Ten Months In The Field With The Boers Part 18

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After forty-eight hours of fighting from Elandsfontein to Florida, on May 29 and 30, we were cut off from the road to Pretoria by General French and his cavalry.

Without horses it was impossible for us to follow the retreat, and we found ourselves shut up in Johannesburg. We succeeded in enrolling ourselves among the police of the mines, which gave us a temporary shelter, and perhaps saved us a sojourn at St. Helena; for we were determined not to take the oath of neutrality, but to begin fighting again as soon as possible.

On May 31 the English entered Johannesburg. The English flag was hoisted with great pomp at noon in the great square, in the presence of Lord Roberts. Dr. Krause had been empowered to surrender the town.

Johannesburg is a very English town. Its behaviour at the time of Jameson's raid sufficiently proved this, and many of the more irreconcilable Burghers who had been brought into hospital there wounded ran away before they were cured rather than remain in the hostile town.

The Union Jack was accordingly greeted with loud shouts of 'Hip! hip!

hip! hurrah!'

Nevertheless, we often met Burghers in the crowd who, like ourselves, were only biding their time to return to the front. I saw one old man weeping silently. I am not sentimental, but I have rarely felt a more poignant emotion than this mute and dignified despair excited in me. I hurried away. I think I should have wept myself.

The entry of the troops began at about 10.30, and lasted four hours.

About 12,000 men marched through the town, and in the environs, as far off as Elandsfontein, some 50,000 pa.s.sed, it was said.

But what a procession it was! There was no order; the men barely marched in ranks. No uniforms, officers and soldiers huddled together, dirty, and many of them in rags. They had eaten nothing since the day before, when the ration had been two biscuits.

On they came, or rather dragged themselves, with drooping heads, one with his rifle on his shoulder, another with his slung across his back, one with the b.u.t.t-end uppermost, some without bayonets, others with bayonets fixed. Some officers had our Mauser rifles, others Lee-Enfields, others sporting rifles. Nearly all, both officers and soldiers, walked with the help of sticks.

From Bloemfontein to Johannesburg they had covered 250 miles, fighting every day, and sometimes marching 45 kilometres without a halt across country.

A few days earlier, at Kroonstad, their convoys had not come up. Lord Roberts, anxious to continue his forward movement by forced marches, asked the commissariat-officer:

'Can you serve the ration?'

'No, sir.'

'Half ration, then?'

'No, sir.'

'Quarter ration?'

'Yes, perhaps.'

On receiving this problematic reply, the Marshal explained the situation to his men. They immediately replied with acclamations: 'For Lord Roberts we would march without any ration at all!'

The Black Watch, out of a thousand men, their strength on landing, mustered about sixty behind their pipers. The others lie in the trenches of Magersfontein and at the foot of Dorn Kop.

Save for a few battalions that have arrived recently, the regiments are skeleton corps.

As we watched these haggard, exhausted troops dragging themselves along, involuntarily we called to mind him who once marched our fathers through all the capitals of Europe. In spite of fatigue, privation, and hard fighting, it was in a very different guise that the Grand Army entered Vienna and Berlin behind the Emperor and his glittering staff.

The artillery was in better form. Some fifteen batteries were drawn by magnificent horses, and I saw men on cobs that looked well worth from two to three hundred louis.

There were also some siege-guns, and some 15 centimetre naval guns--one from the _Monarch_--drawn by thirty-two oxen. It was behind this powerful artillery, devastating the whole region with it on principle, whether occupied or not, that the English army had advanced from Bloemfontein.

If we had had a body of cavalry, I believe that rapid and energetic action would have resulted in a considerable loss of _materiel_ to the English army; for, relying on the absolute lack of offensive measures on our side, they often left their batteries defenceless.

Next came a strong train--telegraph apparatus, balloonists, engineering implements for digging wells, pumps, etc.

The troops merely pa.s.sed through the town, leaving in it a garrison under the command of Colonel Mackenzie (Seaforth Highlanders), who was appointed Governor of Johannesburg.

The next day a proclamation by Frederick Sleigh, Baron Roberts of Kandahar and Waterford, K.P., G.C.B., G.C.S.I., G.C.I.E., V.C., Field-Marshal, commanding Her Majesty's Forces in South Africa:

'a.s.sures the non-combatant population of his protection.

'All Burghers who have committed no act of violence contrary to the laws of civilization against any of Her Majesty's subjects are authorized to return to their homes, after giving up their arms and pledging themselves to take no further part in hostilities. Pa.s.sports will be given them.

'Her Majesty's Government will respect the private property of the inhabitants of the South African Republic, as far as is compatible with the exigencies of war.

'All individual attempts upon property will be severely punished.

'G.o.d SAVE THE QUEEN!

'Given under my hand and seal at Johannesburg, May 31, 1900.'

At the same time, regulations fixing the prices of provisions for the troops were issued: 30s. for a sack of 168 lb. of oats; champagne-tisane, 160s. a case; tobacco, from 3s. to 7s. a pound, etc.

Let us take advantage of our ephemeral functions as policemen to explore the town a little. Johannesburg was not the first mining centre in the Transvaal. The first workers established themselves at Barberton in 1886. A few years later the Brothers Strubens, whilom prospectors, discovered an auriferous vein in the Wit.w.a.tersrand near the farm of Landlaagte. Johannesburg then consisted of a few scattered huts. It now numbers over 100,000 inhabitants (I mean, of course, before the war).

It is a town given over to business. The centre is occupied by the post-office, a huge building, in front of which is a vast marketplace.

Here in normal times trains of carts bring in all the necessaries of life--fruit, vegetables, mealies, etc. The princ.i.p.al streets, Commissioner Street, Market Street, Pritchard Street and President Street, are wide, clean, and bordered by handsome shops. The whole town is lighted by electricity.

The blocks of houses, three and four stories high, are called 'buildings'; often several of them belong to the same owner or to the same society, and bear their names: aegis Building, Commissioner Street; S.A. Mutual Building; Standard Building; Heritier Building.

The houses are not numbered, but this does not inconvenience the postmen, for they do not exist. Each inhabitant pays a small sum for his own box at the post-office, and goes to fetch his correspondence when he likes.

Johannesburg has a very well organized fire-brigade, with engines, ladders and fire-escapes of the latest pattern. The captain, who is, I believe, an Englishman, served for a time in Paris, London, and New York, and wears the honorary medal of our Paris brigade. The men wear the same uniform as English firemen.

The hosiers, tailors, French milliners, dressmakers, saddlers, and music-sellers of the town are on a par with the best European specialists. Life is very expensive, and all luxuries command tremendous prices. Cabs, dirty and ill-harnessed, drawn by two miserable horses and very badly driven, cost 7s. an hour. Little light cabriolets drawn by negroes are therefore generally used for locomotion. These are much cheaper and fairly rapid, for the negroes--Kaffirs or Zulus--are in excellent training, and can go extraordinary distances at the double.

The currency was for a long time English, but in 1892 the Transvaal struck her first coins (pounds and shillings) with the effigy of President Kruger.

The Free State has no coinage of her own, and uses English or Transvaalian money.

Bronze money, of which the President only allowed a few specimens to be struck, is not current; the monetary unit is the 'ticket,' a small silver coin worth 3d.[#]

[#] Some English officers, it seems, saw for the first time at Elandsfontein a Kruger's penny, and bought it for 2. The current price of a Kruger's penny is from two to three shillings.

The Johannesburg journals, the _Standard and Diggers' News_ and the _Wolkstrem_, the official organ, therefore cost 3d.