Though nearly two years had elapsed since the cessation of hostilities, the place showed the signs of the past struggle, by its general air of desertion, and the poverty-stricken appearance of a whilom-beleagured town. On making my way in, I could see by the marks all round how the place had been riddled by bullets, and could imagine the hot fire to which it had been exposed. The hole in the door was pointed out to me, through which the bullet sped which killed Capt. Falls, on the very first day of the attack by the Boers.
COURT-HOUSE AT POTCHEFSTROOM, DEC., 1880, AFTER THE SIEGE.
After Capt. Falls’ death Colonel Clark, now Her Majesty’s representative in Basutoland, took command, and with the thirty-five men he had with him defended the building for three days, until the Boers fired the roof, and he was forced to surrender on December 20th.
The Boers, elated to a degree, outraged every rule of war, sentenced the men who had capitulated to hard labor and forced them to work in the trenches which they (the Boers) were digging in front of the fort, where some of our troops had taken shelter, and which they were defending. There, exposed to shot and shell, several lost their lives, killed by the bullets of their comrades in the fort, who knew them not. I next visited the fort itself, which had been the scene of so many painful events. In a space but twenty-five yards square were crammed during the siege nearly 300 souls, of whom about 100 only could bear arms, and here men, women and children remained cooped up from the date above mentioned until they surrendered on March 20th, evacuating the fort on the 23d. In the rear of the fort a stone enclosure was pointed out to me containing the graves of those who died during the four months’ siege. There is no doubt Cronjé, the Dutch commander, ought to have been severely brought to task, as he was guilty of a decided breach of the rules of war, in that he never informed the garrison, which when it surrendered had only a few rotten mealies left, of the armistice which had been agreed upon after Majuba, on the 6th of March, news of which he received in Potchefstroom on the 12th, and was published in the Staats Courant on the 16th. During the siege our losses were: one officer killed and four wounded, twenty-five rank and file killed, and forty-one wounded. The survivors after the surrender were marched to the Free State border and liberated.
There is no doubt that Potchefstroom, which at one time, when the Transvaal was divided into two Republics, was one of the seats of government, lost much by the war. When I was there all the men of business with whom I conversed, told me that property had immensely depreciated in value, and while walking round the town I myself saw proofs of this in the many houses that were tenantless: but although Mr. Robert Acult of the firm of Reid and Co., the largest merchants of the place, told me that business was decidedly reviving, yet the non-reappearance of any banking institutions since the war told me its own tale. One thing, however, I noticed, that to all appearance a friendly feeling seemed to exist among all classes.
“Time and tide wait for no man,” so the frantic blasts from the driver’s bugle announced the readiness of the coach for departure. Taking our seats, off we started for Pretoria at eleven o’clock—
“Smack went the whip, round went the wheels,
Never were folks so glad;”
for now at last we began to see “the beginning of the end.” The journey from Potchefstroom to Pretoria is excessively wearisome, and the country very level and tame. We saw nothing worthy of recording, unfortunately passing the celebrated caves of Wonderfontein[[100]] in the night—nothing to break the monotony of our journey, save the periodical changing of our horses, nothing to occupy our attention but the oft-repeated arguments, whether or not there was any improvement in the team, or the discussion whether time had been gained or lost. In fact we all felt an incessant longing for our journey’s end.