"There is a land of every land the pride;
Belov'd by Heaven o'er all the world beside.
Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found?
Art thou a Man, a Patriot? Look around!
Oh thou shalt find, howe'er thy footsteps roam,
That land thy country, and that spot thy home!"
Boer patriotism we had supposed to be not merely pronounced, but fiercely passionate; and "a Dutchman," said Penn, "is never so dangerous as when he is desperate"; yet when the Guards' Brigade stepped out of the newly-conquered Free State into the about to be conquered Transvaal, scarcely a solitary Dutchman appeared upon the scene to dispute our passage, or to strike one desperate blow for hearth and altar and independence. In successive batches we were peacefully hauled across the river on a pontoon ferry bridge; and as I leaped ashore it was with a glad hurrah upon my lips; a grateful hallelujah in my heart![Back to Contents]
CHAPTER VI
A CHAPTER ABOUT CHAPLAINS
Whilst our narrative pauses for a while beside the Vaal which served as a boundary between the two Republics, it may be well to devote one chapter to a further description of the work of the chaplains with whom in those two Republics I was brought into more or less close official relationship. Concerning the chaplains of other Churches whose work I witnessed, it does not behove me to speak in detail; I can but sum up my estimate of their worth by saying concerning each, what was said concerning a certain Old Testament servant of Jehovah:—"He was a faithful man and feared God above many."
Of Wesleyan acting-chaplains, devoting their whole time to work among the troops, and for the most part accompanying them from place to place, there were eight; and to the labours of three of them—the Welsh, the Australian and the Canadian—reference has already been made. A fourth, the Rev. Owen Spencer Watkins, represented the Wesleyan Church in the Omdurman Campaign and was officially present at the memorial service for General Gordon; but in this campaign he was unfortunately shut up in Ladysmith, so that we never met. His story however has been separately told in "Chaplains at the Front." There remain three whom I repeatedly saw, and who reported to me from time to time the progress of their work—viz. the Revs. M. F. Crewdson, T. H. Wainman, and W. C. Burgess, each of whom in few words it will now be my privilege to introduce.
A Chaplain who found the Base became the Front.
Mr Crewdson, who had for some years been my colleague in England, at the commencement of the war was compelled to leave Johannesburg, and became a refugee minister at the Cape, where on my arrival he was one of the first to welcome me. Possessed of brilliant preaching abilities and uncontrollably active, a life of semi-indolence soon became to him unendurable; and presently his offer was accepted of service with the troops, but instead of being sent as he desired into the thickest of the fray, he found himself detailed for hospital and other homely duties, at De-Aar Nauwpoort and Norval's Pont. Here for over twelve months he rendered admirable, though to him monotonous, service; when, lo, suddenly the Boers doubled back upon their pursuers, and attempted not unsuccessfully though unfruitfully, a second invasion of Cape Colony. The base became the front, and this vast region of hospitals and supply depôts became the scene of very active operations indeed, in which the Guards' Brigade, now recalled from Koomati Poort, took a prominent part. Mr Crewdson found himself at last not where wounds are healed merely, but where wounds are made, and for the moment, being intensely pro-British, found in that fact a kind of grim content.