Dear diet and dangerous.
Long after dark, weary and footsore and famished, we stumbled back three miles to our chosen camping ground. Since the previous evening some of the Scots Guards had managed to secure only a hasty drink of coffee, so they told me, as their sole rations for the four-and-twenty hours; but they seemed as happy as they were hungry, like men proudly conscious that they had done a good day's work that brought them, so they fondly supposed, perceptibly nearer home. Assisted by many an undesirable expletive, they staggered and darkly groped their way over some of the very roughest ground we had thus far been required to traverse; they got repeatedly entangled in a profusion of barbed wire; scrambled into deep railway ditches, then scrambled out again; till at last they reached their appointed resting-place, and in dead darkness proceeded as best they could to cook their dinners.
Greatly to our surprise the people, who seemed mostly Dutch or of Dutch relationship, received us like those in the Orange Free State towns, with demonstrative kindness; and in many a case brought out their last loaf as a most welcome gift to the just then almost ravenous soldiery. Every scrap of available provisions was eagerly bought up, and here as elsewhere honestly paid for, often at prices that seemed far from honest. Months after at this very place I learned that eggs were being sold at from ten to fifteen shillings a dozen, and fowls at seven shillings a-piece!
An Australian correspondent of the London Times declares that as it was with us, so was it with the troops that he accompanied. About the very time we reached this Germiston Junction, his men, he says, were practically starving; and any other army in the world would have commandeered whatever food came in its way. He was with Rundle's Brigade, "the starving Eighth" as they were well called, seeing that for a while they were rationed on one and a half biscuits a day. Yet they gave Mr Stead's "ill-treated women" two shillings a loaf for bread that sixpence would have well paid for, and no one was allowed to bring foodstuffs away from any farmhouse without getting a written receipt from the vendor. If the military police caught a ragged Leinster packing a chicken down his trouser leg through a big hole in the seat, and he could not show a receipt for the bird, away went the man's purchase to the nearest Field Hospital. To this same representative of the Press the wife of a farmer still out fighting our troops naïvely said, "For goodness sake do keep those wicked Colonials away; I am terrified of them" (he was himself a Colonial)—"but I am so glad when the English come; they pay me so well." That was the experience of almost all who had anything to sell, alike in town and country; and this particular Frau confessed to having made a profit of ten clear pounds in a single week out of the bread sold to the British soldiers. It is said, however, that in some cases when they asked for bread our men got a bullet. Around many a farmstead there hovered far worse dangers than the danger of being fleeced.
No wages but the Sjambok.
At Elandsfontein an almost frantic welcome was awarded us by the crowds of Kaffirs that eagerly watched our coming. As we marched through their Location almost the only darkie I spoke to happened to be a well-dressed intelligent Wesleyan, who said to me, "Good Boss, we are truly glad that you have come; for the last seven months the Boers have made us work without any wages except the sjambok across our backs." It is only fair to add that the burghers on commando during those same seven months were supposed to receive no wages; and the Kaffirs, who were commandeered for various kinds of service in connection with the war, could scarcely expect the Boer Government to deal more generously with them. From the very beginning, however, the Kaffirs in the Transvaal were often made to feel that their condition was near akin to that of slaves. The clauses in the Sand River Convention which were intended to be the Magna Charta of their liberties proved a delusion and a snare. Recent years, however, have effected immense improvements in their relative position and importance. Since the mines were opened their labour has been keenly competed for, and a more considerate feeling concerning them pervades all classes; but they are still regarded by many of their masters as having no actual rights either in Church or State. So when a victorious English army appeared upon the scene they fondly thought the day of their full emancipation had dawned, and in wildly excited accents they shouted as we passed, "Victoria! Victoria!" Whereupon our scarcely less excited lads in responsive shouts replied, "Pretoria! Pretoria!"
Surely never was the inner meaning and significance of a great historic event more aptly voiced. The natives beheld in the advent of English rule the promise of ampler liberty and enlightenment under Victoria the Good; but the hearts of the soldiers were set on the speedy capture of Pretoria, as the crowning outcome of all their toil, and their probable turning-point towards home. Well said both! Pretoria! Victoria!
The Gold Mines.
Lord Roberts' rapid march rescued from impending destruction the costly machinery and shafting of the Witwaterrand gold mines, in which capital to the extent of many millions had been sunk, and out of which many hundreds of millions are likely to be dug. By some strange freak of nature this lofty ridge, lying about 6000 feet above the sea level, and forming a narrow gold-bearing bed over a hundred miles long, is by universal confession the richest treasure-house the ransackers of the whole earth have yet brought to light. "The wealth of Ormuz or of Ind," immortalised by Milton's most majestic epic, the wealth of the Rand completely eclipses, and nothing imagined in the glowing pages of the "Arabian Nights" rivals in solid worth the sober realities now being unearthed along this uninviting ridge. It fortunately was not in the power of the Boer Government to carry off this as yet ungarnered treasure, or it would certainly have shared the fate of the cart-loads of gold in bar and coin with which President Kruger decamped from Pretoria; but it is beyond all controversy that many of that Government's officials favoured the proposal to wreck, as far as dynamite could, both the machinery and mines in mere wanton revenge on the hated Outlanders that mainly owned them. That policy was thwarted by the swiftfootedness of the troops, and by the tactfulness of Commandant Krause, through whose arranging Johannesburg was peacefully surrendered; but who now, by some strange irony of fate, lies a felon in an English jail!
Nevertheless, later on enough mischief of this type was done to demonstrate how deadly a blow a few desperate men might have dealt at the chief industry of South Africa; and concerning it Sir Alfred Milner wrote as follows:—