Ten Months In The Field With The Boers Part 3

Meanwhile, the buxom negresses of the quarter went about their daily work, apparently unmoved at the ruin of their dwellings.

We pay a visit to the fort, a very curious sight, with its mediaeval battlements bristling with cannon two hundred years old, and its soldiers armed with flintlock muskets. All these excellent Portuguese warriors seem to be impressed by a sense of their lofty mission. They even demurred a little before admitting us into their 'citadel.'

We take up the Archbishop of Mozambique, I believe; he is brought on board by a military launch, with all the honours due to his rank, and saluted by the guns of the fort.

We leave Mozambique the same evening.

Every day there were superb sunsets, glories of deep purple, blue, blazing red, green, yellow and pink, vivid pieces of impressionism that beggar description.

Thus, still avoiding shipwreck, we come to Beira, where we land our prelate, who is received by a numerous staff of officers; troops line the quays, and salutes are fired!

Portugal has certainly a remarkable colonial army. Among the others there is a huge captain, bursting out of his tunic. Each of his long commands, incomprehensible to me, seems to produce consternation in his troop, followed by a series of perfectly diverse manoeuvres.

We turn away that we may avoid laughing aloud, for the moment is a serious one... Two or three trombones attack the Portuguese national air. A good many of the worthy soldiers have shouldered arms, and the majority have presented them.... His lordship pa.s.ses. He gets into a little 'lorry' pushed by natives, and goes off quickly, while the troops disperse. They are worthy of those I have several times seen at Lisbon.

I think if I were the Portuguese I would prefer none at all to such as these.... And, then, the suppression of the military budget would perhaps enable them to pay their dividends. In the afternoon we embark a band of Englishmen coming from Rhodesia to enlist as volunteers at Durban and Cape Town. They invade the saloon with their friends, and sing 'G.o.d save the Queen.' Some of the Frenchmen present retort with the Ma.r.s.eillaise; the situation becomes strained, fists are clenched, and finally a certain number of blows are exchanged. We have on board a grandson of President Kruger's, whose home is in Holland. After having been arrested once, conducted to Durban and sent back to Europe, he is making a second attempt to enter his country. Thanks to a strict incognito, only laid aside for two of us, he succeeds in his design.

At night we arrive off Lourenco Marques, where, without let or hindrance, we disembark on January 21.

We order a bottle of Moet in the saloon to drink the health of Captain B----, whom we are leaving, and against whom we are going to fight presently.

'Your good health,' he says, 'and I trust we shan't meet later on!'

We part with a hearty shake of the hand. At the Custom-house we easily get our artistically-concealed revolvers through, but the Customs officers fall upon the uniforms, arms and harness belonging to Colonel Gourko. They decline to pa.s.s anything, in spite of all explanations.

The Colonel is obliged to go and fetch the Russian Consul and the Governor. We take up our quarters at the Hotel Continental, which, we are told, is the best. Five of us are packed into one small room on improvised beds, where we are devoured by mosquitoes ... and this costs fourteen shillings a day!

Colonel Gourko, having recovered his baggage, joins us there, and, in his turn, invites us to dinner. He does things in a princely fashion, and the bill must have been one that Paillard himself would have hesitated to present.

All sorts of obstacles are invented to prevent our departure. Firstly, of course, our pa.s.sports have to be _vise_, but before this can be done we have to get stamps, which are only to be had at the opposite end of the town; we have, further, to produce a certificate of good conduct (having only arrived the night before!). Then more stamps, then a note from the French Consul, then more stamps; and the office where you get the signature or the paper is never the same as the one that sells the stamps.

At last all formalities have been carried out. Our pockets are bulging with some dozen papers covered with innumerable signatures and a shower of stamps. Cost: over 50 francs--10,850 res!

We go to the station at seven o'clock the following morning. There are a great many police officers on duty. By the Governor's orders no one is to be allowed to start for the Transvaal with the exception of the Russian ambulance. We all exclaim shrilly, and hurry off to the Consul.

Upon our formal declaration that this order will injure us in our business, he proceeds to the Governor and remonstrates, with the result that we are authorized to start next morning, there being only one train a day.

We spend the day wandering about the town, which is of little interest.

The great square planted with trees is pleasant, however.

We see the funeral procession of an officer of the English man-of-war stationed here. The coffin, covered with the Union Jack, is placed on a little gun-carriage drawn by sailors; others line the way. Officers in full uniform follow, and a company of red-coats bring up the rear.

This is our last encounter with the 'soldiers of the Queen' before we open fire upon them. They are already numerous in South Africa, and every day brings reinforcements.

At the beginning of hostilities there were about 25,000 men distributed over Natal and Cape Colony. From November 9 to January 1 seventy-eight transports have brought 70,000 men, completing the fifth division; 15,000 volunteers have been raised on the spot, making in all 110,000 men.

The sixth and seventh divisions, a contribution from the colonies, will bring them up to 22,000; 3,000 yeomanry and 7,000 militiamen will complete the total of 152,000 promised for the month of February. The seventh division started from January 4 to January 11, bringing nearly 10,000 men and eighteen cannon.

Engagements at the rate of 3,600 francs (124) are being made on every side--1,600 (64) on enlistment, 2,000 francs (80) at the end of the war. Enlistments in our Foreign Legion are affected and fall off considerably.

The City of London, by means of a public subscription of 100,000, raises a corps of volunteers. This desperate system of enlistment is severely criticised, even in England.

'What a humiliation,' says Mr. Frederick Greenwood in the _Westminster Gazette_ of January 2, 'to have to cry Help! help! at every crossway to pick up a man or a horse.'

Seventeen new battalions are to be raised after January 15. The choice of men rests with the colonel or the lieutenant-colonel commanding the regimental district. They are required to be aged from twenty to thirty-five, to have gone through a course of instruction in 1898 or 1899, and to hold a certificate of proficiency in shooting. But, as a fact, many of these certificates are given by favour, and a third of the volunteers are from eighteen to twenty years old. The effort made by the country has been considerable.

On January 19 the eighth division was mobilized. It comprised the sixteenth and seventeenth brigades under the command of Major-Generals B. Campbell and J. E. Boyes; Batteries 89, 90, and 91, and the 5th company of Engineers, making a strength of 10,540 men, 1,548 horses, eighteen cannon, and eight machine guns.

The eighth division is under the command of General H. M. L. Rundle, aged forty-four, who has already served in the Zulu campaign, at the siege of Potchefstroom in the Transvaal in 1881, and in the Egyptian and Soudanese campaigns from 1884 to 1898.

III

To return to our journey. On the morning of the 24th, at 10 o'clock, we took the train and departed, happy to leave Lourenco Marques. The last station on the frontier is Ressano-Garcia; again our papers are examined. If we paid highly for them, they at least do good service.

The train rolls on again, and in a few minutes we are on the soil of the Transvaal. All along the line, at every little bridge, bands of armed Boers are posted. Komatipoort Station is also occupied by troops.

Everyone gets out. There is a minute inspection of all papers, even of private letters, and we are conscientiously searched. Having satisfied our challengers, we are allowed to go on. The trains travel very slowly in this very broken, varied country. We ascend almost uninterruptedly, and the line seems to run either along the sides of rocky mountains or the edges of bottomless abysses. Many of the spots we pa.s.s are extraordinarily picturesque. In the evening we arrive at Watervaalonder, and the train stops; for in this country neither trains nor men are in a hurry.

A Frenchman, named Mathis, keeps a hotel, at which we sleep. He receives us with much affability, and talks enthusiastically of the game in the neighbourhood. He is a Nimrod.

The next day we start again, and in the evening we are at Pretoria. My friend Gallopaud is at the station, and takes us to the Transvaal Hotel, where the guests of the Government are quartered.

On the 26th, thanks to the good graces of M. Grunberg, we are presented to M. de Souza, Mr. Reitz's secretary, for whom we have letters of introduction.

We take the oath of fealty as burghers, and receive our weapons, Mauser carbines, the stock of which is getting low, cartridges and belts.

Horses and saddles are already giving out. We are impatient to be off, but shops and offices are all closed on Sat.u.r.day at one o'clock and throughout Sunday.

We take advantage of the holiday to inspect the town. Pretoria, as everyone knows, is the capital of the Transvaal. It is the seat of the Government, which is composed of two Chambers, the First Volksraad and the Second Volksraad. Each is composed of twenty-nine members, elected by direct suffrage. The President of the Republic and the Commander-in-Chief are elected by the members of the First Chamber, the former for five, the latter for ten years. They are eligible for re-election for any length of time.

The President, Paul Kruger, familiarly known as 'Oom Paul,' was Commander-in-Chief for a long time before he became President. The present Generalissimo, Joubert, was his rival in the Presidential elections.

The Transvaal revenue is drawn for the most part from heavy royalties on the mines, and a crushing tax on explosives; in 1897 an income of 112,005,450 francs (4,480,218) was received, against an expenditure of 109,851,400 francs (4,394,056).

The general aspect of Pretoria is depressing; only two or three streets show any animation. The circ.u.mstances of the moment are not certainly such as to enliven the town, but I have been told that even in times of peace it is never very cheerful.

Stretching over a wide area, it is intersected by little tramways, the cars drawn by two consumptive horses. In the centre is Government House, a huge building of freestone, ma.s.sive and ungraceful, though not without certain pretensions to the 'grand style,' I believe. On each side a sentry of the Presidential guard paces up and down. Under the colonnade of the main entrance, which faces a large open s.p.a.ce, a few steps lead up to a vast hall, with a monumental staircase at the end.

On each side of the hall two wide corridors run round the building, and give access to all the different offices. We find the whole place, hall, corridors and offices, crowded with busy people, some soliciting, others solicited, all hurrying hither and thither. With the exception of some few buildings of several storeys grouped round the palace and in the main street--the post-office, the clubs, the banks, the hotels and the large shops--all the houses are little one-storey cottages surrounded by gardens.

On Monday morning we are able to have horses, which we go and catch ourselves in the great courtyard which serves as a depot. We have also some old English saddles, and after buying some rugs and some indispensable provisions, we are ready to start at about five in the evening.

Our departure is fixed for eleven o'clock, by the special train which is to take _Long Tom_ to Kimberley, where we are to join Colonel Villebois.

This _Long Tom_, a 155 millimetres Creusot gun, is a personage, a celebrity. It weighs 2,500 kilogrammes; its carriage weighs the same.

Its fame is derived from its history.