered Koomati Poort, 2000 more, who were mostly ruined burghers, and who thus arrived at Delagoa Bay to become like Kruger himself the guests or prisoners of the Portuguese.

To the Portuguese we ourselves owe no small debt of gratitude, for they had sternly forbidden the destruction of the magnificent railway bridge across the Koomati, in which their government held large financial interests. But other destruction they could not hinder.

Just in front of us lay the superbly lovely junction of the Crocodile with the Koomati River, and appropriately enough I then saw in midstream, clinging to a rock, a real crocodile, though, like the two Boer Republics, as dead as a door nail. Immediately beyond ran a ridge of hills which served as the boundary between the Transvaal and the Portuguese territory. Along that ridge floated a line of Portuguese flags, and within just a few yards of them the ever-slim Boer had planted some of his long-range guns, not that there he might make his last valiant stand, but that from thence he might present our approaching troops with a few parting shots. This final outrage on their own flag our friendly neighbours forbade. So we discovered the guns still in position but destroyed with dynamite. Thus finding not a solitary soul left to dispute possession with us we somewhat prematurely concluded that at last, through God's mercy, our toils were ended, our warfare accomplished. What wonder therefore if in that hour of bloodless triumph there were some whose hearts exclaimed, "We praise Thee O God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord!" To the God of Battles the Boer had made his mutely stern appeal and with this result.

[Sidenote: Two notable Fugitives.]

The Household Brigade Magazine tells an amusing story of a Guardsman hailing from Ireland who at one of our base hospitals was supplied with some wine as a most welcome "medical comfort." Therein right loyally he drank the Queen's health, and then after a pause startled his comrades by adding, "Here's to old Kruger! God bless him!" Such a disloyal sentiment, so soon tripping up the heels of his own loyalty, called forth loud and angry protests, whereupon he exclaimed, "Why not? Only for him where would the war be? And only for him I would never have sent my old mother the Queen's chocolate!"

The Queen's chocolate is not the only bit of compensating sweetness begotten out of the bitterness of this war. The fiery hostility of Kruger, like the quenchless hate of Napoleon a hundred years ago, has not been without beneficent influence on our national character and destiny, and these two years of war have seemingly done more for the consolidation of the empire than twenty years of peace. Whether he and Steyn used the Africander Bond as their tool or were themselves its tools the outcome of the war is the same. To Great Britain it has so bound Greater Britain in love-bonds and mutual loyalty as to make all the world wonder. The President of the Transvaal months after the war began is reported to have said: "If the moon is inhabited I cannot understand why John Bull has not yet annexed it"; but with respect to his own beloved Republic he reckoned it was far safer than the moon, for he added: "So surely as there is a God of righteousness, so surely will the Vierkleur be victorious."

[Sidenote: The propaganda of the Africander Bond.]

What that victory, however, would inevitably have involved was made abundantly plain in the pages of De Patriot, the once official organ of the Africander Bond. There, as long ago as 1882, it was written: "The English Government keep talking of a Confederation under the British flag. That will never happen. There is just one hindrance to Confederation, and that is the British flag. Let them take that away, and within a year the Confederation under the Free Africander flag would be established; but so long as the English flag remains here the Africander Bond must be our Confederation. The British must just have Simon's Bay as a naval and military station on the road to India, and give over all Africa to the Africanders."