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FROM CAPETOWN TO LADYSMITH
AN UNFINISHED RECORD OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR
BY
G.W. STEEVENS
AUTHOR OF 'WITH KITCHENER TO KHARTUM,' 'IN INDIA,' ETC., ETC.
EDITED BY VERNON BLACKBURN
_THIRD IMPRESSION_
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCC
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
WITH KITCHENER TO KHARTUM. With 8 Maps and Plans. Twenty-first Edition.
Crown 8vo, 6s.
"This book is a masterpiece. Mr Steevens writes an English which is
always alive and alert.... The description of the battle of Omdurman
reaches, we do not hesitate to say, the high-water mark of
literature."--_Spectator._
IN INDIA. With a Map. Third Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s.
"To read this book is a liberal education in one of the most interesting
and least known portions of our Empire."--_St James's Gazette._
THE LAND OF THE DOLLAR. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s.
"One of the smartest books of travel which has appeared for a long time
past.... Brings the general appearance of Transatlantic urban and rural
life so clearly before the mind's eye of the reader, that a perusal of
his work almost answers the purpose of a personal inspection. New York
has probably never been more lightly and cleverly sketched."--_Daily
Telegraph._
WITH THE CONQUERING TURK. With 4 Maps. Cheaper Edition. Demy 8vo, 6s.
"This is a remarkably bright and vivid book. There is a delicious
portrait of the jovial aide-de-camp, plenty of humorous touches of
wayside scenes, servants' tricks, dragoman's English, and vagaries of
cuisine."--_St James's Gazette._
EGYPT IN 1898. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo, 6s.
"Set forth in a style that provides plenty of entertainment.... Bright
and readable."--_Times._
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH AND LONDON.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. FIRST GLIMPSES OF THE STRUGGLE.
First impressions--Denver with a dash of Delhi--Government House--
The Legislative Assembly--A wrangling debate--A demonstration of
the unemployed--The menace of coming war 1
II. THE ARMY CORPS--HAS NOT LEFT ENGLAND!
A little patch of white tents--A dream of distance--The desert of
the Karroo--War at last--A campaign without headquarters--Waiting
for the Army Corps 10
III. A PASTOR'S POINT OF VIEW.
An ideal of Arcady--Rebel Burghersdorp--Its monuments--Dopper
theology--An interview with one of its professors 19
IV. WILL IT BE CIVIL WAR?
On the border of the Free State--An appeal to the Colonial Boers--
The beginning of warlike rumours--A commercial and social boycott--
The Boer secret service--The Basutos and their mother, the Queen--
Boer brutality to Kaffirs 28
V. LOYAL ALIWAL: A TRAGI-COMEDY.
The Cape Police--A garrison of six men--Merry-go-rounds and naphtha
flares--A clamant want of fifty men--Where are the troops?--"It'll
be just the same as it was in '81" 35
VI. THE BATTLE OF ELANDSLAAGTE.
French's reconnaissance--An artillery duel--Beginning of the attack--
Ridge after ridge--A crowded half-hour 43
VII. THE BIVOUAC.
A victorious and helpless mob--A break-neck hillside--Bringing down
the wounded--A hard-worked doctor--Boer prisoners--Indian bearers--
An Irish Highlander in trouble 56
VIII. THE HOME-COMING FROM DUNDEE.
Superfluous assistance--A smiling valley--The Border Mounted Rifles--
A rain-storm--A thirty-two miles' march--How the troops came into
Ladysmith 66
IX. THE STORY OF NICHOLSON'S NEK.
An attenuated mess--A regiment 220 strong--A miserable story--The
white flag--Boer kindness--Ashamed for England 74
X. THE GUNS AT RIETFONTEIN.
A column on the move--The nimble guns--Garrison gunners at work--
The veldt on fire--Effective shrapnel--The value of the engagement 81
XI. THE BOMBARDMENT.
Long Tom--A family of harmless monsters--Our inferiority in guns--
The sensations of a bombardment--A little custom blunts sensibility 92
XII. THE DEVIL'S TIN-TACKS.
The excitement of a rifle fusilade--A six-hours' fight--The picking
off of officers--A display of infernal fireworks--"God bless the
Prince of Wales" 106
XIII. A DIARY OF DULNESS.
The mythopoeic faculty--A miserable day--The voice of the pompom--
Learning the Boer game--The end of Fiddling Jimmy--Melinite at
close quarters--A lake of mud 114
XIV. NEARING THE END.
Dulness interminable--Ladysmith in 2099 A.D.--Sieges obsolete
hardships--Dead to the world--The appalling features of a
bombardment 124
XV. IN A CONNING-TOWER.
The self-respecting bluejacket--A German atheist--The sailors'
telephone--What the naval guns meant to Ladysmith--The salt of
the earth 134
THE LAST CHAPTER. By VERNON BLACKBURN 144
MAPS.
PAGE
MAP OF THE COUNTRY ROUND LADYSMITH 95
MAP ILLUSTRATING THE SEAT OF WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA _At end_
FROM CAPETOWN TO LADYSMITH
I.
FIRST GLIMPSES OF THE STRUGGLE.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS--DENVER WITH A DASH OF DELHI--GOVERNMENT
HOUSE--THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY--A WRANGLING DEBATE--A
DEMONSTRATION OF THE UNEMPLOYED--THE MENACE OF COMING WAR.
CAPETOWN, _Oct. 10._
This morning I awoke, and behold the _Norman_ was lying alongside a
wharf at Capetown. I had expected it, and yet it was a shock. In this
breathless age ten days out of sight of land is enough to make you a
merman: I looked with pleased curiosity at the grass and the horses.
After the surprise of being ashore again, the first thing to notice was
the air. It was as clear--but there is nothing else in existence clear
enough with which to compare it. You felt that all your life hitherto
you had been breathing mud and looking out on the world through fog.
This, at last, was air, was ether.
Right in front rose three purple-brown mountains--the two supporters
peaked, and Table Mountain flat in the centre. More like a coffin than a
table, sheer steep and dead flat, he was exactly as he is in pictures;
and as I gazed, I saw his tablecloth of white cloud gather and hang on
his brow.
It was enough: the white line of houses nestling hardly visible between
his foot and the sea must indeed be Capetown.
Presently I came into it, and began to wonder what it looked like. It
seemed half Western American with a faint smell of India--Denver with a
dash of Delhi. The broad streets fronted with new-looking, ornate
buildings of irregular heights and fronts were Western America; the
battle of warming sun with the stabbing morning cold was Northern
India. The handsome, blood-like electric cars, with their impatient
gongs and racing trolleys, were pure America (the motor-men were
actually imported from that hustling clime to run them). For Capetown
itself--you saw it in a moment--does not hustle. The machinery is the
West's, the spirit is the East's or the South's. In other cities with
trolley-cars they rush; here they saunter. In other new countries they
have no time to be polite; here they are suave and kindly and even
anxious to gossip. I am speaking, understand, on a twelve hours'
acquaintance--mainly with that large section of Capetown's inhabitants
that handled my baggage between dock and rail way-station. The niggers
are very good-humoured, like the darkies of America. The Dutch tongue
sounds like German spoken by people who will not take the trouble to
finish pronouncing it.
All in all, Capetown gives you the idea of being neither very rich nor
very poor, neither over-industrious nor over-lazy, decently successful,
reasonably happy, whole-heartedly easy-going.
The public buildings--what I saw of them--confirm the idea of a placid
half-prosperity. The place is not a baby, but it has hardly taken the
trouble to grow up. It has a post-office of truly German stability and
magnitude. It has a well-organised railway station, and it has the merit
of being in Adderley Street, the main thoroughfare of the city: imagine
it even possible to bring Euston into the Strand, and you will get an
idea of the absence of push and crush in Capetown.
When you go on to look at Government House the place keeps its
character: Government House is half a country house and half a country
inn. One sentry tramps outside the door, and you pay your respects to
the Governor in shepherd's plaid.
Over everything brooded peace, except over one flamboyant many-winged
building of red brick and white stone with a garden about it, an
avenue--a Capetown avenue, shady trees and cool but not large:
attractive and not imposing--at one side of it, with a statue of the
Queen before and broad-flagged stairs behind. It was the Parliament
House. The Legislative Assembly--their House of Commons--was
characteristically small, yet characteristically roomy and
characteristically comfortable. The members sit on flat green-leather
cushions, two or three on a bench, and each man's name is above his
seat: no jostling for Capetown. The slip of Press gallery is above the
Speaker's head; the sloping uncrowded public gallery is at the other
end, private boxes on one side, big windows on the other. Altogether it
looks like a copy of the Westminster original, improved by leaving
nine-tenths of the members and press and public out.
Yet here--alas, for placid Capetown!--they were wrangling.
They were wrangling about the commandeering of gold and the
sjamboking--shamboking, you pronounce it--of Johannesburg refugees.
There was Sir Gordon Sprigg, thrice Premier, grey-bearded, dignified,
and responsible in bearing and speech, conversationally reasonable in
tone. There was Mr Schreiner, the Premier, almost boyish with plump,
smooth cheeks and a dark moustache. He looks capable, and looks as if he
knows it: he, too, is conversational, almost jerky, in speech, but with
a flavour of bitterness added to his reason.
Everything sounded quiet and calm enough for Capetown--yet plainly
feeling was strained tight to snapping. A member rose to put a question,
and prefaced it with a brief invective against all Boers and their
friends. He would go on for about ten minutes, when suddenly angry cries
of "Order!" in English and Dutch would rise. The questioner commented
with acidity on the manners of his opponents. They appealed to the
chair: the Speaker blandly pronounced that the hon. gentleman had been
out of order from the first word he uttered. The hon. gentleman thereon
indignantly refused to put his question at all; but, being prevailed to
do so, gave an opening to a Minister, who devoted ten minutes to a
brief invective against all Uitlanders and their friends. Then up got
one of the other side--and so on for an hour. Most delicious of all was
a white-haired German, once colonel in the Hanoverian Legion which was
settled in the Eastern Province, and which to this day remains the
loyallest of her Majesty's subjects. When the Speaker ruled against his
side he counselled defiance in a resounding whisper; when an opponent
was speaking he snorted thunderous derision; when an opponent retorted
he smiled blandly and admonished him: "Ton't lose yer demper."
In the Assembly, if nowhere else, rumbled the menace of coming war.
One other feature there was that was not Capetown. Along Adderley
Street, before the steamship companies' offices, loafed a thick string
of sun-reddened, unshaven, flannel-shirted, corduroy-trousered British
working-men. Inside the offices they thronged the counters six deep.
Down to the docks they filed steadily with bundles to be penned in the
black hulls of homeward liners. Their words were few and sullen. These
were the miners of the Rand--who floated no companies, held no shares,
made no fortunes, who only wanted to make a hundred pounds to furnish a
cottage and marry a girl.
They had been turned out of work, packed in cattle-trucks, and had come
down in sun by day and icy wind by night, empty-bellied, to pack off
home again. Faster than the ship-loads could steam out the trainloads
steamed in. They choked the lodging-houses, the bars, the streets.
Capetown was one huge demonstration of the unemployed. In the hotels and
streets wandered the pale, distracted employers. They hurried hither and
thither and arrived nowhither; they let their cigars go out, left their
glasses half full, broke off their talk in the middle of a word. They
spoke now of intolerable grievance and hoarded revenge, now of silent
mines, rusting machinery, stolen gold. They held their houses in
Johannesburg as gone beyond the reach of insurance. They hated
Capetown, they could not tear themselves away to England, they dared not
return to the Rand.
This little quiet corner of Capetown held the throbbing hopes and fears
of all Johannesburg and more than half the two Republics and the mass of
all South Africa.
None doubted--though many tried to doubt--that at last it was--war! They
paused an instant before they said the word, and spoke it softly. It had
come at last--the moment they had worked and waited for--and they knew
not whether to exult or to despair.
II.
THE ARMY CORPS--HAS NOT LEFT ENGLAND!
A LITTLE PATCH OF WHITE TENTS--A DREAM OF DISTANCE--THE DESERT OF
THE KARROO--WAR AT LAST--A CAMPAIGN WITHOUT HEADQUARTERS--WAITING
FOR THE ARMY CORPS.
STORMBERG JUNCTION.
The wind screams down from the naked hills on to the little junction
station. A platform with dining-room and telegraph office, a few
corrugated iron sheds, the station-master's corrugated iron
bungalow--and there is nothing else of Stormberg but veldt and, kopje,
wind and sky. Only these last day's there has sprung up a little patch
of white tents a quarter of a mile from the station, and about them move
men in putties and khaki. Signal flags blink from the rises, pickets
with fixed bayonets dot the ridges, mounted men in couples patrol the
plain and the dip and the slope. Four companies of the Berkshire
Regiment and the mounted infantry section--in all they may count 400
men. Fifty miles north is the Orange river, and beyond it, maybe by now
this side of it, thousands of armed and mounted burghers--and war.
I wonder if it is all real? By the clock I have been travelling
something over forty hours in South Africa, but it might just as well be
a minute or a lifetime. It is a minute of experience prolonged to a
lifetime. South Africa is a dream--one of those dreams in which you live
years in the instant of waking--a dream of distance.
Departing from Capetown by night, I awoke in the Karroo. Between nine
and six in the morning we had made less than a hundred and eighty miles.
Now we were climbing the vast desert of the Karroo, the dusty stairway
that leads on to the highlands of South Africa. Once you have seen one
desert, all the others are like it; and yet once you have loved the
desert, each is lovable in a new way. In the Karroo you seem to be
going up a winding ascent, like the ramps that lead to an Indian
fortress. You are ever pulling up an incline between hills, making for a
corner round one of the ranges. You feel that when you get round that
corner you will at last see something: you arrive and only see another
incline, two more ranges, and another corner--surely this time with
something to arrive at beyond. You arrive and arrive, and once more you
arrive--and once more you see the same vast nothing you are coming from.
Believe it or not, that is the very charm of a desert--the unfenced
emptiness, the space, the freedom, the unbroken arch of the sky. It is
for ever fooling you, and yet you for ever pursue it. And then it is
only to the eye that cannot do without green that the Karroo is
unbeautiful. Every other colour meets others in harmony--tawny sand,
silver-grey scrub, crimson-tufted flowers like heather, black ribs of
rock, puce shoots of screes, violet mountains in the middle distance,
blue fairy battlements guarding the horizon. And above all broods the
intense purity of the South African azure--not a coloured thing, like
the plants and the hills, but sheer colour existing by and for itself.
It is sheer witching desert for five hundred miles, and for aught I know
five hundred miles after that. At the rare stations you see perhaps one
corrugated-iron store, perhaps a score of little stone houses with a
couple of churches. The land carries little enough stock--here a dozen
goats browsing on the withered sticks goats love, there a dozen
ostriches, high-stepping, supercilious heads in air, wheeling like a
troop of cavalry and trotting out of the stink of that beastly train. Of
men, nothing--only here at the bridge a couple of tents, there at the
culvert a black man, grotesque in sombrero and patched trousers,
loafing, hands in pockets, lazy pipe in mouth. The last man in the
world, you would have said, to suggest glorious war--yet war he meant
and nothing else. On the line from Capetown--that single track through
five hundred miles of desert--hang Kimberley and Mafeking and Rhodesia:
it runs through Dutch country, and the black man was there to watch it.
War--and war sure enough it was. A telegram at a tea-bar, a whisper, a
gathering rush, an electric vibration--and all the station and all the
train and the very niggers on the dunghill outside knew it. War--war at
last! Everybody had predicted it--and now everybody gasped with
amazement. One man broke off in a joke about killing Dutchmen, and could
only say, "My God--my God--my God!"
I too was lost, and lost I remain. Where was I to go? What was I to do?
My small experience has been confined to wars you could put your fingers
on: for this war I have been looking long enough, and have not found it.
I have been accustomed to wars with headquarters, at any rate to wars
with a main body and a concerted plan: but this war in Cape Colony has
neither.
It could not have either. If you look at the map you will see that the
Transvaal and Orange Free State are all but lapped in the red of
British territory. That would be to our advantage were our fighting
force superior or equal or even not much inferior to that of the enemy.
In a general way it is an advantage to have your frontier in the form of
a re-entrant angle; for then you can strike on your enemy's flank and
threaten his communications. That advantage the Boers possess against
Natal, and that is why Sir George White has abandoned Laing's Nek and
Newcastle, and holds the line of the Biggarsberg: even so the Boers
might conceivably get between him and his base. The same advantage we
should possess on this western side of the theatre of war, except that
we are so heavily outnumbered, and have adopted no heroic plan of
abandoning the indefensible. We have an irregular force of mounted
infantry at Mafeking, the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment at Kimberley,
the Munster Fusiliers at De Aar, half the Yorkshire Light Infantry at De
Aar, half the Berkshire Regiment at Naauwpoort--do not try to pronounce
it--and the other half here at Stormberg. The Northumberlands--the
famous Fighting Fifth--came crawling up behind our train, and may now be
at Naauwpoort or De Aar. Total: say, 4100 infantry, of whom some 600
mounted; no cavalry, no field-guns. The Boer force available against
these isolated positions might be very reasonably put at 12,000 mounted
infantry, with perhaps a score of guns.
Mafeking and Kimberley are fairly well garrisoned, with auxiliary
volunteers, and may hold their own: at any rate, I have not been there
and can say nothing about them. But along the southern border of the
Free State--the three railway junctions of De Aar, Naauwpoort, and
Stormberg--our position is very dangerous indeed. I say it freely, for
by the time the admission reaches England it may be needed to explain
failure, or pleasant to add lustre to success. If the Army Corps were in
Africa, which is still in England, this position would be a splendid one
for it--three lines of supply from Capetown, Port Elizabeth, and East
London, and three converging lines of advance by Norval's Pont,
Bethulie, and Aliwal North. But with tiny forces of half a battalion in
front and no support behind--nothing but long lines of railway with
ungarrisoned ports hundreds of miles at the far end of them--it is very
dangerous. There are at this moment no supports nearer than England. Let
the Free Staters bring down two thousand good shots and resolute men
to-morrow morning--it is only fifty miles, with two lines of
railway--and what will happen to that little patch of white tents by the
station? The loss of any one means the loss of land connection between
Western and Eastern Provinces, a line open into the heart of the Cape
Colony, and nothing to resist an invader short of the sea.
It is dangerous--and yet nobody cares. There is nothing to do but
wait--for the Army Corps that has not yet left England. Even to-day--a
day's ride from the frontier--the war seems hardly real. All will be
done that man can do. In the mean time the good lady of the
refreshment-room says: "Dinner? There's been twenty-one to-day and
dinner got ready for fifteen; but you're welcome to it, such as it is.
We must take things as they come in war-time." Her children play with
their cats in the passage. The railway man busies himself about the new
triangles and sidings that are to be laid down against the beginning of
December for the Army Corps that has not yet left England.
III.
A PASTOR'S POINT OF VIEW.
AN IDEAL OF ARCADY--REBEL BURGHERSDORP--ITS MONUMENTS--DOPPER
THEOLOGY--AN INTERVIEW WITH ONE OF ITS PROFESSORS.
BURGHERSDORP, _Oct. 14._
The village lies compact and clean-cut, a dot in the wilderness. No
fields or orchards break the transition from man to nature; step out of
the street and you are at once on rock-ribbed kopje or raw veldt. As you
stand on one of the bare lines of hill that squeeze it into a narrow
valley, Burghersdorp is a chequer-board of white house, green tree, and
grey iron roof; beyond its edges everything is the changeless yellow
brown of South African landscape.
Go down into the streets, and Burghersdorp is an ideal of Arcady. The
broad, dusty, unmetalled roads are steeped in sunshine. The houses are
all one-storeyed, some brick, some mud, some the eternal corrugated
iron, most faced with whitewash, many fronted with shady verandahs. As
blinds against the sun they have lattices of trees down every
street--white-blossoming laburnum, poplars, sycamores.
Despite verandahs and trees, the sunshine soaks down into every
corner--genially, languorously warm. All Burghersdorp basks. You see
half-a-dozen yoke of bullocks with a waggon, standing placidly in the
street, too lazy even to swish their tails against the flies; pass by an
hour later, and they are still there, and the black man lounging by the
leaders has hardly shifted one leg; pass by at evening, and they have
moved on three hundred yards, and are resting again. In the daytime hens
peck and cackle in every street; at nightfall the bordering veldt hums
with crickets and bullfrogs. At morn come a flight of locusts--first,
yellow-white scouts whirring down every street, then a pelting
snowstorm of them high up over the houses, spangling the blue heaven.
But Burghersdorp cared nothing. "There is nothing for them," said a
farmer, with cosy satisfaction; "the frost killed everything last week."
British and Dutch salute and exchange the news with lazy mutual
tolerance. The British are storekeepers and men of business; the Boers
ride in from their farms. They are big, bearded men, loose of limb,
shabbily dressed in broad-brimmed hats, corduroy trousers, and brown
shoes; they sit their ponies at a rocking-chair canter erect and easy;
unkempt, rough, half-savage, their tanned faces and blue eyes express
lazy good-nature, sluggish stubbornness, dormant fierceness. They ask
the news in soft, lisping Dutch that might be a woman's; but the lazy
imperiousness of their bearing stamps them as free men. A people hard to
rouse, you say--and as hard, when roused, to subdue.
A loitering Arcady--and then you hear with astonishment that
Burghersdorp is famous throughout South Africa as a stronghold of
bitter Dutch partisanship. "Rebel Burghersdorp" they call it in the
British centres, and Capetown turns anxious ears towards it for the
first muttering of insurrection. What history its stagnant annals record
is purely anti-British. Its two principal monuments, after the Jubilee
fountain, are the tombstone of the founder of the Dopper Church--the
Ironsides of South Africa--and a statue with inscribed pedestal complete
put up to commemorate the introduction of the Dutch tongue into the Cape
Parliament. Malicious comments add that Afrikander patriotism swindled
the stone-mason out of £30, and it is certain that one of the gentlemen
whose names appear thereon most prominently, now languishes in jail for
fraud. Leaving that point for thought, I find that the rest of
Burghersdorp's history consists in the fact that the Afrikander Bond was
founded here in 1881. And at this moment Burghersdorp is out-Bonding the
Bond: the reverend gentleman who edits its Dutch paper and dictates its
Dutch policy sluices out weekly vials of wrath upon Hofmeyr and
Schreiner for machinating to keep patriot Afrikanders off the oppressing
Briton's throat.
I went to see this reverend pastor, who is professor of a school of
Dopper theology. He was short, but thick-set, with a short but shaggy
grey beard; in deference to his calling, he wore a collar over his grey
flannel shirt, but no tie. Nevertheless, he turned out a very charming,
courteous old gentleman, well informed, and his political bias was
mellowed with an irresistible sense of humour. He took his own side
strongly, and allowed that it was most proper for a Briton to be equally
strong on his own. And this is more or less what he said:--
"Information? No, I shall not give you any; you are the enemy, you see.
Ha, ha! They call me rebel. But I ask you, my friend, is it natural that
I--I, Hollander born, Dutch Afrikander since '60--should be as loyal to
the British Government as a Britisher should be? No, I say; one can be
loyal only to one's own country. I am law-abiding subject of the Queen,
and that is all that they can ask of me.
"How will the war go? That it is impossible, quite impossible, to say.
The Boer might run away at the first shot and he might fight to the
death. All troops are liable to panic; even regular troop; much more
than irregular. But I have been on commando many times with Boer, and I
cannot think him other than brave man. Fighting is not his business; he
wishes always to be back on his farm with his people; but he is brave
man.
"I look on this war as the sequel of 1881. I have told them all these
years, it is not finish; war must come. Mr Gladstone, whom I look on as
greatest British statesman, did wrong in 1881. If he had kept promises
and given back country before the war, we would have been grateful; but
he only give it after war, and we were not grateful. And English did not
feel that they were generous, only giving independence after war,
though they had a large army in Natal; they have always wished to
recommence.
"The trouble is because the Boer have never had confidence in the
English Government, just as you have never had confidence in us. The
Boer have no feeling about Cape Colony, but they have about Natal; they
were driven out of it, and they think it still their own country. Then
you took the diamond-fields from the Free State. You gave the Free State
independence only because you did not want trouble of Basuto war; then
we beat the Basutos--I myself was there, and it was very hard, and it
lasted three years--and then you would not let us take Basutoland. Then
came annexation of the Transvaal; up to that I was strong advocate of
federation, but after that I was one of founders of the Bond. After that
the Afrikander trusted Rhodes--not I, though; I always write I distrust
Rhodes--and so came the Jameson raid. Now how could we have confidence
after all this in British Government?
"I do not think Transvaal Government have been wise; I have many times
told them so. They made great mistake when they let people come in to
the mines. I told them, 'This gold will be your ruin; to remain
independent you must remain poor.' But when that was done, what could
they do? If they gave the franchise, then the Republic is governed by
three four men from Johannesburg, and they will govern it for their own
pocket. The Transvaal Boer would rather be British colony than
Johannesburg Republic.
"Well, well; it is the law of South Africa that the Boer drive the
native north and the English drive the Boer north. But now the Boer can
go north no more; two things stop him: the tsetse fly and the fever. So
if he must perish, it is his duty--yes, I, minister, say it is his
duty--to perish fighting.
"But here in the Colony we have no race hatred. Not between man and man;
but when many men get together there is race hatred. If we fight here
on this border it is civil war--the same Dutch and English are across
the Orange as here in Albert. My son is on commando in Free State; the
other day he ride thirteen hours and have no food for two days. I say to
him, 'You are Free State burgher; you have the benefit of the country;
your wife is Boer girl; it is your duty to fight for it.' I am
law-abiding British subject, but I hope my son will not be hurt. You,
sir, I wish you good luck--good luck for yourself and your
corresponding. Not for your side: that I cannot wish you."
IV.
WILL IT BE CIVIL WAR?[1]
ON THE BORDER OF THE FREE STATE--AN APPEAL TO THE COLONIAL
BOERS--THE BEGINNING OF WARLIKE RUMOURS--A COMMERCIAL AND SOCIAL
BOYCOTT--THE BOER SECRET SERVICE--THE BASUTOS AND THEIR MOTHER, THE
QUEEN--BOER BRUTALITY TO KAFFIRS.
_Oct. 14 (9.55 p.m.)_
The most conspicuous feature of the war on this frontier has hitherto
been its absence.
The Free State forces about Bethulie, which is just over the Free State
border, and Aliwal North, which is on our side of the frontier, make no
sign of an advance. The reason for this is, doubtless, that hostilities
here would amount to civil war. There is the same mixed English and
Dutch population on each side of the Orange river, united by ties of
kinship and friendship. Many law-abiding Dutch burghers here have sons
and brothers who are citizens of the Free State, and therefore out with
the forces.
In the mean time the English doctor attends patients on the other side
of the border, and Boer riflemen ride across to buy goods at the British
stores.
The proclamation published yesterday morning forbidding trade with the
Republics is thus difficult and impolitic to enforce hereabouts.
Railway and postal communication is now stopped, but the last mail
brought a copy of the Bloemfontein 'Express,' with an appeal to the
Colonial Boers concluding with the words:--
"We shall continue the war to the bloody end. You will assist us. Our
God, who has so often helped us, will not forsake us."
What effect this may have is yet doubtful, but it is certain that any
rising of the Colonial Dutch would send the Colonial British into the
field in full strength.
Burghersdorp, through which I passed yesterday, is a village of 2000
inhabitants, and, as I have already put on record, the centre of the
most disaffected district in the colony. If there be any Dutch rising in
sympathy with the Free State it will begin here.
_Later._
And so there's warlike news at last.
A Boer force, reported to be 350 strong, shifted camp to-day to within
three miles of the bridge across the Orange river. Well-informed Dutch
inhabitants assert that these are to be reinforced, and will march
through Aliwal North to-night on their way to attack Stormberg Junction,
sixty miles south.
The bridge is defended by two Cape policemen with four others in
reserve.
The loyal inhabitants are boiling with indignation, declaring themselves
sacrificed, as usual, by the dilatoriness of the Government.
Besides the Boer force near here, there is another, reported to be 450
strong, at Greatheads Drift, forty miles up the river.
The Boers at Bethulie, in the Free State, are believed to be pulling up
the railway on their side of the frontier, and to be marching to Norvals
Pont, which is the ferry over the Orange river on the way to Colesberg,
with the intention of attacking Naauwpoort Junction, on the
Capetown-Kimberley line; but as there are no trains now running to
Bethulie it is difficult to verify these reports, and, indeed, all
reports must be received with caution.
The feeling here between the English and Dutch extends to a commercial
and social boycott, and is therefore far more bitter than elsewhere.
Several burghers here have sent their sons over the border, and promise
that the loyal inhabitants will be "sjambokked" (you remember how to
pronounce it?) when the Boer force passes through.
So far things are quiet. The broad, sunny, dusty streets, fringed with
small trees and lined with single-storeyed houses, are dotted with
strolling inhabitants, both Dutch and natives, engrossed in their
ordinary pursuits. The whole thing looks more like Arcady than
revolution.
The only sign of movement is that eight young Boers, theological
students of the Dopper or strict Lutheran college here, left last night
for the Free State for active service.
The Boers across the Orange river so far make no sign of raiding. Many
have sent their wives and families here into Aliwal North, on our side
of the border, in imitation, perhaps, of President Steyn, whose wife at
this moment is staying with her sister at King William's Town, in the
Cape Colony.
Many British farmers, of whom there are a couple of hundred in this
district, refuse to believe that the Free State will take the offensive
on this border, considering that such aggression would be impious, and
that the Free State will restrict itself to defending its own frontier,
or the Transvaal, if invaded, in fulfilment of the terms of the
offensive and defensive alliance.
Nevertheless there is, of course, very acute tension between the Dutch
and English here. No Boers are to be seen talking to Englishmen. The
Boers are very close as to their feelings and intentions, which those
who know them interpret as a bad sign, because, as a rule, they are
inclined to irresponsible garrulity. A point in which Dutch feeling here
tells is that every Dutch man, woman, or child is more or less of a Boer
secret service agent, revealing our movements and concealing those of
the Boers.
If there be any rising it may be expected by November 9, when the Boers
hold their "wappenschouwing," or rifle contest--the local Bisley, in
fact--which every man for miles around attends armed. Also the
Afrikander Bond Congress is to be held next month; but probably the
leaders will do their best to keep the people together.
The Transvaal agents are naturally doing their utmost to provoke
rebellion. A lieutenant of their police is known to be hiding
hereabouts, and a warrant is out for his arrest. All depends, say the
experts, on the results of the first few weeks of fighting.
The attitude of the natives causes some uneasiness. Every Basuto
employed on the line here has returned to his tribe, one saying: "Be
sure we shall not harm our mother the Queen."
Many Transkei Kaffirs also have passed through here, owing to the
closing of the mines. Sixty-six crammed truckloads of them came by one
train. They had been treated with great brutality by the Boers, having
been flogged to the station and robbed of their wages.
[Footnote 1: This chapter has been deliberately included in this volume
notwithstanding its obviously fragmentary nature. The swift picture
which it gives of flying events is the excuse for this decision.]
V.
LOYAL ALIWAL: A TRAGI-COMEDY.
THE CAPE POLICE--A GARRISON OF SIX MEN--MERRY-GO-ROUNDS AND NAPHTHA
FLARES--A CLAMANT WANT OF FIFTY MEN--WHERE ARE THE TROOPS?--"IT'LL
BE JUST THE SAME AS IT WAS IN '81."
ALIWAL NORTH, _Oct. 15._
"Halt! Who goes there?" The trim figure, black in the moonlight, in
breeches and putties, with a broad-brimmed hat looped up at the side,
brought up his carbine and barred the entrance to the bridge. Twenty
yards beyond a second trim black figure with a carbine stamped to and
fro over the planking. They were of the Cape Police, and there were four
more of them somewhere in reserve; across the bridge was the Orange Free
State; behind us was the little frontier town of Aliwal North, and
these were its sole garrison.
The river shone silver under its high banks. Beyond it, in the enemy's
country, the veldt too was silvered over with moonlight and was blotted
inkily with shadow from the kopjes. Three miles to the right, over a
rise and down in a dip, they said there lay the Rouxville commando of
350 men. That night they were to receive 700 or 800 more from
Smithfield, and thereon would ride through Aliwal on their way to eat up
the British half-battalion at Stormberg. On our side of the bridge
slouched a score of Boers--waiting, they said, to join and conduct their
kinsmen. In the very middle of these twirled a battered
merry-go-round--an island of garish naphtha light in the silver, a jarr
of wheeze and squeak in the swishing of trees and river. Up the hill,
through the town, in the bar of the ultra-English hotel, proceeded this
dialogue.
_A fat man_ (_thunderously, nursing a Lee-Metford sporting rifle_).
Well, you've yourselves to blame. I've done my best. With fifty men I'd
have held this place against a thousand Boers, and not ten men'd join.
_A thin-faced man_ (_piping_). We haven't got the rifles. Every
Dutchman's armed, and how many rifles will you find among the English?
_Fat man_ (_shooting home bolt of Lee-Metford_). And who's fault's that?
I've left my property in the Free State, and odds are I shall lose every
penny I've got--what part? all over--and come here on to British soil,
and what do I find? With fifty men I'd hold this place--
_Thin-faced man._ They'll be here to-night, old De Wet says, and they're
to come here and sjambok the Englishmen who've been talking too much.
That's what comes of being loyal!
_Fat man._ Loyal! With fifty men--
_Brown-faced, grey-haired man_ (_smoking deep-bowled pipe in corner_).
No, you wouldn't.
_Fat man_ (_playing with sights of Lee-Metford_). What! Not keep the
bridge with fifty men--
_Brown-faced, grey-haired man._ And they'd cross by the old drift, and
be on every side of you in ten minutes.
_Fat man_ (_grounding Lee-Metford_). Ah! Well--h'm!
_Thick-set man._ But we're safe enough. Has not the Government sent us a
garrison? Six policemen! Six policemen, gentlemen, and the Boers are at
Pieter's farrm, and they'll be here to-night and sjambok--
_Thin-faced man._ Where are the troops? Where are the volunteers? Where
are the--
_Brown-faced, grey-haired man._ There are no troops, and the better for
you. The strength of Aliwal is in its weakness. (_To fat man_.) Put that
gun away.
_Thin-faced man, thick-set man, and general chorus._ Yes, put it away.
_Thin-faced man._ But I want to know why the Boers are armed and we
aren't? Why does our Government--
_Brown-faced man._ Are you accustomed to shoot?
_Thin-faced man_ (_faintly_). No.
_Fat man_ (_returning from putting away Lee-Metford_). But where do you
come from?
_Brown-faced man._ Free State, same as you do. Lived there
five-and-twenty years.
_Thin-faced man._ Any trouble in getting away?
_Brown-faced man._ No. Field-cornet was a good old fellow and an old
friend of mine, and he gave me the hint--
_Thin-faced man._ Not much like ours! Why, there's a lady staying here
that's friendly with his daughters, and she went out to see them the
other day, and the old man said they'd stop here and sjam--
_Fat man._ Gentlemen, drinks all round! Here's success to the British
arms!
_All._ Success to the British arms!
_Thick-set man._ And may the British Government not desert us again!
_Fat man._ I'll take a shade of odds about it. They will. I've no trust
in Chamberlain. It'll be just the same as it was in '81. A few reverses
and you'll find they'll begin to talk about terms. I know them. Every
loyal man in South Africa knows them. (_General murmur of assent._)
_Hotel-keeper._ Gentlemen, drinks all round! Here's success to the
British arms!
_All._ Success to the British arms!
_Thick-set man._ And where are the British arms? Where's the Army Corps?
Has a man of that Army Corps left England? Shilly-shally, as usual.
South Africa's no place for an Englishman to live in. Armoured train
blown up, Mafeking cut off, Kimberley in danger, and General
Butler--what? Oh yes--General Buller leaves England to-day. Why didna
they send the Army Corps out three months ago?
_Brown-faced man._ It's six thousand miles--
_Thick-set man._ Why didna they send them just after the Bloemfontein
conference, before the Boers were ready? British Gov--
_Brown-faced man._ They've had three rifles a man with ammunition since
1896.
_I_ (_timidly_). Well, then, if the Army Corps had left three months
ago, wouldn't the Boers have declared war three months ago too?
_All except brown-faced man_ (_loudly_). No!
_Brown-faced man_ (_quietly_). Yes. Gentlemen, bedtime! As Brand used to
say, "Al zal rijt komen!"
_All_ (_fervently_). Al zal rijt komen! Success to the British arms!
Good night!
(All go to bed. In the night somebody on the Boer side--or
elsewhere--goes out shooting, or looses off his rifle on general
grounds; two loyalists and a refugee spring up and grasp their
revolvers. In the morning everybody wakes up unsjamboked. The
hotel-keeper takes me out to numerous points whence Pieter's farm can be
reconnoitred: there is not a single tent to be seen, and no sign of a
single Boer.)
It is a shame to smile at them. They are really very, very loyal, and
they are excellent fellows and most desirable colonists. Aliwal is a
nest of green on the yellow veldt, speckless, well-furnished, with
Maréchal Niel roses growing over trellises, and a scheme to dam the
Orange river for water-supply, and electric light. They were quite
unprotected, and their position was certainly humiliating.
VI.
THE BATTLE OF ELANDSLAAGTE.
FRENCH'S RECONNAISSANCE--AN ARTILLERY DUEL--BEGINNING OF THE
ATTACK--RIDGE AFTER RIDGE--A CROWDED HALF-HOUR.
LADYSMITH, _Oct. 22._
From a billow of the rolling veldt we looked back, and black columns
were coming up behind us.
Along the road from Ladysmith moved cavalry and guns. Along the railway
line to right of it crept trains--one, two, three of them--packed with
khaki, bristling with the rifles of infantry. We knew then that we
should fight before nightfall.
Major-General French, who commanded, had been out from before daybreak
with the Imperial Light Horse and the battery of the Natal Volunteer
Artillery reconnoitring towards Elandslaagte. The armoured
train--slate-colour plated engine, a slate-colour plated loopholed
cattle-truck before and behind, an open truck with a Maxim at the tail
of all--puffed along on his right. Elandslaagte is a little village and
railway station seventeen miles north-east of Ladysmith, where two days
before the Boers had blown up a culvert and captured a train. That cut
our direct communication with the force at Dundee. Moreover, it was
known that the Free State commandoes were massing to the north-west of
Ladysmith and the Transvaalers to attack Dundee again. On all grounds it
was desirable to smash the Elandslaagte lot while they were still weak
and alone.
The reconnaissance stole forward until it came in sight of the little
blue-roofed village and the little red tree-girt station. It was
occupied. The Natal battery unlimbered and opened fire. A round or
two--and then suddenly came a flash from a kopje two thousand yards
beyond the station on the right. The Boer guns! And the next thing was
the hissing shriek of a shell--and plump it dropped, just under one of
the Natal limbers. By luck it did not burst; but if the Boer ammunition
contractor was suspect, it was plain that the Boer artillerist could lay
a gun. Plump: plump: they came right into the battery; down went a
horse; over went an ammunition-waggon. At that range the Volunteers'
little old 7-pounders were pea-shooters; you might as well have spat at
the enemy. The guns limbered up and were off. Next came the vicious
_phutt!_ of a bursting shell not fifty yards from the armoured
train--and the armoured train was puffing back for its life. Everybody
went back half-a-dozen miles on the Ladysmith road to Modder Spruit
Station.
The men on reconnaissance duty retired, as is their business. They had
discovered that the enemy had guns and meant fighting. Lest he should
follow, they sent out from Ladysmith, about nine in the morning, half a
battalion apiece of the Devonshire and Manchester Regiments by train,
and the 42nd Field Battery, with a squadron of the 5th Dragoon Guards,
by road. They arrived, and there fell on us the common lot of
reconnaissances. We dismounted, loosened girths, ate tinned meat, and
wondered what we should do next. We were on a billow of veldt that
heaved across the valley: up it ran, road and rail; on the left rose
tiers of hills, in front a huge green hill blocked our view, with a
tangle of other hills crowding behind to peep over its shoulders. On the
right, across the line, were meadows; up from them rose a wall of
red-brown kopje; up over that a wall of grass-green veldt; over that was
the enemy. We ate and sat and wondered what we should do next. Presently
we saw the troopers mounting and the trains getting up steam; we
mounted; and scouts, advance-guard, flanking patrols--everybody crept
slowly, slowly, cautiously forward. Then, about half-past two, we turned
and beheld the columns coming up behind us. The 21st Field Battery, the
5th Lancers, the Natal Mounted Volunteers on the road; the other half
of the Devons and half the Gordon Highlanders on the trains--total, with
what we had, say something short of 3000 men and eighteen guns. It was
battle!
The trains drew up and vomited khaki into the meadow. The mass separated
and ordered itself. A line of little dots began to draw across it; a
thicker line of dots followed; a continuous line followed them, then
other lines, then a mass of khaki topping a dark foundation--the kilts
of the Highlanders. From our billow we could not see them move; but the
green on the side of the line grew broader, and the green between them
and the kopje grew narrower. Now the first dots were at the base--now
hardly discernible on the brown hill flanks. Presently the second line
of dots was at the base. Then the third line and the second were lost on
the brown, and the third--where? There, bold on the sky-line. Away on
their right, round the hill, stole the black column of the Imperial
Light Horse. The hill was crowned, was turned--but where were the Bo--
A hop, a splutter, a rattle, and then a snarling roll of musketry broke
on the question,--not from the hill, but far on our left front, where
the Dragoon Guards were scouting. On that the thunder of galloping
orderlies and hoarse yells of command--advance!--in line!--waggon
supply!--and with rattle and thunder the batteries tore past, wheeled,
unlimbered as if they broke in halves. Then rattled and thundered the
waggons, men gathered round the guns like the groups round a patient in
an operation. And the first gun barked death. And then after all it was
a false alarm. At the first shell you could see through glasses mounted
men scurrying up the slopes of the big opposite hill; by the third they
were gone. And then, as our guns still thudded--thud came the answer.
Only where? Away, away on the right, from the green kopje over the brown
one where still struggled the reserves of our infantry.
Limbers! From halves the guns were whole again, and wheeled away over
ploughland to the railway. Down went a length of wire-fencing, and gun
after gun leaped ringing over the metals, scoring the soft pasture
beyond. We passed round the leftward edge of the brown hill and joined
our infantry in a broad green valley. The head of it was the second
skyline we had seen; beyond was a dip, a swell of kopje, a deep valley,
and beyond that a small sugar-loaf kopje to the left and a long
hog-backed one on the right--a saw of small ridges above, a harsh face
below, freckled with innumerable boulders. Below the small kopje were
tents and waggons; from the leftward shoulder of the big one flashed
once more the Boer guns.