These bywoners believe any preposterous story their leaders tell them in order to keep them together. One of my sons who was taken prisoner by Theron because he had laid down his arms, told me, after his escape, it was common laager talk that 60,000 Russians, Americans and Frenchmen were on the water, and expected daily; that China had invaded and occupied England, and that only a small corner of that country still resisted. These are the men who are terrifying their own people. I could instance hundreds of cases to show their atrocious conduct. Notorious thieves and cowards are allowed to clear isolated farmhouses of every valuable. Widows whose husbands have been killed on commando are not safe from their depredations. They have even set fire to dwelling-houses while the inmates were asleep inside.
As to the perfect accuracy of these accusations I can scarcely claim to be a judge, though apparently reliable confirmation of the same reached me from many sources; but I do confidently assert that no kindred accusations can be justly hurled at the men by whose side I tramped from Orange River to Koomati Poort. Their good conduct was only surpassed by their courage, and of them may be generally asserted what Maitland said to the heroic defenders of Hougoumont—"Every man of you deserves promotion."[Back to Contents]
CHAPTER XIV
FROM PORTUGUESE AFRICA TO PRETORIA
Towards sundown on Tuesday, September 24th, while most of the Guards' Brigade was busy bathing in the delicious waters of the Koomati at its juncture with the Crocodile River, I walked along the railway line to take stock of the damage done to the rolling stock, and to the endlessly varied goods with which long lines of trucks had recently been filled. It was an absolutely appalling sight!
Staggering Humanity.
Long before, at the very beginning of the war, the Boers, as we have often been reminded, promised to stagger humanity, and during this period of the strife they came strangely near to fulfilling their purpose. They staggered us most of all by letting slip so many opportunities for staggering us indeed. Day after day we marched through a country superbly fitted for defence, a country where one might check a thousand and two make ten thousand look about them. Our last long march was through an absolutely waterless and apparently pathless bush. Yet there was none to say us nay! From Waterval Onder onwards to Koomati Poort not a solitary sniper ventured to molest us. A more complete collapse of a nation's valour has seldom been seen. On September 17th, precisely a week before we arrived at Koomati, special trains crowded with fugitive burghers rushed across the frontier, whence not a few fled to the land of their nativity—to France, to Germany, to Russia—and amid the curious collection of things strewing the railway line, close to the Portuguese frontier, I saw an excellent enamelled fold-up bedstead, on which was painted the owner's name and address in clear Russian characters, as also in plain English, thus:—
P. DUTIL. ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIE.
That beautiful little bedstead thus flung away had a tale of its own to tell, and silently assented to the sad truth that this war, though in no sense a war with Russia, was yet a war with Russians and with men of almost every nationality under heaven.
Food for Flames.