With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back

by Edward P. Lowry

Fortunately the damage done to the mines has not been large relatively to the vast total amount of the fixed capital sunk in them. The mining area is excessively difficult to guard against purely predatory attacks having no military purpose, because it is, so to speak, "all length and no breadth," one long thin line stretching across the country from east to west for many miles. Still, garrisoned as Johannesburg now is, it is only possible successfully to attack a few points in it. Of the raids hitherto made, and they have been fairly numerous, only one resulted in any serious damage. In that instance the injury done to the single mine attacked amounted to £200,000, and it is estimated that the mine is put out of working for two years. This mine is only one out of a hundred, and is not by any means one of the most important. These facts may afford some indication of the ruin which might have been inflicted, not only on the Transvaal and all South Africa, but on many European interests, if that general destruction of mine works which was contemplated just before our occupation of Johannesburg had been carried out. However serious in some respects may have been the military consequences of our rapid advance to Johannesburg, South Africa owes more than is commonly recognised to that brilliant dash put forward by which the vast mining apparatus, the foundation of all her wealth, was saved from the ruin threatening it.

That this wonderful discovery of wealth was indirectly the main cause of the war is undeniable. But for the gold the children of "Oden the Goer," whose ever restless spirit has sent them round the globe, would never have found their way in any large numbers to the Transvaal. There would have been no overmastering Outlander element, no incurable race competitions and quarrels, no unendurable wrongs to redress; the Boer Republic might again have become bankrupt, or broken up into rival chieftaincies as of old, but it could not have become a menace to Great Britain, and would never have rallied the whole Empire to repel its assault on the Empire. It is too usually with blood that gold is bought!

The Soldiers' share.

The war was practically the purchase price of this prodigious wealth, but it effected no transfer in the ownership. It may have in part to provide for the expenses of the war, but it is not claimed by the British Government as part of the spoils of war; and when Local Government is granted it will still be included in local assets. The capitalists, colonists and Kaffirs who live and thrive through the mines will thrive yet more as the result of juster laws, ample security, and a more honest administration; but the soldiers whose heroism brought to pass the change profit nothing by it. The niggers driving our carts were paid £4 a month, while the khaki men who did the actual fighting were required to content themselves with anything over about fifteen pence a day.

When Cortez, with his accompanying Spaniards, discovered Mexico, he sent word to its ruler, Montezuma, that his men were suffering from a peculiar form of heart disease which only gold could cure; so he desired him of his royal bounty to send them gold and still more gold. In the end those Spanish leeches drained the country dry; though when convoying their treasure across the sea no small portion of it was seized by English warships, and shared as loot among the captors. After the treasure ship Hermione had thus been secured off Cadiz by the Actæan and the Favorite, each captain received £65,000 as prize-money (so Fitchett tells us); each lieutenant, £13,000; each petty officer, £2000; and each seaman, £500. Our fighting men and officers found in the Transvaal vastly ampler wealth, but no such luck and no such loot. Well would it be, however, if these mining Directorates when about to declare their next dividends should bethink them generously of the widows and orphans of those whose valour and strong-footedness rescued their mines from imminent plunder and destruction.

The Golden City.

Johannesburg, which we entered unopposed on May 31st, though it covers an enormous area and contains several fine buildings, is only fourteen years old, and consequently is still very largely in the corrugated iron stage of development which is always unlovely, and in this case proved specially so. Many of the houses were deserted, most of the stores were roughly barricaded, and there were signs not a few of recent violence and wholesale theft, at which none need wonder. Long before the war broke out there was presented to President Kruger and his Raad a petition for redress of grievances signed, as already stated, by adult male Outlanders that are said to have outnumbered the total Boer male population at that time of the whole Transvaal. Most of those who signed were resident on the Rand; and as soon as war hove in sight these "undesirables" were hurried across the border, leaving behind them in many cases well-furnished houses and well-stocked shops. More than ten thousand of them took up arms in defence of the Empire, and what befell their property is best told by the one Wesleyan minister who was privileged to remain all the time in the town, was the first to greet me when with the Guards I marched into the Market Square, and soon after established our first Wesleyan Soldiers' Home in the Transvaal. He, the Rev. S. L. Morris, on that point writes as follows:—

President Kruger proclaimed Sunday, May 27th, and the two following days, as days of humiliation and prayer. Notices to this effect were sent to officials and ministers, and doubtless there were many who devoutly followed the directions. The conduct of one large section of the Dutch people of Johannesburg was, however, very strange. In Johannesburg, as in Pretoria, the last ten years have seen the development of special locations where the lowest class of Dutch people reside. For the most part these are the families of landless Boers. Until recent years they lived as squatters on the farms of their more thrifty compatriots. Their life then was one of progressive degradation. Under the Kruger policy hundreds of such families were encouraged to settle in the neighbourhood of the towns. Plots of ground were given them, and there they built rough shanties, and formed communities which were a South African counterpart to the submerged tenth of England. There was this difference, that these bywoners became a great strength to the Kruger party. The males of sixteen years of age and upwards had all the privileges which were denied to the most influential of the Uitlanders. It was the votes of Vrededorp, the poor Dutch quarter, that decided the representation of Johannesburg in the Volksraad. On the days of humiliation and prayer, when the army under Lord Roberts was within twenty miles of Johannesburg, the families of these poor burghers broke into the commissariat stores of their own Government, into the food depôts from which doles had been distributed, and into private stores; taking away to their homes, goods, clothing and provisions of all sorts. Those who witnessed the invasion of the great goods sheds where the Republican commissariat had its headquarters say that the people defied the officials, daring them to shoot them. I met many of these people returning to their homes laden with spoils. Sometimes there was a wheelbarrow heaped up with sacks of flour, or tins of biscuits, or preserved meat. Men, women, children and Kaffir "boys" trudged along with similar articles, or with bundles of boots and clothing. Dr Krause, the commandant, did his best to secure order and to repress looting, but he lacked the reliable agents who alone could have controlled the people. This sort of thing was going on on Monday and Tuesday, May 28th and 29th. But for the astonishing marches by which Lord Roberts paralysed opposition, and which enabled him to summon the town to surrender on the Wednesday morning, it is hard to say what limit could have been put to the disorder. In all probability the dangerous section of the large Continental element in the population would have broken out into crime. Looting had hitherto been confined to the property which was left unprotected, and few unoccupied houses had not been ransacked; but had the British occupation been delayed a few days the consequences would have been disastrous.

Astonishing the Natives.

As on that Thursday morning we tramped steadily from Germiston to Johannesburg we were greatly surprised to find near each successive mine crowds of natives all with apparently well oiled faces that literally shone in the sunlight; but natives of every conceivable shade of sableness, and in some cases of almost every permissible approach to nudity. They were for the most part what are called "raw Kaffirs"; and as we were astonished at their numbers after so many months of war and consequent stoppage of work, so were they also astonished at our numbers, and confided to our native minister their wonder at finding there were so many Englishmen in all the world as they that day saw upon the Rand. It was a vitally important object lesson that by this time has made its beneficent influence felt among all the tribes of the South African sub-continent.