A West Pointer with the Boers /

by John Y. Fillmore Blake

Then again the guards would sometimes take others to the same tree, and, having tied the ropes to their necks and passing it over the limb of the tree, would draw them up till their toes would just touch the ground, that the people might see them struggle and slowly strangle to death. Again, they would be marched into the street, and many guards being placed behind and near them, they would be commanded to run for their lives. Of course, all would be shot down, and the wounded sometimes shot five or six times before they died. These were horrible murder scenes, but Rhodesians seemed to enjoy them. Having seen all this, I do not hesitate to tell the public, that all may know just what a civilized people the English are.

In June we were relieved, by troops coming from the south, and I said farewell to the miserable hole, Buluwayo, and returned to Johannesburg in August, 1896.

I will tell in a few words the causes of that war, because I know them. The Matabeles had not forgotten that white men had poisoned their chief, Lobengula. The Chartered Company sent its police and forcibly took all the cattle from the Kaffirs. This caused the death of thousands of their little ones, who lived almost exclusively on the milk of the cows. The Company allowed its police and its people generally to go to the Kaffir Kraals, and, with their rifles, force young girls to go to their huts, where they could use them at their pleasure. This struck the Kaffirs to the very heart, because they are an extremely moral people, and immorality with them is punished by death. The Company allowed its Police Commissioners to force the Kaffirs to work in the mines. The Commissioners received from the Mining Company $2.50 for each Kaffir, and, in return, guaranteed the Kaffir to work for three months.

Just before the expiration of the three months, the mine captain would take his cowhide whip and so slash them that they would run away. He would then call upon the Commissioners to make good their contract and bring back the Kaffirs. The Commissioner would then send his police to arrest the runaways, and, having got them in his possession, would himself give them twenty lashes and return them to work. Finally the Kaffir, after running away, would hide in the hills. Then it was that the Commissioner would arrest the fugitive's wife and children and hold them as hostages, till he came and gave himself up to receive the twenty lashes. If the Kaffir left before his three months expired, the mine captain did not have to pay him any wages. To get his $2.50, the Commissioner had to make the Kaffir work three months, or put another one in his place, so that the poor Kaffir must be cut and slashed to pieces whether he worked or not. So universal was this cutting and slashing, that life to the Kaffir became worse than hell itself, and thereupon they rebelled, and killed every white man they could lay hands on. I said, "Well done." They would have taken the country, but Rhodes paid them $2,500,000, in kind, and bought peace; and to-day there is no whipping, no cutting Kaffirs to pieces, and they are as independent as kings, in Rhodesia, because they are the masters.

While I was enjoying myself in the jungles of the Zambesi, Rhodes completed all his arrangements for a raid into the Transvaal, but I must tell why it became necessary for Rhodes to make a raid into the Transvaal. He had painted Rhodesia yellow, and through flaming advertisements had led the world to believe that it was the richest gold bearing country on earth.

He knew there was no gold of any account in the country, and he knew, too, that the English public had been swindled out of more than $120,000,000. He knew also that the Chartered Company could not exist, would fall flat, and prove worse than the South Sea bubble, if something were not done, and that quickly, too. Now if he could only manage to seize the world-known, rich gold fields of the Rand, at Johannesburg, and annex them to Rhodesia, why then he and the Chartered Company would be safe, and could easily fill their chest with many more millions.

If the Rand gold-fields were once annexed, then he could advertise the marvellous gold output of Rhodesia, and would find no trouble in floating all the sand banks of that desert land, as veritable gold mines, and thus save and enrich himself and the Chartered Company.

I will say a few words about the Raid.

In December, 1895, Rhodes put about 600 of the Rhodesian police, with Dr. Jameson in command, on the western border of the Transvaal, near Mafeking. Of course, Rhodes had every thing arranged in Downing Street, London, so that at the proper time the English Government could step in, with its troops, to protect its citizens and thus take the rich Rand gold-fields from the Boers. Rhodes had a telegram sent to the London Times that the Boers were about to murder the English women and children in Johannesburg. Many of Jameson's men refused to cross the border, but when they were called into line and told they must go and help protect the English women and children from the savage Boers, they consented. The raiding column made a rapid march, reached Doornkop, about twenty miles from Johannesburg and were there captured by 180 Boers, who had come to meet them on hearing of the raid. There were some prominent Americans in the Johannesburg Reform Committee of seventy, who with Rhodes were implicated in this most outrageous piece of piracy, and when President Kruger refused to put Dr. Jameson and his staff, together with his seventy members of the Reform Committee, in a line and shoot them down, (and what a blessing it would have been for humanity,) he made the fatal mistake of his life and in the end lost his country, at least, temporarily. It was by wilful lying that Rhodes, Jameson and the Reform Committee induced those 600 police to make that raid, and on the tombstones of the twenty-five or thirty men killed at Doornkop, there should be engraved the words, "Murdered by C.J. Rhodes and his followers." All the miscreants who were connected with that infamous raid were soon set free, and they began at once in another way to create trouble for the Boers, and, as a result of their labor, one of the greatest wars in the history of man was fought by a handful of patriotic Boers, against the so-called mightiest empire of the world.

As a result of the raid, the names of something like a hundred low, greed-loving conspirators were made know to the world, and the Transvaal still held possession of its precious gold fields.