At this time of the investment General Cronje sent verbal messages to the chief advising him not to mix himself and his people in a white man's quarrel. This view of General Cronje's was, at the beginning of the siege, in accord with local white sentiment. The European inhabitants of the besieged town had a repugnance to the idea of armed Natives shooting at a white enemy; but the businesslike method of General Cronje in effecting the investment had a sobering effect upon the whole of the beleaguered garrison; the Dutch 100-pounder Cruesot especially thundered some sense into them and completely altered their views.
The Barolong youth had his baptism of fire on October 25, 1899, when General Cronje tried to storm the garrison by effecting an entry through the native village. He poured a deafening hail of nickel into the native village. The Natives who were concealed behind the outer walls of Montsioastad waited with their rifles in the loopholes, according to Captain Marsh's instructions, till the Boers were quite near to them, then returned the fire with satisfactory results. After this encounter the whites, for the first time, regretted that there were not any arms in the place with which to arm all the Natives. As this attack was unmistakably severe and a Red Cross wagon moved around the Boer lines in the afternoon, it was feared that the native casualties were heavy, and medical aid was offered by the white section of the garrison. But all were agreeably surprised to find that beyond slight damages to the housetops there were no casualties among the Barolongs. The following was the only injury: A shell burst in front of Chief Lekoko as he was engaged in repelling the Boer attack, but no fragments of it touched him. One piece of shell, however, struck a rock and a splinter of the rock grazed his temple. At best only a few rounds of ammunition could be handed out to those of the Barolongs who used their own rifles, and it is doubtful if so little ammunition was ever more economically used, and used to greater advantage.
The investment of Mafeking was so effective that only certain Natives could crawl through the Boer lines at night. Throughout the seven months of the siege only one white man managed, under the guidance of two Natives, to pass into the village. All the dispatches which came into and out of Mafeking were carried by Barolong runners. Before the Boers moved their stock into the far interior of the Transvaal, the Barolongs continually went out and raided Boer cattle and brought them into the besieged garrison. Often the raiders had to fight their way back, but sometimes as they returned with the cattle in the night the Dutch sentries preferred to leave them alone. The result was that General Snyman, who commanded the besiegers after General Cronje went south, issued a general order authorizing the shooting dead of "any one coming in or out of Mafeking", armed or unarmed.
At his village called Modimola, ten miles outside the beleaguered garrison, there lived Chief Saane, uncle of the Mafeking chief. Being apparently harmless he was not for some months molested by the Boers. Later, however, they rightly suspected him of supplying the garrison with information. They then took him and his followers to Rietfontein, where they placed him under surveillance, but Chief Saane proved even more useful in captivity than in liberty. He used the seemingly inoffensive young men of Rietfontein, to glean all first-hand information from the Boers, who still had command of the lines of communication. Then he sent the news in verbal messages to his nephew, the paramount chief in the siege, who in turn communicated it to Her Majesty's officers in command. By means of this self-constituted intelligence bureau the garrison learnt of the surrender of Cronje — a happy consummation of the battle of Paardeberg — shortly after the good news reached their besiegers; and when official confirmation came from the Cape, more than a week later, Chief Saane's messengers were there again with fresh news of the surrender of Bloemfontein. This news, as might be well supposed, was glad tidings to the besieged people. They were in fact the truths that King Solomon thus sets forth: "As cold water is to the weary soul, so is good news from a far country," for, in those days, before the invention of aeroplanes and Marconigrams, no country in this wide world was further than a besieged garrison.
Among the first civilian bodies raised in Mafeking for purposes of garrison defence was the "Cape Boy Contingent", a company of mixed classes in varying degrees of complexions. Sergt.-Major Taylor, a coloured bricklayer, who led the contingent and directed the crack snipers of that company, was killed during the fourth month of the siege, by a fragment of a huge shell in the outer trenches.
His funeral was attended by General Baden-Powell and other staff officers, and was probably the only funeral of a coloured person in the South African war that was accorded such distinguished military attendance.
The language of the Cape coloured or mixed people is the same as that of the Boers, viz., the Cape Dutch. At times during the siege our advance lines and those of the Boers used to be less than 100 yards apart, and when the wily snipers of both sides saw nothing to snipe at, they used to exchange pleasantries at the expense of one another, from the safety of their entrenchments. Sometimes these wordy compliments made the opponents decidedly "chummy", to borrow a trench phrase. In that mood, they would now and again wax derisive or become amusing, bespeaking the fates of one another or the eventual outcome of the war. Whoever got the worst of the argument used to cut off communication with an unpleasant remark; but when it was mutually amusing, both sides enjoyed an advantage and each joined heartily in the resulting merriment. On more than one occasion a convivial Dutchman momentarily forgot the martial aspect of the mutual hilarity and complied with an equally convivial coloured man's exclamation to "kyk hier, jong" (look here, old fellow), and directly he "kyked" the snipers did to him that which from the enemy's point of view would amount to "devil's work".
The reader of these reminiscences will perhaps permit us to pay a tribute to the Dutch Burghers who, under General Snyman, besieged Mafeking. Whatever we may say against them, in other ways, this much must be said in their favour, namely, that they left us entirely alone on Sundays. Such an opportunity gave the Mafeking people a chance to get about, to have a thorough wash-up, and to keep the Sabbath holy. Snipers put down their rifles on Sunday mornings, declared a day's peace among the contending forces between the opposing trenches, and pointed out to one another landmarks beyond which the opposing sentries might not cross, since to wander past these beacons would mean a sudden resumption of hostilities. But as the landmarks were religiously respected there seldom was any occasion to desecrate the Sabbath by the clash of arms. We had thus a whole day's recreation, when the trenchmen used to visit their families in the women's camp and make all-round preparations for another week's bombardment.
The "Cape Boys" fought with distinction and maintained their reputation right up to the end of the siege. Visitors to Mafeking may now see near the obelisk in front of the pretty town hall of the famous siege town, a five-pounder gun "captured by the Cape Police during the siege". This gun was seized by the coloured Sergeant Bell and two other subalterns of the "Cape Boys" contingent; their contingent was then under the command of Lieutenant Currey of the Cape Police.
Besides the brave coloured men who fell during the defence of Mafeking, one painful effect of the siege, in connexion with this contingent, was that of Mr. Swartz, who was blinded by an exploding Boer shell and has never been able to regain his eyesight.